Professed public conversion is not only from sins against the second table in personal repentance, but from false worship also.
First, doth their conversion amount to external turning from idols, 1 Thess. i. 9, beside their internal repentance, faith, love? &c. Secondly, who wrought this conversion, who begot these children? for though the Corinthians might have ten thousand teachers, yet Paul had begotten them by the word.
It is true, as Mr. Cotton himself elsewhere acknowledgeth, God sendeth many preachers in the way of his providence, even in Babel mystical, though not according to his ordinance and institution. So even in the wilderness God provideth for the sustentation of the woman, Rev. xii.; by which provision, even in the most popish times and places, yea, and by most false and popish callings (now in this lightsome age confessed so to be), God hath done great things to the personal conversion, consolation, and salvation of his people.
A true ministry necessary before conversion, and therefore before the church, in the first pattern.
But as there seems yet to be desired such constitution of the Christian church, as the first institution and pattern calls for: so also such a calling and converting of God’s people from anti-christian idols to the Christian worship: and therefore such a ministry, according to the first pattern, sent from Christ Jesus to renew and restore the worship and ordinances of God in Christ.
The true way of the ministry sent with that commission, Matt. xxviii. discussed.
Lastly, if it should be granted that without a ministry sent from Christ to gather churches, that God’s people in this country may be called, converted from anti-christian idols, to the true worship of God in the true church estate and ordinances, will it not follow that in all other countries of the world God’s elect must or may be so converted from their several respective false worships and idolatries, and brought into the true Christian church estate without such a ministry sent unto them? Or are there two ways appointed by the Lord Jesus, one for this country, and another for the rest of the world? Or lastly, if two or three more, without a ministry, shall arise up, become a church, make ministers, &c., I ask, whether those two or three, or more, must not be accounted immediately and extraordinarily stirred up by God? and whether this be that supreme power of Christ Jesus, which they speak of, sending forth two or three private persons to make a church and ministers, without a true ministry of Christ Jesus first sent unto themselves? Is this that commission, which all ministers pretend unto, Matt. xxviii. 19, &c. first, in the hands of two or three private persons becoming a church, without a mediate call from which church, say they, there can be no true ministry, and yet also confess that Christ sendeth forth to preach by his supreme power, and the magistrate by his power subordinate to gather churches?
CHAP. CIV.
Peace. You have taken great pains to show the irreconcilableness of those their two assertions, viz., First, there is now no ministry, as they say, but what is mediate from the church; and yet, secondly, Christ Jesus sends preachers forth by his supreme power to gather the church. I now wait to hear, how, as they say, “the magistrate may send forth by his power subordinate to gather churches, enforcing the people to hear,” &c.