All out of Christ are heathens, that is of the nations, or Gentiles.
Translators promiscuously render the words, Gentiles, heathens, nations: whence it is evident that even such as profess the name of Christ in an unregenerate and impenitent estate, whether papist, or protestant, are yet without: that is, heathen, Gentile, or of the nations.
CHAP. CXXXIII.
Peace. Dear Truth, it is now time to cast your eye on the second part of this head or picture, uncomely and deformed.
Truth. It contains two sorts of religious meetings or assemblies.
First, more extraordinary and occasional, for which he quotes the practice of Josiah.
Josiah a type of Christ Jesus, the king of the church.
An. Josiah was in the type: so are not now the several governors of commonweals, kings or governors of the church or Israel; whose state I have proved to be a non-such, and not to be paralleled but in the antitype, the particular church of Christ, where Christ Jesus alone sits King in his own most holy government.
Secondly, they propound meetings or assemblings ordinary, stated, and constant, yearly and monthly, unto which the civil magistrate should give liberty. For these meetings they propound plausible arguments from the necessity of them, from Christian fellowship, from God’s glory, from the experience of the benefit of them, and from the good report of them, as also those two scriptures, 1 Cor. x. 33, 2 Cor. xi. 28.