Fallacy in Mr. Cotton’s generals. A godly person remaining a member of a false church, is therein a member of a false Christ.
Thirdly, I observe how easily a soul may wander in his generals, for thus he writes: “Though they see not all the pollutions wherewith they have been defiled in the former church fellowship.” Again, “if they see so much as did enthral them to anti-christ, and separate them from Christ.” And yet he expresseth nothing of that, “all the pollutions,” nor what so much is as will separate them from Christ. Hence upon that former distinction that Christ in visible worship is Christ, I demand, whether if a godly person remain a member of a falsely constituted church, and so consequently, in that respect, of a false Christ, whether in visible worship he be not separate from the true Christ?
Separation from false Christ absolutely necessary before there can be union to the true. A sequestration or separation of the soul from the world in the idolatrous and invented worships of it, before it can be presented to Christ Jesus, as a chaste virgin into the chaste bed of his own most holy institutions.
Secondly, I ask, whether it be not absolutely necessary to his uniting with the true church, that is, with Christ in true Christian worship, that he see and bewail, and absolutely come out from that former false church or Christ, and his ministry, worship, &c., before he can be united to the true Israel—must come forth of Egypt before they can sacrifice to God in the wilderness. The Jews come out of Babel before they build the temple in Jerusalem. The husband of a woman [must] die, or she be legally divorced, before she can lawfully be married to another; the graft cut off from one before it can be ingrafted into another stock. The kingdom of Christ, that is, the kingdom of the saints, Dan. ii. and vii., is cut out of the mountain of the Roman monarchy. Thus the Corinthians, 1 Cor. vi. 9-11, uniting with Christ Jesus, they were washed from their idolatry, as well as other sins. Thus the Thessalonians turned from their idols before they could serve the living and true God, 1 Thess. i. 9; and as in paganism, so in anti-christianism, which separates as certainly, though more subtilly, from Christ Jesu.
CHAP. XIV.
Yea; but it is said, that Jews, weak in Christian liberties, and zealous for Moses’s law, they were to be received.
I answer, two things must here carefully be minded:—
Difference between God’s own holy institutions to the Jews, and Satan’s paganish, or anti-christian institution to the Gentiles, as concerning the manner of coming forth of them.
First, although bondage to Moses would separate from Christ, yet the difference must be observed between those ordinances of Moses which it pleased God himself to ordain and appoint, as his then only worship in the world, though now in the coming of his Son he was pleased to take away, yet with solemnity; and on the other side, the institutions and ordinances of anti-christ, which the devil himself invented, were from first to last never to be received and submitted to one moment, nor with such solemnity to be laid down, but to be abhorred and abominated for ever.
A comparison between the Jewish and Christian ordinances.