A DISCOURSE CONCERNING THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. " One body, and one Spirit."EPf. iv. 4. THE "unity of the church" is a point which may seem somewhat speculative and remote from practice; but in right judgments it is otherwise, many duties depending upon a true notion and consider- ation of it; so that from ignorance or mistake about it we may incur divers offences or omissions of duty. Hence in holy Scripture it is often proposed as a considerable point, and useful to practice. And if ever the consideration of it were needful, it is so now, when the church is so rent with dissensions, for our satisfaction and direc- tion about the questions and cases debated in Christendom; for on the explication of it, or the true resolution wherein it consists, the controversies about " church government, heresy, schism, liberty of conscience," and by consequence many others, depend; yea, indeed, all others are by some parties made to depend thereon. St Paul, exhorting the Ephesians, his disciples, to themaintenance of charity and peace among themselves, for inducement to that prac- tice represents the unity and communityof those things which jointly appertainedto them as Christians: the unityof that "body" of which they were members; of that "spirit" which animated and acted them; of that "hope" to Which they were called; of that " Lord" whom they all worshipped and served; of that "faith" which they professed ; of that " baptism" whereby they were admitted into the same state of duties, of rights, of privileges; of that one " God" and universal "Father," to whom they had all the same relations. He begins with the "unityof the body," that is, of the Christian church; concerningwhich unity, what it is, and wherein it consists, I meannow to discourse. In order to clearing which point, we must first state what the church is of which we discourse; for the word "church" is ambigu-
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