36.Owen's posthumously-printed
Owen’s posthumously-printedTrue Nature of a Gospel Church and its Government Owen died in 1683. One of his most important tracts, The True Nature of a Gospel Church and its Government, was published posthumously six years later in 1689. Rightly, the later congregationalistic editor W.H. Goold admitted in his own ’Prefatory Note’ thereto (VXI:2) that because "of some statements in the following treatise...it has been gravely argued that the author returned to the Presbyterianism of his early days before he died." Those statements are found especially in Owen’s chapter on ’the Communion of Churches.’
"This Communion," Owen there insists (XVI:183), is incumbent on every church with respect unto all other Churches of Christ in the world equally." Apparently thinking of 1Co 12:3-26 (especially verse Eph 12:13) and Eph 4:1-16 (especially verse Eph 4:5), Owen emphasized (XVI:189f) "that the true and only union of all particular Churches consists in that which gives form, life and being unto the Church Catholic.... They have all one and the same God and Father; one Lord Jesus Christ; one faith and one doctrine of faith; one hope of their calling or the promised inheritance; one regeneration; one baptism; one bread and wine and are united unto God and Christ in one Spirit....
"Two things concur," explains Owen, "unto the completing of this Union of Churches 1. Their union or relation unto Christ;
2. That which they have among themselves....
"The Lord Christ Himself is the original and spring of this Union, and every particular Church is united unto Him as its Head; besides which, with, or under which, it hath none. This relation of the Church unto Christ as its Head, the Apostle expressly affirms to be the foundation and cause of its Union. Eph 4:15-16....
"The Communion of Churches," Owen goes on, "is their joint actings in the same Gospel duties towards God in Christ, with their mutual actings towards each other with respect unto the end of their institution and being, which is the glory of Christ in the edification of the whole Catholic Church....
"Churches have Communion unto their mutual edification by advice in Synods or Councils.... SYNODS are the meetings of divers Churches by their [commissioned] Messengers or Delegates, to consult and determine of such things as are of common concernment unto them all by virtue of their Communion which is exercised in them....
"The union of all churches as before described in one Head, by one Spirit, through one faith and worship, unto the same ends doth so compact them into one Body Mystical, as that none of them is or can be complete absolutely without a joint acting with other Members of the same Body.... Thisacting in Synodsis an institution of Jesus Christ...in the nature of the thing itself, fortified withapostolicalexample. For having erected such a Church-state and disposed all His Churches into such order and mutual relation unto one another as that none of them can be complete or discharge their whole duty without mutual advice and counsel He hath thereby ordained this way of their communion in Synods, no other being possible unto that end."