Chapter II.
Of the formal cause of a particular church.
The way or means whereby such persons as are described in the foregoing chapter may become a church, or enter into a church-state, is by mutual confederation or solemn agreement for the performance of all the duties which the Lord Christ hath prescribed unto his disciples in such churches, and in order to the exercise of the power wherewith they are intrusted according unto the rule of the word.
For the most part, the churches that are in the world at present know not how they came so to be, continuing only in that state which they have received by tradition from their fathers, Few there are who think that any act or duty of their own is required to instate them in church order and relation. And it is acknowledged that there is a difference between the continuation of a church and its first erection; yet that that continuation may be regular, it is required that its first congregating (for the church is a congregation) was so, as also that the force and efficacy of it be still continued. Wherefore the causes of that first gathering must be inquired into.
The churches mentioned in the New Testament, planted or gathered by the apostles, were particular churches, as hath been proved. These churches did consist each of them of many members; who were so members of one of them as that they were not members of another. The saints of the church of Corinth were not members of the church at Philippi. And the inquiry is, how those believers in one place and the other became to be a church, and that distinct from all others? The Scripture affirms in general that they gave up themselves unto the Lord and unto the apostles, who guided them in these affairs, by the will of God, 2 Cor. viii. 5; and that other believers were added unto the church, Acts ii. 47.
That it is the will and command of our Lord Jesus Christ that all his disciples should be joined in such societies, for the duties and ends of them prescribed and limited by himself, hath been proved sufficiently before. All that are discipled by the word are to be taught to do and observe all his commands, Matt. xxviii. 19, 20.
This could originally be no otherwise done but by their own actual, express, voluntary consent. There are sundry things which concur as remote causes, or pre-requisite conditions, unto this conjunction of believers in a particular church, and without which it cannot be; such are baptism, profession of the Christian faith, convenient cohabitation, resorting to the preaching of the word in the same place: but neither any of these distinctly or separately, nor all of them in conjunction, are or can be the constitutive form of a particular church; for it is evident that they may all be, and yet no such church-state ensue. They cannot all together engage unto those duties nor communicate those powers which appertain unto this state.
Were there no other order in particular churches, no other discipline to be exercised in them, nor rule over them, no other duties, no other ends assigned unto them, but what are generally owned and practised in parochial assemblies, the preaching of the word within such a precinct of cohabitation, determined by civil authority, might constitute a church. But if a church be such a society as is intrusted in itself with sundry powers and privileges depending on sundry duties prescribed unto it; if it constitute new relations between persons that neither naturally nor morally were before so related, as marriage doth between husband and wife; if it require new mutual duties and give new mutual rights among themselves, not required of them either as unto their matter or as unto their manner before, — it is vain to imagine that this state can arise from or have any other formal cause but the joint consent and virtual confederation of those concerned unto these ends: for there is none of them can have any other foundation; they are all of them resolved into the wills of men, bringing themselves under an obligation unto them by their voluntary consent. I say, unto the wills of men, as their formal cause; the supreme efficient cause of them all being the will, law, and constitution of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thus it is in all societies, in all relations that are not merely natural (such as between parents and children, wherein the necessity of powers and mutual duties is predetermined by a superior law, even that of nature), wherein powers, privileges, and mutual duties, are established, as belonging unto that society. Nor, after its first institution, can any one be incorporated into it, but by his own consent and engagement to observe the laws of it: nor, if the nature and duties of churches were acknowledged, could there be any couldst in this matter; for the things ensuing are clear and evident:—