Scott
Puritan Board Graduate
Does anyone have any detail (also interested in resources, especially online) on how members of English or other established churches viewed New England Congregationalists? I am especially interested in whether they were viewed as true churches. I am also interested in whether members of congregational churches would have been allowed communion the in the established churches of Europe.
Here is an excerpt from a statement by Rutherford about New England Congregationalists in a PCA position paper.
Scott
Here is an excerpt from a statement by Rutherford about New England Congregationalists in a PCA position paper.
To use terminology developed later, the church is visible both as an organism and as an institution. As stated by Berkhof:
The Church as an organism is the coetus fidelium, the communion of believers, who are united in the bond of the Spirit, while the church as an institution is the mater fidelium, the mother of believers, a Heilsanstalt, a means of salvation, an agency for the conversion of sinners and the perfecting of saints.
Such appears to have been the view of Samuel Rutherford, one of the delegates of the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Assembly. Writing in 1644 (with reference to the New England congregational churches' refusal to admit to sealing ordinances believers coming over from old England who were not members of the particular churches they were attending in New England) Rutherford said:
We hold that those who profess faith in Christ, to be members of the visible Congregation, and that the seals of the Covenant should not be denied to them.
Scott