The Church
The Church
The Church | Savoy and London Compared with Westminster - Westminster Standards
Westminster, chapter XXV:
II. The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation as before under the law)
consists of all those, throughout the world, that profess the true religion, and of their children;
and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.
III. Unto this catholic visible Church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God,
for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world […].
Savoy, chapter XXVI:
II. The whole body of men throughout the world, professing the faith of the gospel and obedience unto God by Christ according to it,
not destroying their own profession by any errors everting the foundation, or unholiness of conversation, are, and may be called the visible catholic church of Christ;
although as such it is not entrusted with the administration of any ordinances, or have any officers to rule or govern in, or over the whole body.
London, chapter XXVI:
II. All persons throughout the world, professing the faith of the gospel, and obedience unto God by Christ according unto it,
not destroying their own profession by any errors everting the foundation, or unholiness of conversation, are and may be called visible saints;
and of such ought all particular congregations to be constituted.
What changes. Two words disappear already in Savoy: "their children". The visible church is made up of those who profess, and no more.
And with them the whole of paragraph III disappears: the catholic visible church still exists, but empty. Christ has entrusted to it neither ministry, nor ordinances, nor government;
all that he has given to each particular church. London takes the last step and no longer speaks of a visible catholic church, but of "visible saints" of whom congregations are formed.
The rest is addition. Savoy published, alongside its confession, a platform of thirty articles on "the institution of churches, and the order appointed in them by Jesus Christ".
London abridges it and puts it inside the chapter, which goes from six paragraphs to fifteen. What both teach is this:
each particular church, gathered by the consent of its members, has received from Christ "all that power and authority" which is needful for its worship and its discipline;
it chooses its officers "by the common suffrage of the church itself"; and there is no court whatever above it.
The offices are reduced: Savoy names pastors, teachers, elders and deacons; London, "bishops or elders, and deacons".
What is kept. It is not little. Both retain the invisible catholic church, consisting of all the elect. Both retain that Christ is the only head of the church and that the Pope of Rome is "that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition", and they add that the Lord shall destroy him "with the brightness of his coming". Savoy adds besides a paragraph of its own, which London does not take up, on the expectation that in the latter days, antichrist being destroyed and the Jews called, the churches of Christ shall enjoy in this world a more peaceable and glorious condition.
Why. It was for this that they met at the Savoy: the Independents accepted the doctrine of Westminster and rejected its government, and they had already said so within the Assembly itself, where Thomas Goodwin was one of the "dissenting brethren". In London there is added what the chapter on the covenant had prepared: if the church consists only of professors, the children of believers are not members of it.
What this shows. That the difference between Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists does not begin at baptism, but here, and that it is a difference of degree. Westminster confesses a visible church which is a body, which includes the children, and to which Christ has given ministry and government. Savoy removes the children from the paragraph and the government from the body, but goes on baptising infants. London draws the consequence which Savoy did not draw. What is lost on the way is what the Assembly read in 1 Corinthians 12:28 and in Ephesians 4:11-13: that the gifts and the government were given to the whole church, and not only to each congregation separately. That principle, and whither it led, is the subject of the last article of this section.