.
Excerpted from:
Richard Baxter, Christian Concord, or the Agreement of the Associated Pastors & Churches of Worcestershire, with Richard Baxter’s Explication & Defence of it, & his Exhortation to Unity (London: A.M., 1653), pp. 95-106 & 119-20
.
This lightly edited transcription is public domain.
.
.
Exhortation to Church Union
.
3. I solemnly profess that I have no desire by this our Associating to advance any parties or carnal interests, but merely that all godly, faithful, orthodox ministers may join together to guide their flocks in these licentious days, lest through our divisions they be made a prey. And also that so much of discipline may be unanimously exercised as we are all agreed in, lest our congregations be a reproach through their pollutions and men should forget the true nature of Christianity, and we be all laid waste or overgrown with weeds while the hedge lies down…
Lastly, understand that it is not only those that differ in [Church] government that we desire should unite with us: but also those that differ in doctrines, so they be such as can heartily subscribe our Profession [of Christianity’s fundamentals] and will manage their differences in peace and love…
Only let all know that the able, godly, faithful and peaceable of all these sorts we heartily desire to unite with as brethren, but the insufficient, ungodly, unfaithful, unpeaceable we do disclaim, of what opinion, side or party soever they be.
I shall conclude with this humble request to all my brethren in the ministry, in the name of our great Lord and Master, that they would forget all former injuries and differences so far as presently to address themselves to seek peace and reconciliation. And to that end that they would here and in all countries presently enter into some fraternal Associations, and there meekly and self-denyingly to set themselves with one heart and soul to carry on Christ’s work so far as we are agreed.
Why sirs, have not Independents, presbyterians, episcopal, etc. one God, one Christ, one Spirit, one Creed, one Scripture, one hope of everlasting life [1 Cor. 8:6; Eph. 4:4-6]? Are our disagreements so great that we may not live together in love and close in fraternal union and amity? Are we not of one religion? [Acts 26:5; James 1:27] Do we differ in fundamentals or substantials? [Mt. 23:23] Will not conscience worry us? Will not posterity curse us if by our divisions we betray the Gospel into the hands of the enemies? and if by our mutual envyings and jealousies and perverse zeal for our several conceits we should keep open the breach for all heresies and wickedness to enter and make a prey of our poor people’s souls? Brethren, you see other bonds are loosed: Satan will make his advantage of these days of licentiousness. Let us straighten the bond of Christian unity and love and help each other against the powers of Hell and join our forces against our common enemy.
Have you not had yet time and means enough to observe how God has been offended with your unpeaceable proceedings? seeking to oppress and subdue each other by force rather than to win each other by love and evidence of truth? The episcopal party, when they were up [before 1640], made that sad havoc of the [English] Church by the persecution of their brethren, which this land is like to lament yet longer. The presbyterians, when they were up [after 1640], sought their ejection too rashly, without sufficient means of satisfaction. What, should I rip up the faults of others which the sun has seen and the world rings of? Truly brethren, I speak it that we may all be humbled and go weeping together in seeking the Lord with our faces Zion-ward, saying, ‘Come, let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten,’ Jer. 50:4-6. [Samuel Rutherford argues, rightly, that the covenant here spoken of is God’s Covenant of Grace.]
I would not open our shame were it not necessary to our humiliation and reformation, but the world knows it already. As God tells us of it, so the railing, malicious, insulting enemies tell us of it. Have not some of you so led the way in secret or open vilifying, deriding, despising and aspersing your brethren that thereby you, even you, have been the means of raising those calumnies that you cannot allay, and have put those words into the mouths of the wicked which they daily belch forth to the pleasing of the Devil, the grieving of all lovers of holiness and peace and the undoing of their own souls? So bitterly and scornfully have some used the name of an Independent that the most reverend and learned and godly of that way do with the multitude lie under such contempt that they are the less capable of successful serving God in their places. So reproachfully and contemptuously have others used the name of a presbyterian that they have raised by it that scorn in the multitude of seduced ones which will prove a snare to many a soul, and which these churches may have cause to bewail while there is a tongue to mention it.
Yea, some have ventured into the throne of God to search the hearts of a nation, and in such auditories and with such language to proclaim their pretended discoveries as I am ashamed to express; and when they have done this, to print it, that there may not be lacking a witness of their sin. Alas, it is past denial that you have occasioned those Hellish reproaches which the Satanical mercuries [newspapers] do daily proclaim in the ears of the world, so that a man of another nation cannot read the reports of civil or military affairs in England or Scotland but he must read it intermixed with the accusations, reproaches and slanders of the brethren. I will not now go so near the quick as to meddle with matters of blood, even the blood of confessed saints, in which we little thought ten years ago [in 1643] that such should have had a hand in as have openly owned it to God and men; only I will say, these things must sit close to some men’s consciences.
But this I would seriously have you consider, whether the fearful danger that the Gospel and Christian cause is in this day be not principally occasioned by your divisions, emulations and contentions? And if it should fall out (which God prevent) that academies and ministry be cast down, that Popery be let in, that the power of godliness be swallowed up by schisms and profaneness, will not your names be the first in the curse? Who knows not that the divisions of the pastors lead the people into divisions? yea, and that they are as backward yet as almost any to heal them?
In all this I exclude not myself, though I can truly say that I always loved peace and hated censorious dividing; yet I unfeignedly bewail (and confess my sin before God and the world) that I did love the one and hate the other no more, that ever I did so much against peace and no more for it. O brethren, it’s we that lead the way to division that must sound the retreat and jointly lead the way to reconciliation. We have no other way to heal our wounded consciences and hide our sin and shame (under Jesus Christ). We have no other way to revive the hopes of the churches, now they seem to be ready to gasp their last, nor yet to rescue the souls of our poor people who are some of them ready to turn Papists as soon as liberty has opened the door wide enough for the priests and Jesuits to be familiar among them; and the rest of them are ready to think all religion to be uncertain or vain while they see so many divisions.
In the name of God brethren, Return! and speedily and zealously return to unity and peace. Send abroad to one another and stir up the dull and invite the backward, and draw on the prejudiced and negligent to this work. Alas brethren! it is greater, more difficult and more blessed work than to be done with idle-wishing and sitting still. Have you forgotten your Master’s sheep-mark? “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye love one another.” (Jn. 13:35) Have you forgotten the Spirit’s charge: “If it be possible, as much as in you lies, live peaceably with all men,” (Rom. 12:18) and “follow peace with all men” [1 Pet. 3:11]?
To receive it when it’s thrust upon you is not following it, and yet happy be England if all would do so. Alas that ever men, that men that make so much conscience of praying, hearing, reading, sacraments, should make no more conscience of their duties for the peace of the Church! when Christ has so frequently, so plainly, so piercingly inculcated love, peace, over and over as He has done and yet that Christians, yea, ministers do so strangely overlook them and read them as if they read them not; when the Lord has placed so much of the very nature of Christianity in it and made it so necessary to our very salvation, that yet we should pass it over so lightly and with so little observation: O what hypocrisy! what self-condemning is it for to cry out of the divisions and schisms of the times, as most do, when we have sat still when we should endeavor to heal them and when we that have made the breach should make it up!
Division and lack of love is a sin that all men are ready to blame in others and exclaim of in the general, and yet that we should be so deeply guilty ourselves as if we had not run far enough in the guilt already! Alas brethren! are not the effects of our sin before our eyes which way ever we look? into city, country, into parliament that late was and into the army, into men of all sorts and degrees? and is it not time to return? Again, therefore, I beseech you make out after union and reconciliation. And to that end get all together and keep constant meetings in Associations.
Most jealousies and jarrings are occasioned by strangeness and distance when you hear men spoken evil of and do not hear them speak for themselves. Familiarity would much further the cure of differences. Devils and wicked men can agree in evil doing and go hand in hand in sin; and shall not we unite in the work of God? What, we! that look to live in Heaven together and there to be employed all in one blessed work of praising the Living and Most Blessed God? Will it do you good then to remember your strangeness and dissensions now?
For my part I daily look death in the face and live in a constant expectation of my change and therefore have the better advantage to be faithful to my conscience; and I must needs profess that when I look back upon my life I have more comfort in the least means that ever I used for the Church’s peace than in all my most zealous, contentious engagements. I am confident, brethren, you scarce know the work that will more comfort you in the review than to be speedy and diligent in the using of your wit, strength, power and interest for the union and reformation of these distracted churches. Shall it be said (alas, too truly) that Separatists will ride and run and lay out all their pains unweariedly to divide the Church and that we will not do half so much to heal it and unite it? Our office is to be builders, and building is conjoining, and demolishing and destroying is dividing.
I confess it is a work of exceeding difficulty to bring even the best to be of one mind: We are of such various intellectual complexions and statures and all so imperfect in knowledge; and they that do know are so unable to convey their knowledge to their prejudiced, unstudied, unprepared brethren or to make such impression on other men’s understandings as is necessary to their conviction that it is no wonder if agreement be a difficult thing. Besides, mistakes once received do so insinuate into the very will and do so strangely multiply and engage men before they are aware to maintain them, and error (as all sin) is of such a deceitful nature, seeming to be the best when it is the worst and always coming under the pretense of its contrary, and the great Deceiver is so skillful and diligent to set out his wares to the best advantage that it is no wonder if the Church’s teachers be perverted.
Besides this, men are of such difference in the strength of their natural parts and also do so differ in the advantages of improving them, and some study so hard and some so little, that it is no wonder if there be almost as many minds as men. Some also have such passions to pervert their understandings and some have such strong temptations and carnal interests, and so many false hearts are ready to creep into the best assemblies, that it is no wonder if dividing be easier then uniting.
Yea (which is the core of all our misery), there is in most of us so much pride and false estimation of our own conceptions that it is not the smallest difficulty to convince us of our ignorance and to make us know how little we know; yea, such proud spirits will quarrel with the light because it came not originally from their candle; and let the choicest discoveries be sent from Heaven to them, they will contemn them because they are brought them by another man’s hand; and if the only way of agreement be propounded by another, they will cavil or dissent, or envy it because themselves were not the motioners or authors. There is no agreement with those men where pride is unmortified: for be they never so unable or unwilling to do the work themselves, yet will they hinder another in doing it.
But brethren, the more difficult this work of agreement is, the more industriously and resolvedly should we set ourselves to seek it. Difficulties that amount not to impossibilities should quicken and not discourage where the work is of necessity, as ours is.
I seriously profess that I often wonder how men, learned men, godly men, can maintain so much seeming peace with God and their own consciences, who do so little for the Church’s peace, and how they can ever hope to die in peace that study no more to live in peace? If without holiness here there be no hope of holiness or happiness hereafter, how can there be any hopes of everlasting peace to those that do not here value and pursue peace? What! Preachers of the Gospel? and yet forget their Master’s name! “The King of Salem, the Prince of Peace,” (Isa. 9:6) and forget the Gospel’s nature and title to be, “The Message of Peace” (Lk. 2:12-14); and forget their own office which is to be “The Messengers of Peace,” (Isa. 2:7) and forget the title of that way which they must preach, “The Way of Peace” (Prov. 3:17; Lk. 1:79); and forget that it is the description of the wicked, “The way of peace they have not known;” (Isa. 59:8) and to forget that it is their curse, “There is no peace to the wicked;” (Isa. 57:21) and to forget that great benediction of our Lord, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” (Mt. 5:9) yea, and to forget the tenor of our final sentence, “They shall enter into peace;” (Isa. 57:2) and the nature of our everlasting inheritance, what absurdities are all these? how inconsistent with that calling which we profess and do pretend to?
But I know there is none of us such enemies to peace but we would be content to have it, so it be upon our own terms. If all men will take up their opinions and stoop to their wills, what men be so wicked but would yield to peace? But is that seeking for it, and denying ourselves for it, and closing in Christ the Common Center? All that I will say more to you shall be in these following prognostics, which do also intimate the impediments and difficulties, and do point out our own duties.
In general I am confident if this be God’s season for the restoring of his Church, it will be his season also for the uniting of his people; and let all the dividers know that they labor in vain while they think to restore the Church by any other means than the loving, amicable closure of the members. Nay, they demolish and destroy while they dream that they are building. Zion is not built by the Babel-confusions: if God divide our language, He will blast our work.
More particularly I do foretell you that (for the way to peace):
1. Whenever God means to restore and build his Church in peace, He will open the eyes of his people to see the necessity, excellency and glory of peace, and give them such deep apprehensions of this that they will wonder that they were before so blinded as to overlook it.
2. He will (to that end) make them read more seriously and with observation those texts of Scripture which before they slipped over and felt no force or favor in, so that they shall wonder how they could so overlook such serious precepts and such clear discoveries of their Master’s will, such as: 1 Cor. 1:10-11, etc. and 3:3-4; Rom. 16:17-18; Phil. 3:15-16; 1 Thess. 5:13-15, specially Rom. 15:1-7 and 14:1, etc. Jam. 3:17-18; 1 Cor. 12:12, etc.; Mt. 5:9; Gal. 6:1; Rom. 12:9-10, 15-18 to the end. O that these few verses of this chapter were but conscionably practiced even by the eminent leaders of the Flock of Christ!
3. When God will do this great work, He will wonderfully convince his people of the sinfulness of their divisions and of that perverse emulation and zeal which they were accustomed to entitle God Himself to and to glory in as a part of their chiefest duty. They shall no more reproach one another and lie vilifying their brethren behind their backs, and one say, ‘It’s all long of these Independents,’ and another, ‘This we may thank the presbyterians for,’ and a third, ‘The prelatical conformists did all this’; but they shall see that we were all too blame and every man shall acknowledge his unpeaceable miscarriages and heartily lament them before the Lord and loath themselves for all their emulations.
4. Yea, when God will do this work, He will make his people feel an indispensible obligation lying on them to seek peace and pursue it so that they shall be no more able to rest with quiet consciences till they have sent to one another, confessed their miscarriages and desired reconciliation and constant Associations for the unanimous carrying on the work of Christ, than now they can rest in peace of conscience without preaching, praying or any other duty.
5. Yea, God will possess them with such a love to peace and such a fervent zeal for it that they shall set themselves with all their might to obtain it; and they that now can hardly be drawn to accept of it when it is thrust into their hands shall then follow it as thirstily and importunately as the most zealous dividers are now set on the propagation of their opinions, or rather, as the most zealous, godly preacher does thirst after the winning and saving of souls. And as the zealous reformers in Luther’s days were set against Popery, and the zealous non-conformists in Queen Elizabeth and King James’s days and also before this late parliament were set against bishops and ceremonies, so that they restlessly prosecuted their work till it was accomplished, so shall the restorers of the Church be as zealously set for the reconciling of differences and the union and association of pastors and of churches.
6. Yea God will raise in his people such deep apprehensions of the heinous wickedness of dividing principles and practices (which are now accounted acts of piety) that they shall not make a light matter of them anymore, but Christians shall think and speak of divisions and emulations and breaking into parties as now they think and speak of theft, whoredom, murder or such like. [Gal. 5:19-21]
7. Yea God will cause his people to detest the very names of division and lay them by as occasions and badges of our disagreement. And I think Epiphanius and Augustine’s and others’ long lists of heresies will not be in so good esteem as they are at this day. For though the schism will be more abhorred, yet it will not be every such difference in judgment, as some of theirs, that will be taken for a sufficient ground to call a man a heretic.
8. Moreover, when God will restore his Church, He will give meek and humble spirits to his people and take down much of that pride which now causes and continues our divisions. Those proud men that now value their reputation and carnal interests before the Church’s unity and reformation, that so value their own understandings that they think contemptuously of other men’s, shall then be low in their own eyes and prefer their brethren before themselves. The pride of Christians, especially of ministers, is now the main impediment to our union. This cursed sin makes men look with an envious eye at every brother that is esteemed above them and (as they think) does cloud them in the eyes of the people. It makes ministers seek after applause and makes them impatient of slighting and disesteem. And while they are striving who shall have the greater party, they are engaged in division before they are aware, forgetting that (while they think they are laboring for Christ) they do but fish for themselves and draw men from Christ by drawing them from unity. It is this pride that makes men so froward in carrying on any work of God that unless themselves may have the glory of it or it may be done their way, they will quarrel and break it all in pieces as if they had rather Christ had no Church, than themselves should be denied an honorable station in it, or as if they had rather Christ’s work should be undone than done without them or contrary to their conceits. God will turn this devilish distemper into humility and self-denial when his work shall be done. He will make his people base in their own eyes and glad to be slighted, vilified and laid by so it might but conduce to the unity and peace of the Church and the furthering of reformation, as Clement of Rome says (To the Corinthians, ch. 54):
“He therefore that is strong, merciful, full of charity among you, let him say, ‘If it be for me that sedition, contention and divisions arise, I will depart; I will be gone whither you will. I will do what the people command me, so be it that the Flock of Christ may live in peace with those presbyters that are set over them.’ He that shall do this will win himself much honor in the Lord and every place will gladly receive him.”
9. Yea God will cause men to abhor that censoriousness of their brethren and those secret desires to destroy their reputations, which are the fruit of this pride. So that they who now are questioning every man’s sincerity that does not please them, and making the worst of every man’s actions and speeches, shall then cover men’s infirmities by that charity which thinks not and speaks not evil, which envies not and is not puffed up (1 Cor. 13:4-5); and they shall be so conscious of their own faults and frailties as that it shall constrain them to tenderness and compassion on their brethren and to judge the best till they know the worst; and they shall learn to hear a censurer and backbiter with as much indignation as now they hear a swearer or a liar. [Ps. 15:3-4; Rom. 1:29-31; 2 Cor. 12:20-21]
10. Yea God will take them off from all their engagements to parties and let them perceive that the very names of parties are a dishonor to the Church [1 Cor. 1:11-13], and that Christians should not think of a party but as a man thinks of his wounds: with smart and sorrow.
11. Also when this blessed work of healing shall be wrought, God will show his people the sinfulness of that zeal for inferior particular opinions (true or false) which makes them think that they ought to do many things against the churches’ unity and peace. He will show them that it is a perverse zeal which chooses the propagation of a smaller point before the edification of the body and the propagation of the substance of the Christian faith, which by that course is apparently hindered.
12. Yea God will open their eyes to see the difficulties of those lower controversies which they insisted on till their high confidence in their opinions be abated, so as that they shall pity themselves and the rest of mankind for our unavoidable darkness and weakness, and not despise, cast off or divide from those that differ from them.
13. For God will let men see that it is the substance of Christianity that Christians must center and unite in; and He will teach them to take those for brethren that hold that substance, though they differ in several inferior things.
14. And God will teach his people to be hereafter less cruel and proud than to impose new articles of Faith upon their brethren and to put their own interpretations into their creed. He will teach men to be more merciful to the Church than to load her with canons and constitutions of men containing unnecessary, dividing determinations and seeking to force all to their obedience.
15. For whenever God intends peace and unity to his Churches, He will cause men freely to give his Word the honor of its sufficiency and to take it for a perfect rule of Faith and worship, as that which has left nothing undetermined which was fit for a stated, universal determination; and therefore men shall see the vanity, yea the sinfulness of men’s undertaking to determine by canons what God thought not fit to determine in his laws, except only for the occasional determining of that in particular which God has determined only in general and directed man by his rules how to determine in special, which therefore must not be by a fixed universal determination (for then God would have done it Himself), but by a temporary determination, to be changed as occasions shall require: and therefore in most things to be left to the particular church-guides who are upon the place and employed in the work. Also, God will teach men to take the Scripture for sufficient in matter of belief and to screw men no higher, not adding their super-numerary articles, as the Council of Trent, no, nor putting a word among their fundamentals as necessary which is not in the Scripture. What hope of union is there when there is no uniting rule or center agreed on? And can the Papists or any other over-doing zealots imagine that ever God’s universal Church will agree upon any rule or center as sufficient besides the Scripture? or ever depart from its sufficiency?
16. Lastly, if God intend peace, He will (likely) fit his providences to advantage it: He will give preparing seasons and accommodations. Three great disadvantages to the Church’s peace and unity are these that follow:
1. Times of war, when men’s ears are filled with a contrary sound and their minds alienated, exasperated and filled with jealousies. If men do think that in any foreign Churches there be anything amiss, how much more Christian a course were it, and probable to succeed, to debate the case in peace than to fight with them?
2. It is an unlikely time for agreement when one party is in prosperity and power and thinks he can have his will without condescending to a loving, Christian debating of our differences. Man’s proud, corrupt heart will hardly be taken off from the using of his carnal weapons and advantages, but will think that God puts such power and opportunities into his hand for the promoting of his particular opinions and ways by force, and not by satisfying the unsatisfied.
3. Another disadvantage is ignorant or wicked magistrates in the sovereignty, who either understand not the ways of the Lord or else hate them and would undermine them: either as [Emperor] Julian [the Apostate], by giving every party a liberty of contending and of publishing their delusions, and of denying openly the foundation, and working on the poor people who are usually more easily taken with confident speeches than with solid reasonings, or else (on the other extreme) to use a foolish violence with those that dissent in inferior things and to become a discouragement to true piety and tenderness of conscience. The latter we have felt formerly; the former we have felt lately and fear yet more. But what God may yet do upon this change of our government [since Oliver Cromwell], we cannot tell. Let all that love the churches’ peace and welfare pray that our rulers may avoid these two destroying extremes, of giving too much liberty or too little.
You see, brethren, there’s many things to be done and great changes to be made on the hearts of the best before the Church of Christ is like to be restored by unity and peace. Yet God can do all this in a moment, when his time is come. O set to the work, that we may see that our deliverance is at hand. I think you have now as fit a season in one respect as ever you had:
When you had the advantage of superiority and secular power, your ears were stopped, your hearts were hardened, you thought you had a speedier way to settlement than by satisfying dissenters and condescending to those brethren whom you were readier to treat with contempt.
But now God has either laid you all under hatches together or left you no assurance of your carnal advantages. Those martyrs could agree in the prison and at the stake that differed about ceremonies in their prosperity. If God give you not hearts to hearken to this counsel and agree now; I shall expect to hear that you are brought much lower and conjoined in that misery where you shall be forced to agree; and then you will look back on your proud divisions with shame and sorrow.
I do therefore in the name of Christ entreat, not only the people of this congregation to unite, but all the godly, able ministers in this county to Associate with us, of what party soever they have been. And I do let them know that we are not so settled in our present opinions or ways but that if they see anything amiss in our Agreement or our courses, we shall be ready to hear anything that can be said for our information and alteration. And if the zeal for their own parties and ways should keep them off, let me advise them to be more zealous for the welfare of the Church in general and to take heed lest our divisions do prepare our people for Popery or fasten them in ungodliness: and I dare assure them that if episcopacy, presbytery or Independency, etc. be indeed the way of God, then is no way in the world so likely to set it up as the uniting and loving Association of the pastors, where all things may be gently and amicably debated.
And I desire that our brethren in other counties would take the same course: Not that I dare urge them to unite just on the terms of our Propositions or Profession, if they have better before them. Yet I will say this, that I admire God’s good providence in facilitating our consent herein so happily in this county: and that it will be found, upon trial, a matter of great difficulty to bring even wise and godly men to agree on the drawing up of forms: and I seriously profess that if I had known where to have found but this much done to our hands, I would not have consented that any of us should have attempted to draw up a new and different model, but had the more gladly received it because the union would have been more full. But as soon as we see our own weaknesses or mistakes corrected by any more perfect way of our brethen abroad, we shall accept their instructions and correct them ourselves. In the mean time we shall rather do thus than nothing.
.
Postscript
…
Let none wonder that I speak so much on this subject: For if the Scripture were conscionably observed, men would take Church-division for a greater sin than adultery or theft. Mutinies and divisions do more infallibly destroy an army than almost any other fault or weakness: and therefore all generals punish mutineers with death, as well as flat traitors.
I confess ten or twelve years ago, I wondered oft to find both Scripture and almost all the voluminous writings of the fathers in every age to be so filled with exclamations and argumentations against Church-dividers and heretics: But now I know a little better the reason of it, and how prone even godly, zealous men (especially young, inexperienced Christians) are to it, and of what desperate consequence it is. Our union is our strength and beauty: Commonly they that divide for the bringing in of any inferior truth or practice, do but destroy that truth and piety that was there before. I like not him that will cure the headache by cutting the throat.
No master, no law, no profession was ever more merciful, gentle, meek, more for unity, love and concord than the Master, Law and profession of Christians. O that the Lord would speedily arise and stir up in all his people in the world so mighty a zeal for unity and sanctity that those blessed twins might conjunctly flourish, which thrive so ill when they are divided: and that the true saints of Christ may once taste that sweetness which such a blessed state of the Church would afford! However, the friends of peace and holiness shall taste of it: read James 1:13 to the end; 1 Cor. 1 & 3; Heb. 12:14.
.
The End
.
.
.
Related Pages
The History of Relations between the Lutherans & the Reformed
J.A. Turretin, Discourse concerning Fundamental Articles
Church Government is Secondary