A Puritan at Heart

Daily quote from the puritans

Partial and total apostasy

When an important principle of evangelical truth is foresaken and renounced, especially when many of them are so; when the rule of obedience which the gospel prescribeth is habitually neglected; when men believe otherwise than it teacheth, and live otherwise than it requireth, there is a partial apostasy from it, whose guilt and danger answers the degrees and measures which in each kind it proceeds unto… Men are apt to please themselves, to approve of their own state and condition…Churches content themselves with their outward order and adminstration, and contend fiercely that all is well, and the gospel, sufficiently compiled withal, whilst their outward constitution is preserved and their laws of order kept involate…and it is known that the judgement of Christ concerning churches…is oft-times very distant from their own concerning themselves…Only a few remain that fruitlessly complain that, under all these conflicts, the glory, power and purity of the Christian religion are lost in the world. [John Owen]

January 18, 2008 Posted by Deejay | John Owen | | No Comments