Inquiry into the Original, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches

Of the original of churches.

When any thing which is pleaded to belong unto religion or the worship of God is proposed unto us, our first consideration of it ought to be in that inquiry which our Lord Jesus Christ made of the Pharisees concerning the baptism of John, “Whence is it? from heaven, or of men?” He distributes all things which come under that plea or pretence into two heads, as unto their original and efficient cause, — namely, “heaven” and “men.” And these are not only different and distinct, but so contradictory one unto another, that, as unto any thing wherein religion or the worship of God is concerned, they cannot concur as partial causes of the same effect. What is of men is not from heaven; and what is from heaven is not of men. And hence is his determination concerning both sorts of these things: “Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up,” Matt. xv. 13.