Boundaries of The Church
The church itself is defined as: "a company of saints by calling, united into one body by a holy covenant, for the public worship of God, and the mutual edification of one another in the fellowship of the Lord Jesus".
Chapter 7 establishes Elders, who attend to the boundaries of the church—admitting members to fellowship, excommunicating offenders, be guides and leaders in church administration, admonish the flock when needed—and deacons, who care only for the temporal goods of the church, handling money, paying the ministers and the poor. A third category is included in this officers section, namely that "ancient widows... minister to the church in giving attendance to the sick and to give succor to them and others in the like necessities."
The church body, by vote, has the power to install officers and to depose them. The platform specifies that no higher ecclesiastical authority, nor any civil authority, has the power to choose officers.
Membership requires "a personal and public confession and declaring of God's manner of working upon the soul".
Read more about this topic: The Cambridge Platform
Famous quotes containing the words boundaries of, boundaries and/or church:
“Not too many years ago, a child’s experience was limited by how far he or she could ride a bicycle or by the physical boundaries that parents set. Today ... the real boundaries of a child’s life are set more by the number of available cable channels and videotapes, by the simulated reality of videogames, by the number of megabytes of memory in the home computer. Now kids can go anywhere, as long as they stay inside the electronic bubble.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will’s impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)