Christian Unity (the book) - The Maranatha Community

ut as part of it. All true Christians are united in Christ and therefore shouldworship together.The Church of England was an episcopal church but Baxter’s view of episcopacywas radical. There was to be no overlording of the church by bishops: theirauthority was to be exercised through a council of pastors. He saw that muchof what denominations held dear, including belief in an apostolic succession,created division rather than unity in the Church. His definition of what wasneeded to be a church member of any denomination was a personalrepentance and a Trinitarian faith. 64Baxter’s famous dictum ‘In things necessary, unity; in things indifferent, liberty;in all things, charity’ begged the question of what is meant by ‘necessary’ and‘indifferent.’ For Baxter, doctrinally necessary things were assent to a‘sacramental covenant’, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Decalogueand the infallible truth of Scripture. These were basics, and what Baxter called‘indifferent, small and doubtful points’ should not be insisted on for unity.Most of Baxter’s ‘necessary’ things concerned pastoral matters, not doctrinalones. Interestingly, Baxter prophesied, like Dury, that foreign missions wouldhelp to unite Christians, and in this he was to be proved right. He was right,too, to see danger in the power of bishops in the 17 th Century, but he was avoice crying in the wilderness. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 ended all hishopes.The Act of Uniformity with its matchless Book of Common Prayer was the lastattempt to impose church uniformity on England and Wales. Times werechanging. Royal authority had been challenged once and for all in the EnglishCivil War, and for many people spiritual authority was no longer to be found inan episcopal hierarchy. The tinker of Bedford had as much right to be heard onspiritual matters as their lordships. Nonconformism was now deeply rooted inthe spiritual landscape of Britain in England and Wales and was to take rootsoon in Scotland, as patronage questions were to divide the (Presbyterian)Church of Scotland from the early 18 th into the 19 th Century.64Baxter held the view that the Church of England ‘derived its succession’ not from Romebut from the ‘British and Scottish Church’ (see Slosser, G J, Christian Unity, its history andchallenger in all communions, in all lands, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd, London,1929, p 56). Slosser writes also that Baxter saw that unity depended upon the personalsanctification of Christianity.Page 103