The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed and Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered, by Roger Williams CHAP. XII. CHAP. XII. Now whereas Mr. Cotton addeth, that godly persons are not so enthralled to anti-christ as to separate them from Christ, else they could not be godly persons:— Christ considered two ways, first, personally, and so God’s people can never be separated from him. I answer, this comes not near our question, which is not concerning personal godliness or grace of Christ, but the godliness or Christianity of worship. Hence the scripture holds forth Christ Jesus first personally, as that God-man, that one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, whom all God’s people by faith receive, and in receiving become the sons of God, John i. 12, although they yet see not the particular ways of his worship. Thus was it with the centurion, the woman of Canaan, Cornelius, and most, at their first conversion. Secondly, as head of his church, and so he is often lost and absent from his spouse. Secondly, the scripture holdeth forth Christ as head of his church, formed into a body of worshippers, in which respect the church is called Christ, 1 Cor. xii. 12: and the description of Christ is admirably set forth in ten several parts of a man’s body, fitting and suiting to the visible profession of Christ in the church, Cant. v. God’s people cannot serve a false Christ and the true together. Now in the former respect, anti-christ can never so enthral God’s people as to separate them from Christ, that is, from the life and grace of Christ, although he enthral them into never so gross abominations concerning worship: for God will not lose his in Egypt, Sodom, Babel. His jewels are most precious to him though in a Babylonish dunghill, and his lily sweet and lovely in the wilderness commixed with briars. Yet in the second respect, as Christ is taken for the church, I conceive that anti-christ may separate God’s people from Christ, that is, from Christ’s true visible church and worship.[250] This Mr. Cotton himself will not deny, if he remember how little a while it is since the falsehood of a national, provincial, diocesan, and parishional church, &c., and the truth of a particular congregation, consisting only of holy persons, appeared unto him. The church before Luther. Rev. xiii. The papists’ question to the protestant, viz., where was your church before Luther? is thus well answered, to wit, that since the apostacy, truth and the holy city, according to the prophecy, Rev. xi. and xiii., have been trodden under foot, and the whole earth hath wondered after the beast: yet God hath stirred up witnesses to prophesy in sackcloth against the beast, during his forty-two months’ reign: yet those witnesses have in their times, more or less submitted to anti-christ and his church, worship, ministry, &c.,[251] and so consequently have been ignorant of the true Christ, that is, Christ taken for the church in the true profession of that holy way of worship, which he himself at first appointed.