Martin-
I will get back to the other things soon. But quickly:
That's fine Herbert. Frankly, I am in awe of the volume of your output on this forum. I don't know how you manage it!
I don't see it that way, Martin. I am saying that fragmentation hasn't been able to destroy the Church's fundamental and essential unity for 2,000 years. So the fragmentation that takes place in the Church and despite which it made it through especially the first few tumultuous centuries, is, was, and will be, by virtue of its divine institution, incapable of tearing apart his Body in both its visible and invisible nature. There is still one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. It was instituted by Christ as the very means and principle of unity by which authentic Christianity could rightly be identified. Whereas, "Reformed churches" share no essential unity.........
I can agree with almost all that, Herbert. There is indeed on holy, catholic (small 'c') and apostolic Church. It's just not the Church of Rome. There are two places in the NT where unity is taught particularly. One is John 17; the other is Ephesians 4:1-16. In both of those passages, unity is based on Truth and knowledge (John 17:17; Ephesians 4:13. The unity is not organizational, but spiritual and based on love and on our submission to the Head of the Church who is Christ our Lord (Ephesians 4:15) and to His word.
Since the Lord Jesus prayed for this unity, it must be an accomplished fact, and so I find it. Last Lord's Day, we had a retired minister of the Church of England come and preach for us, and very good he was too! But we do not have unity with the C of E as a whole, since large portions of it are completely apostate. There are, however, many excellent Anglican churches with whom we are very happy to have unity and fellowship. I encourage them to leave and become Independent. As an itinerant preacher, I visit Independent, Congregational, Brethren, Baptist and occasionally Presbyterian and Anglican churches and enjoy the sweetest fellowship with them. As a member of
Gideons International I join with Bible-believers from all these churches and more to circulate the Scriptures into the hands of those who don't know the Lord. But it is not organizational fellowship; they're not the boss of me, nor I of them. Our fellowship is based on our shared love of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.
Organizational unity can only come through coercion. This has been the case with the Church of Rome, but also with the Church of England. John Bunyan, a Particular Baptist, served 12 years in Bedford Prison in the 17th Century for preaching the Gospel without a license. Dissenters were kept out of the Universities in Britain until into the 19th Century. Freedom of religion, freedom of association and unity based of truth and love are the only ways forward..
In contrast, the division among "Reformed churches" really is what it appears to be: doctrinal confusion with no essential ecclesial unity to speak of on the human side of things.
I am sorry if that was your experience as a Baptist. All the title 'Baptist' means is that the church doesn't baptize babies. I fully agree that many of them are disastrous. One needs to look at the church constitution and statement of faith to establish what an individual church believes. But what is needed is not an imposed organization unity, but what Paul was encouraging:
'.......The edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect [ie.'mature']
man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head- Christ- from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part of it does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.'