Forced into a Howling Wilderness

Writing from England, John Owen thinking of the pilgrims coming to the New World....

"I doubt not but that the great controversy God has had with this nation for so many years, and which He has pursued with so much anger and indignation, was upon this account: that, contrary to that glorious light of the gospel that shone among us, the wills and fancies of men, under the name of order, decency, and the authority of the church (a chimera that none knew what it was, nor wherein the power of it did consist, nor in whom reside), were imposed on men in the ways and worship of God. Neither was all that pretense of glory, beauty, comeliness, and conformity that then was pleaded anything more or less than what God does so describe in the church of Israel in Ezekiel 16:252 and forward. Hence was the Spirit of God in prayer derided; hence was the powerful preaching of the gospel despised; hence was the Sabbath decried; hence was holiness stigmatized and persecuted—to what end? That Jesus Christ might be deposed from the sole privilege and power of lawmaking in His church; that the true husband might be thrust aside, and adulterers of His spouse embraced; that taskmasters might be appointed in and over His house, which He never gave to His church (Eph. 4:11); that a ceremonious, pompous, outward show of worship, drawn from pagan, Judaical, and anti-Christian observations might be introduced—of all which there is not one word, tittle, or iota in the whole book of God. This, then, they who hold communion with Christ are careful of: they will admit of nothing, practice nothing, in the worship of God, private or public, but what they have His warrant for; unless it comes in His name with “Thus saith the Lord Jesus,” they will not hear an angel from heaven. They know the apostles themselves were to teach the saints only what Christ commanded them (Matt. 28:20). You know how many in this very nation, in the days not long since past, how many thousands left their native soil and went into a vast and howling wilderness in the utmost parts of the world to keep their souls undefiled and chaste to their dear Lord Jesus, as to this of His worship and institutions."

John Owen from Communion with God, in Works, 2:151.