“An Unfeigned Agreement to Yield Obedience”

A succinct statement of the principles discussed in respect to 1 Corinthians 1 the other day, from John Calvin’s commentary on Psalm 47:9 (“The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted!”),¹ in a manner reminiscent (or, really, preminiscent) of some of John Webster’s explorations in Scripture and ecclesiology:²

This passage contains two very important and instructive truths. In the first place, we learn from it, that all who would be reckoned among the children of God ought to seek to have a place in the Church, and to join themselves to it, that they may maintain fraternal unity with all the godly; and, secondly, that when the unity of the Church is spoken of, it is to be considered as consisting in nothing else but an unfeigned agreement to yield obedience to the word of God, that there may be one sheepfold and one Shepherd. Moreover, those who are exalted in the world in respect of honors and riches, are here admonished to divest themselves of all pride, and willingly and submissively to bear the yoke in common with others, that they may show themselves the obedient children of the Church.

1. Cf. also here.
2. This is not surprising, really, as Webster makes it quite clear that he is an attentive student of Calvin.