The Savoy Declaration

They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten. (Jeremiah 50:5)And this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God. (2 Corinthians 8:5)

Happy 25th Anniversary

The power of censures being seated by Christ in a particular church, is to be exercised only towards particular members of each church respectively, as such.

However, they who are engaged in the work of public preaching, and enjoy the public maintenance upon that account, are not thereby obliged to dispense the seals to any other than such as (being saints by calling, and gathered according to the order of the gospel) they stand related to as pastors and teachers.

The essence of this call of a pastor, teacher, or elder unto office, consists in the election of the church, together with his acception of it, and separation by fasting and prayer.

A particular church gathered and completed according to the mind of Christ, consists of officers and members.

By the appointment of the Father, all power of the calling, institution, order, or government of the church, is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner in the Lord Jesus Christ, as King and Head thereof.

God has appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ, to whom all power and judgment is given of the Father.

The bodies of men after death return to dust, and see corruption, but their souls (which neither die nor sleep) having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them.

In this sacrament Christ is not offered up to his Father, nor any real sacrifice made at all for remission of sin of the quick or dead, but only a memorial of that one offering up of himself by himself upon the cross once for all.

The outward element to be used in this ordinance is water, wherewith the party is to be baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy ghost, by a minister of the gospel lawfully called.

Sacraments are holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace, immediately instituted by Christ, to represent him and his benefits and to confirm our interest in him, and solemnly to engage us to the service of God in Christ, according to his word.

All saints that are united to Jesus Christ their head, by his Spirit and faith, although they are not made thereby one person with him, have fellowship in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection and glory.

The catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one under Christ, the head thereof, and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of him that fills all in all.

Marriage is to be between one man and one woman.

God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, has ordained civil magistrates to be under him, over the people for his own glory and the public good.

A lawful oath is part of religious worship, wherein the person swearing in truth, righteousness and judgment, solemnly calls God to witness what he asserteth or promises, and to judge him according to the truth or falshood of what he swears.

Religious worship is to be given to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and to him alone.

The liberty which Christ has purchased for believers under the gospel, consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the rigor and curse of the Law, and in their being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of sin, from the evil of afflictions, the fear and sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation.

This pormise of Christ, and salvation by Him, is revealed only in and by the Word of God.

God gave to Adam a law of universal obedience written in his heart, and a particular precept of not eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, as a covenant of works, by which he bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience, promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatned death upon the breach of it, and inued him with power and abilitiy to keep it.

Although temporary believers, and other unregenerate men may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes, and carnal presumptions of being in the favour of God, and state of salvation, which hope of theirs shall perish.

They whom God has accepted in his beloved Son, effectually called and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of Grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.

Good works are only such as God has commanded in his holy word, and not such as without the warrant thereof are devised by men out of blind zeal, or upon any pretence of good intentions.

This saving repentance is an evangelical grace, whereby a person being by the Holy Ghost made sensible of the manifold evils of his sin, does by faith in Christ humble himself for it with godly sorrow, detestation of it, and self-abhorrency, praying for pardon and strength of grace, with a purpose and endeavor, by supplies of the Spirit, to walk before God unto all well-pleasing in all things.

The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the word.

They that are united to Christ, effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, are also further sanctified really and personally through the same virtue, by His word and Spirit dwelling in them.

All those that are justified, God vouchsafes in and for His only Son Christ to make partakers of the grace of adoption, by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God.

Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifies, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous, not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone.

This effectual call is of God's free and special grace alone, not from any thing at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive therein.

God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice, that it is neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined to do good or evil.

It pleased God, in his eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only begotten Son, according to a covenant made between them both, to be the Mediator between God and Man.

The distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of Life, but by some voluntary condscension on God's part, which he has been pleased to express by way of covenant.

God the great Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence.

It pleased God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create or make of nothing the world, and all things therein.

God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.

He is most Holy in all His counsels!

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

A declaration of the faith and order owned and practiced in the Congregational churches in England; Agreed upon, and consented to, by their elders and messengers, in their meeting at the Savoy, October 12, 1658.