Rev. Richard Phillips in the book The Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic speaks of the unity “among all who adhere to the apostolic gospel that bounds the true church”:
How is this possible, many respond, when we don’t agree on everything? The answer is to be found in the manner in which we hold our disagreements within the fold of the true gospel church. Though we are organized outwardly in denominations, we must oppose the party spirit of denominationalism. The great Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs, a champion of truth but also notably charitable toward true believers with whom he disagreed, wrote this:
- We should labor to find out what is truth, search for it as silver, and go according to what light we have; but yet so, though we might differ, to ‘keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,’ and join in all things that we can, and so walk so lovingly that it may appear that, if there are differences, it is merely that which conscience makes, because we dare not deny what we are persuaded in our consciences is a truth.