these Additions to Christianity this proud Church-tyranny I doubt not is the great cause of Schism in the world And when I have had opportunity to write against it I have born my testimony against it as is yet legible But it is not that sort of men that I am here most to speak to but to them that profess to be more teachable and willing to know the truth 3. And yet I add though this Book be written principally to save the darker sort of honest Christians from the sin and misery of Church divisions I write it not principally for them to read For I know their prejudice weakness and incapacity after-mentioned But I write it to remember the Teachers of the Churches what principles they have to Preach and strengthen and what principles to confute and to destroy if ever they mean to save the people from this state of sin and the Churches from the sad effects And if Ministers neglect the faithful discharge of so great and necessary a duty let them remember that they were warned if they find themselves overwhelmed in the ruines II. The Reasons moving me to this work are these First It is my calling to help to save people from their sins and Church division is a heap of sins 2. The more I love them that I hope are tender Conscienced and dare not sin when they are convinced of it the more I am bound to endeavour their conviction remembring who hath said Thou shalt not hate thy Brother in thy heart thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy Neighbour and not suffer sin upon him Lev. 19. 17. 3. LOVE is not an appurtenance of my Religion but my Religion it self God is Love and he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God and God in him who can speak a higher word of any thing in all the world Love is the end of faith and faith is but the Bellows to kindle Love Love is the fulfilling of all the Law the end of the Gospel the nature and mark of Christs Disciples the divine nature the sum of holiness to the Lord the proper note by which to know what is the man and what his state and how far any of his other acts are acceptable unto God without which if we had all knowledge and belief all gifts of utterance and highest profession we were but as sounding Brass and as a tinkling Cymbal And if all our goods were given to the poor and our bodies to the fire it would profit nothing Love is our foretast of Heaven and the perfection of it is Heaven it self even the state and work of Angels and of Saints in glory And he that is angry with me for calling men to Love is angry for calling them to Holiness to God and Heaven Holiness which is against Love is a contradiction It is a deceitful Name which Satan putteth upon unholiness All Church principles which are against Universal Love are against God and Holiness and the Churches life And he that saith he loveth God and hateth his Brother is a Lyar. To be holy without Love is to see without light to live without life He that said The wisdom from above is first pure then peaceable gentle c. did no more dream of separating them then of dividing the head of a man from his heart to save his life Iam. 3. 17. Nor no more than he that said Follow Peace with all men and Holiness Heb. 1â— 14. No necessity can justifie such a division Holiness and Love to God are but two names for one thing Love to God and to man are like Soul and Body that are separated no way but by death Love and Peaceableness differ but as Reason and Reasoning Love may be without Passive Peace from others to us but never without Active Peace from us to others 4. I have had so great opportunity in my time to see the working of the mysterie of iniquity against Christian Love and to see in what manner Christs House and Kingdome is edified by divisions that if I be ignorant after such sad experience I must be utterly unexcusable and of a seared Conscience and a heart that seemeth hardened to perdition God knoweth how hardly sin is known in its secret root till men have tasted the bitterness of the fruit Therefore he hath permitted the two Extreams to shew themselves openly to the world in the effects And one must be noted and hated and avoided as well as the other I thought once that all that talk against Schism and Sects did but vent their malice against the best Christians under those names But since then I have seen what Love-killing principles have done I have long stood by while Churches have been divided and sub-divided one Congregation of the division labouring to make the other contemptible and odious and this called the Preaching of truth and the purer worshiping of God I have seen this grow up to the height of Ranters in horrid Blasphemies and then of Quakers in disdainful pride and surliness and into the way of Seekers that were to seek for a Ministry a Church a Scripture and consequently a Christ. I have many a time heard it break out into more horrid revilings of the best Ministry and Godliest people than ever I heard from the most malignant Drunkard I have lived to see it put to the Question in that which they called the little Parliament whether all the Ministers of the Parishes of England should be put down at once When Love was first killed in their own breasts by these same principles which I here detect I have seen how confidently the killing of the King the Rebellious demolishing of the Government of the Land the killing of many Thousands of their Brethren the turnings and overturnings of all kinds of Rule even that which they themselves set up have been committed and justified and prophanely fathered upon God These with much more such fruits of Love-killing principles and divisions I have seen And I have seen what fierce censorious proud unchristian tempers they have caused or signified In a word I have long seen that envious wisdom whatever it pretend is not from above but is earthly sensual and devilish and that where envy and strife is upon pretence of Religious precedency of wisdom there is confusion and every evil work Jam. 3. 15 16. And if after so long so sad so notorious experience you would have me still to be tender of the brood of Hell I mean these Loveâ—destroying wayes and to shew any countenance to that which really hath done all this you would have me as blind as the Sodâ—mites and as obdurate as Pharaoh and his Egyptians and utterly resolved never to learn the will of God or to regard either good or evil in the world 5. The same sins are continued in without repentance The same pride and ignorance is still keeping open our divisions And if after such warnings as the world scarce ever had the like we shall be still impenitent
quench it and hath these fifteen hundred years but especially these thirteen hundred been the wolvish Scatterer of the flocks of Christ And must that be now the way to build it which hath so long been the way to pull it down It is Love that must be our Union and Love that must cause it or we shall never have the Union of a Christian Church By this shall all men know that you are Christs Disciples if you have Love one to another If you believe not this pretend not to believe in Jesus Christ who doth affirm it I confess I am so far guilty of superstition my self that if I had been one of the Changers of our ancient Government I should have been somewhat the more backward for his Name sake to the beheading of Christopher Love lest it should be an ill Omen both to Church and State but especially to the Actors of it 8. Another of the Motives of this Discourse is because I know that times of most temptation are times of greatest danger and commonly of greatest sin And all faithful Pastors must know what are the special Temptations of the Time and Place which they live in When had we ever greater Temptations to Love-killing principles and practices than now except in the times of the miserable Wars I need not name them to you The harder it is for men to Love them that hate them that censure them unjustly that revile them and reproach them and make them odious or that hurt them the more cause have Ministers and all Christians to set a double watch upon their Love Lest before they are aware a flaming and consuming zeal do tell others that they know not what manner of Spirit they are of Luk. 9. 55. 9. Yea it is not only a time of great Temptation to this sin but of common guilt They are multitudes that are overtaken already with this sin Is not the Land in a continual heart war Are there not parties against parties and cause against cause and heart-risings and passions and censurings of Dissenters to say no worse And is it not time to bring water when we see the flames 10. And I perceive few know so heinous a sin to be any sin at all But all factions and parties are still justifying their Love-killing wayes and reproaching those whom they have wronged As if when they have sinfully withdrawn their Love from them it were no crime to take away next their good names and all that they have but power to take away And when they have cast their brethren out of their estimation and affection they think it a piece of commendable zeal or justice to cast them ouâ— of Christian communion and if they could out of the Land and of the world And shall Ministers stand by and see men take such sin for duty and serve God by abusing his Servants and look for a reward for dividing and pulling down his Church and never tell them what they are doing 11. And the old Non-conformists who wrote so much against separation were neither blind nor temporizers They saw the danger on that side Even Brightman on Rev. that writeth against the Prelacy and Ceremonies severely reprehendeth the separatists Read but the writings of Mr. Iohn Paget Mr. Iohn Ball Mr. Hildersham Mr. Bradshaw Mr. Baine Mr. Rathband and many such others against the separatists of those times and you may learn that our Light is not greater but less than theirs and that we see not further into that cause than they did and that change of times doth not change the truth nor will warrant us to change our Religion unless we will make our Religion subject to the wills and interests of men and change it as oft as the times shall change 12. Lastly if your friends tell you not of your faults and errours in Love those whom you account your enemies will do it in wrath And though all sober Christians should learn by the keenest rebukes of their Adversaries yet passion and prejudice maketh it so difficult that it usually hardeneth men more in their sin And this is another thing which causeth me the more to abhor division and to long for the reconciling of the minds of all dissenting Christians Because while they take each other for adversaries nothing that is written or said by any is like to do the Adversaries any good Nay I must confess when I see an adversary tell men of their sin especially with furious spleen and wrath mixing together words and swords I am greatly afraid lest by that temptation Satan will draw the reproved to impenitency and greatly harden them in their sin and make them glory in that as a virtue which such a person doth so reprove But if you will neither hear of your sin nor duty by adversaries nor friends by fair speeches nor by foul you fasten the guilt upon your selves Remember I pray you that I am not kindling fires nor drawing Swords against you nor stirring up any to do you hurt but only perswading all dissenters to love one another and to forbear but all that is contrary to love And if such an exhortation and advice seem injurious or intollerable to you the Lord have mercy on your Souls III. And now without a spirit of Prophecy I will foretel what entertainment this Paper must expect 1. Some on the one side will say It is sharper and rounder dealing than all this that must cure the Schismes in the Church And if you would heal our Divisions why do you not conform you self but stand out as one of the party that divideth 2. Some on the other side will say that it is an unseasonable time when so much anger is breaking forth against those that we account Dividers to mention their faults and so to stir up more I will give these men no other answer than to bid them read the last part of this Book or else do not talk till they know of what 3. And some will say that I am doing that which will prove a hurt to my self and others For if I should draw the People to Communion with the Conformists there would little compassion be shewed to the Ministers that cannot conform But selfish wisdome must be shut out of the Council when we are consulting about the healing of the Churches and the good of Souls And indeed there is little danger of this consequence as long as the people are far more averse to Communion or Concord with the Parish-Churches than the Non-conforming Ministers are But suppose it prove true should we not do good to Souls and save men from sin and heal divisions at the dearest rate What though it cost us more than is here mentioned The reviving of decayed Love and the closure of any of the Churches wounds is a recompence worth our liberties and lives 4. And those that are most guilty of the Love-killing principles here detected and are most eminent in self-conceited ignorance will do by me and by
if we shall sin our selves into suffering and sin in our suffering as we did before even the very same sin of Divisions which brought us to it how heinous is our Crime and how dreadful the Prognostick of our greater ruine And how guilty are those Ministers of the blood of Souls that will not tell men of the sin and danger 6. I know that Dividing Principles and Dispositions do tend directly to the ruine and damnation of those in whom they do prevail That which killeth Love killeth all grace and holiness and killeth Souls That which quencheth Love quencheth the Spirit a thousand fold more then the restraining of our gifts of utterance doth That which banisheth Love banisheth God That which is against Love is against the design of Christ in our Redemption and therefore may well be called Antichristian And if the Roman Kingdom for so it is rather to be called than a Church had not such Moral marks of Antichristianity which Dr. More hath notably opened in his Mysterie of iniquity If they were not the Engineers for the Division of the Christian world by a false Center and by impossible terms of Unity and by the engine of tearing dividing impositions If among them were not found the blood of the Saints and the Martyrs of Jesus I should in charity fear to suspect them of Antichristianity notwithstanding all the Prophetical passages which seem otherwise to point them out because I should still suspect my understanding of those Prophecies when the Law of Loving my neighbâ—ur as my self is plain to all They are dangerously mistaken that think that Satan hath but one way to mens damnation There are as many wayes to Hell as there be to the extinguishing of Love And all tendeth unto this whicâ— tendeth to hide or deny the Loveliness that is the Goodness of them whom I must Love much more that which representeth them as odious And there are many pretenses and wayes to make my Neighbour seem unlovely to me One doth it as effectually by unjust or unproved accusations of ungodliness or saying Their worship is Antichristian formal ridiculous vain as another doth by unjust and unproved accusations of Schism Disobedience or Sedition And they that love Godliness may be tempted to cast off their love of their Neighbours yea of the truly Godly when they once believe that they are ungodly And the white Devil is a Love-killer as well as the black He is 〈◊〉 mortal an enemy to Love who back biteth another and saith he is Prophane or he is an empty formalist or he is a lukewarm temporizing complying manpleaser as he that saith He is a pievish factious Hypocrite I am sure he was no Malignant nor intended to gird at Godliness nor to grieve good men who told us that it is Satans way to transform himself into an Angel of Light that is one that pretendeth to make higher motions for Light and for Religious strictness than Christ himself doth and that his Ministers are sent forth by him as Ministers of Righteousness 2 Cor. 11. 14 15 16. who will seem more Righteous than the Preachers of truth Satan will pretend to any sort of strictness by which he can but mortifie Love If you can devise any such strictness of opinions or exactness in Church orders or strictness in worship as will but help to kill mens love and set the Churches in divisions Satan will be your helper and will be the strictest and exactest of you all He will reprove Christ as a Sabbath breaker and as a gluttonous person and a Wine-bibber and a friend or Companion of Publicans and Sinners and as an enemy to Caesar too We are not altogether ignorant of his wiles as young unexperienced Christians are You think when a wâ—athful envious heat is kindled in you against men for their faulâ—â— that it is certainly a zeal of Gods exciting But mark whether it have not more wrathâ— than Love in it and whether it tend not more to disgrace your brother than to 〈◊〉 him or to make parties and divisions than to heal them If it be so if St. Iames be not deceived you are deceived as to the author of your zeal Iam. 3. 15. 16. and it hath a worse Original than you suspect It is one of the greatest reasons which maketh me hate Romish Church tyranny and Religious cruelties against dissenters because as they come from want of Love so I am sure that they â—end to destroy the Love of those on whom they are inflicted and to do more hurt to their Souls than to their Bodies The Devil is not so silly an Angler as to fish with the bare Hook nor such a Fool as when he would damn men to intreat them openly to be damned nor when he would kill mens Love to intreat them plainly not to Love but hate their neighbours But he doth it by making you believe that there is just and necessary cause for it and that it is your duty and that you should be lukewarm in the cause of God of truth of Godliness if you did not do it that so you may go on without scruple and do so again and not repent Even they that killed Christs Apostles did it as a duty and a part of the service of God Ioh. 16. 2. And Paul himself did once think verily that he ought to do many things which he did against the Name and Cause and Servants of Jesus Act. 26. 9. And as he did so he was done by and as he measured to others it was measured to him again For they that bound themselves in an Oath to kill him did deeply interesse God and Conscience in the cruelty But believe it it is Apostacy to fall from Love your souls dye when Love dyeth The opinions the Church Principles the sideings the Practises which destroy your love destroy your graces and your souls You dye while you have a name to live and think that you grow apace in Religion Therefore better understand the Tempter and when backbiters are deriding or vilifying your neighbours take it to signifie in plain English I pray you love not these men but hate them And I have told you in this Treatise that when one saith unjustly Kill them banish them and another saith Have no Communion with them it is too often the same inward affection which both express but in various wayes They are agreed in the assumption that their neighbour is unlovely And when Love is dead and yet Religion seemeth to survive and to be increased by it it is lamentable to think what a degenerate scandalous hypocritical Religion that will be and how odious and dishonourable to God To preach without Love and to hear without Love and to pray without Love and to communicate without Love to any that differ from your Sect O what a loathsome Sacrifice is it to the God of Love If we must leave our guift at the Altar till we are reconciled to one offended brother what a gift is
this book according to their Principles and as they use to do by others Before they have soberly read it over they will carry about the Sectarian reports of it from hand to hand And when one hath said it the rest will affirm it that I have clawed with one party and have girded at the other and have sought to make them odious by bringing them under the reproach of Separation and of censuring and avoiding the ungodly and that being luke-warm my self and a complyer with sin I would have all others do so too And that these Reconcilers are neither flesh nor fish and attempt impossibilities even to reconcile Light and darkness Christ and Belial And that for the sake of Peace we would â—ell the Truth and would let in Church-corruptions out of an over-eager desire of Agreement And when they have all done neither party will regard them but they shall fare worse than any others and will lose both sides whilest they are for neither I know it is the nature of the disease which I am curing to send forth such breath and scents as these And I intend not to bestow a word to answer them 5. And some of the wise and sober Ministers who mark more the inconveniences of one side than of the other and look more to outward occurrences than to the Rule and to the inward state of Souls especially such as have not seen the times and things that I have seen will think that though all this be true it is unseasonable and may give advantage to such as love not Reformation And to them I shall return this answer 1. That if we stay seven years more for a seasonable time to oppose the radical sin of uncharitableness we may be in our graves and the sinners in their graves and the sin may be multiplied and rooted past all hope of remedy And why may you not as well stay seven years more for a seasonable time to Preach down all other sins as well as this Is this the least malignant or least dangerous sin 2. There was never a more seasonable time to tell men of their sin than when the temptation to it is the greatest when it is most growing and multiplying among us When God hath been so heinously dishonoured by it when the world doth ring of it when many Volumes reproach them for it And when the sensual and ungodly are hardened by it in their scorn of godliness to the apparent peril of their damnation yea more to turn our complaints from our Law-givers upon our selves It is want of Love and it is Dividing principles and practices that have silenced so many Ministers and brought us into all the confusions and calamities which we see and undergo 6. But there are many sincere and considerate Ministers who knowing this which I say to be true will be the more excited by it to lead the younger and passionate sort of Religious people into the wayes of Love and peace and to save them from the dangers here detected and perswade them to the practise of these Directions And for the use of these I write this Book And yet to end as I began I must add these notices for your right understanding of it 1. That this is not my first attempt upon this work but the progress of what I have been upon these three and twenty years About fifteen or sixteen years ago I preacht on the third Chapter of Saint Iames in a larger and a closer manner on this Subject than here I write because the times then called me to it 2. I perswade no Christian to justifie or own the sins or the least defects of any Church Minister or People in their Worship or in their lives though I perswade you to Communion with the Churches persons and worship-actions which have many faults For on Earth there is no person Church or Worship faultless and without corruption I justifie not the faults of my own daily Prayers and yet I never pray without them 3. I am not perswading Ministers to any unwise and unseasonable Preaching against the dividing Principles of the weak when the necessities of the Auditory more require other Doctrine Much less to exasperating railings and invectives And least of all to wrathful violence But only with prudence in season and with Love and gentleness to lead men into the truth If even with Infidels and Hereticks the Servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle to all men apt to teach patient in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth 2 Tim. 2. 24 25. How much more must the Children of Gods family be used with Love and tenderness But if the fierceness of any contradict what I say I only add that it is not an unexperienced person that speaketh it but one who through the mercy of God hath long kept a numerous flock in Love and unity and peace by such like means and hath seen the lamentable effects of the contrary way 4. While I say so much in this Treatise against the rash censuring of others I give you not the rule for mens censuring of themselves They know more by themselves They may search into the depth of their hearts and intentions which we cannot do They are allowed to be more suspicious censorious of themselves than of any others It more concerneth them And they have more to do with themselves and may be bolder with themselves We judg others in order to visible Church-Communion by visible and publick evidence But in order to their preparation for the judgment of God we must direct them to judge themselves according to the truth in the inward parts 5. While I draw you to peace and moderation towards others I desire not to quench the least degree of Christian zeal Nay I endeavour to kill that which would kill it The purified peculiar people of the Redeemer ane zealous but of what not to consume and destroy one another nor to hate and flye from one another nor to vilifie and backbite one another but they are zealous of good works And Paul will tell you what are good works Gal. 5. 22 23. Love joy peace long-suffering gentleness goodness faith meekness temperance Be zealous in Loving all Christians as Christians and all men as men Be zealous for Peace If it be possible as much as in you lyeth live peaceably with all men Rom. 12. 18. Be zealously patient gentle good meek temperate And the works of the flesh are hatred variance emulation wrath strife sedition heresies A zeal for these is earthly sensual and devilish as Iames telleth you And remember that the word which is translated there Envy is Zeal in the Original But our translators were afraid lest the prophane would have mistaken it if they had translated it Zeal ver 16. where zeal and strife is that is a striving contentious zeal there is confusion and every evil work If you believe
it He resisteth Light as an Angel of Light and his Ministers hinder Righteousness as pretended Ministers of Righteousness And he will be a zealous Reformer when he would hinder Reformation And this is the mark of Satans way of Reformation He doth it by by dividing the Churches of Christ and teaching Christians to avoid each other And to that end he zealously aggravateth the faults of every party to the rest that they may have odious thoughts of one another and Christian Love may be turned into aversation As in the Plague time every one is afraid of the breath and company of his neighbour and they that were wont to assemble and converse with peace and pleasure do timerously shun the presence of each other because they know that it is an infectious time and they are uncertain who is free even so doth Satan break the societies and converse of Christians by making them believe that every party hath some dangerous infection which as they love their souls they must avoid And he destroyeth your Love to one another by pretending Love to your selves O how careful will he be for your souls when the Devil would undo you he will do it as your Saviour And when his meaning is to save you from Heaven and from Christ and from his saving grace and from Union and Communion with his Church and from the impartial Love of one another he takes on him that he is saving you only from sin and from Church-corruptions Or rather that it is Christ and not he that giveth you counsel And he can do much in imitating Christ in the manner of his suggestions to make you believe that it is Christ indeed Perhaps his counsel shall come in in the midst of a fervent prayer or presently after it to make you believe that it is an undoubted answer of your prayers And oft times his impulses are vehement and much affecting to make you think that it is something above nature And the pioâ—s pretence will much perswade you to think that sure this can never come from an evil spirit But if you had well studied 2 Cor. 11. 13 14 15. Gal. 1. 8. Luke 9. 55. 1 Ioh. 4. 1 2. 2 Thes. 2. 2. you might be wiser and be saved from this deceit I will not recite the words because I would have you turn to them and seriously study them And in this dividing work the Devil doth as make-bates do who first goes to one man and tell him a tale what such a one said against him and what a dangerous person he is and then go to the other and say as much of the first to him So the Devil saith to the Presbyterian O take heed of the Independents and to the Independents Take heed of these Presbyterians To the Anabaptist he suggesteth Avoid these Protestants Take heed of them for they Baptize infants And to the Protestants he saith Take heed of these Anabaptists for they are against baptizing any till they come to full age To one he saith Away from that Church or think not those persons to be religious for they pray by the book And to the other he saith Take heed of those people as whimsical and proud and brainsick fanaticks for they pray without-book by the Spirit To one sort he saith Take heed of those people for they wear a Surplice or Kneel at the Sacrament or answer the Priests in the Responses of the Common-prayer To the other he saith Take heed of these disobedient stubborn selfconceited people that will sit at the Sacrament and will not conform to the orders of the Church I am not now minding whose opinion is right or wrong among all these parties or any like them But how charitable to your souls the Devil is when he would destroy your charity and your souls and how piously and kindly he would have you take heed when he would lead you to perdition and how great a Reformer he will be if he may but do it by Dividing It may be the young unexperienced Schismatick of what sect soever will distast these words and think I speak like an adversary to Reformation And so the Devil would make him think of all other Christians as well as of me except his party But if one should give such counsel for the preservation of his own health and bodily comfort as the Dividing spirit giveth him for the Church and for his soul he would quickly understand it according to my present sense If one should come in kindness to him and bid him O take heed of that mouth and belly for it getteth nothing but devoureth all that the hands do get by labour Cut off that hand for it hath a crooked finger Cut off that gouty foot that it may not trouble the whole body Rip up those guts which have such filthy excrements he would not swell against me if I advised him to suspect such kindness Fifthly Remember also that the Unity of Christians is their peace and ease as well as their strength and safety Psal. 133. 1. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity As the amity and converse with friends is pleasant and the concord of families is their quietness and ease so is it as to the amity and concord which is the bond of Church society And the divisions and discord of Christians is their mutual pain and trouble Do you not feel your minds disturbed by it Do you not see the Church discomposed by it The itch of contention doth ordinarily make it pleasant for the time to every Sect to scratch by zealous wranglings and disputes for their several opinions till the blood be ready to follow But the smart and scab doth use to convince them of their folly But if they will go more than Skin-deep they may need a Surgeon Children will claw themselves but it is Madmen that will wound themselves The hurtâ— which we get in the Christian warfare by mortifying the flesh or by the persecution of the malignant enemy is tenderly healed by the hand of Christ and usually furthereth our inward peace But if we will hurt and wound and divide our selves what pity or comfort can we expect Sixthly Consider also that the Unity and Concord of Believers is their Honour and their Divisions and discord are their shame And consequently the honour or dishonour of Christ and the Gospel and Religion is much concerned in it Agreement among Christians telleth the world that they have a certainty of the faith which they profess and that it is powerful and not ineffectual and that it is of a healing nature and tendeth to the felicity of the world But Divisions and discords among Christians perswade unbelievers that there is no certainty in their belief or that it is of a vexatious and destructive tendency or at best that all its power is too weak to overcome the malignity which it pretendeth to resist where did you ever see Christians live in undivided
to a better if you are free But if as servants or children or wives you are under another Government which restraineth you be patient and use such means as God provideth for you This is the true way of your Church-duty and not to think that you must have a knowledge of the Godliness of all that you communicate with or that you must refuse communion if the Pâ—stor he remiss and negligent Obj. But will it not be my sin if I communicate with such as I know to be notoriously wicked when a little leaven leaveneth the lump Answ. It will be your sin if you obey not Christ Mat. 18. 15. in admonishing them and so if it be long of you that they are not removed or if you do not your duty to reform the Pastor or remove him But otherwise if they be there without your fault it is no more your sin to communicate with such men than it is to live and converse with fellow servants that are wicked when it is not you but your Master that hath the choice of them And the leavening of the lump which the Text speaketh of is the tempting of others to the like sin and not that the innocent shall be held guilty of it nor were the words spoken to the people to perswade them to do the Pastors work or to separate from the Church but to the Pastors to perswade them to cast out the sinner and to the people to perswade them to execute their Sentence and the Apostles in particular It would rule and quiet people if they knew the trust and work of the Pastors from their own DIRECT XII Well study the gracious Nature and Office of Iesus Christ and his great readiness to receive those that come to him though weak in faith and his backwardness to refuse such Commers that so you may desire a Church-discipline that is suitable to the Nature and Office of Christ and to the design and tenor of the Gospel CHrists outward Discipline is agreeable to his inward As those that come to him by faith he will in no wise cast out or reject so those that come to him by profession of faith he would not have his Ministers in any wise reject And coming to Christ when he was personally on earth did signifie the following of him in presente as well as believing in him Just so far as men will come so far they shall be received by Christ If they will come but towards him he will not put them back If they will come but to his visible Church by a dead profession he would not have his Ministers repulse them The outward priviledges of the visible Church which they come to they shall possess If they will come over to the Church of the regenerate they shall be saved But where ever they stop it shall be their own doing Many came to Christ when he was on earth whom he never repulsed though he was marvelled at and grudged at for entertaining them Some came so far as to own his Name and did Miracles by it that yet did not follow him whom the Apostles would have hindered but Christ reproved them Mar. 9. 38. Luk. 9. 49. Some came only to receive a Cure of their Diseases from him whom his Disciples sometimes repulsed but so did not he when little children were brought to him his Disciples rebuked those that brought them as thinking them unfit for his reception but Christ rebuked them for their forbidding of such guests When he eat and drank with publicans and sinsinners and when he received the kindness of a woman that had bin a great sinner the Pharisees censured him therefore as ungodly But yet he would not abate his clemency Many at this day can scarce digest it that he sent forth a Iudas to preach the Gospel when he knew that he was a thief and an hypocrite and foreâ—new that he was a Son of perdition and would betray him and that the Devil would enter into him yea knew that he was a Devil Ioh. 6. 70. 13. 2. yeâ— that this Iudas should be one of the twelve select Apostles and one of the Family of Christ. Yet Christ repulsed him not And if he did not partake of the Sacrament at his last Supper it was not because Christ did turn him out but because he went away himself And accordingly the Apostles received 3000 at once into the Church upon their sudden profession of repentance even of such as had killed the Lord of life And though Simon Magus would not come out of the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity yet was he not kept out of the visible Church when he professed to believe and desired baptism Indeed if men will not come so far as to the profession of true faith and repentance they are not to be received into thâ— Church Because the Church is a Society of such Professours And if they will not come they cannot be received The Church and Sacrament must not be altered and made another thing than Christ made it for the receiving of another sort of men We must not do as some that would have no profession of saving faith and repentance but only a consent to learn required of them that are baptized and so baptism changed into another sort which Christ never instituted and the Church never used to this day But if Christians had well studied the compassions of a Saviour and the tenour of his Gospel and his practice upon earth and instead of a surly flying from their neighbours and groundless censuring them were possessed themselves with that love and tenderness which is the Evangelical temper and the image of their Lord it would put in end to many of our divisions and bring us neerer the truth and one another DIRECT XIII Yet left you run into the worse extream remember still that the destroying of sin and the sanctifying of mans nature and life by recovering us to the obedience and Love of God was the design and work of the Redeemer And that Holiness and Peace must go together And that the outward order and discipline of the visible Church must be subservient to the inward spirituality and prosperity of the regenerate Church And no such favour must be shewed to sinners as favoureth and strengthneth their sin and hindereth the increase of holiness IT is woful work which ungodly Pastors make in the visible Church under the name and pretense of Vnity Concord Peace and Order when an enemy to true holiness hath the managing of these you may easily imagine how they will be used But sad experience hath told the Christian world these 1300 years more doleful things thâ—n could otherwise have bin imagined The compassion which Christ shewed to sinners was to convert and save them from their sin But the compassion which caâ—nal Pastors shew them is to harden them in their sin and make them believe that repentance and holiness are but hypocrisie or needless things The Unity and Concord
aggravate the faults of all that are against their way As if every infirmity were a crime and had no excuse yea they are oft glad to hear of some miscarriage in them for which they may speak against them And very readily take up such reports and are the willing-tongues of slanderous fame And in all this their faction maketh them impenitent For they think it tendeth to the disgrace of the other Party and so of their Cause which they account an errour and consequently that God hath use for their malicious Calumnies to his glory What company can you come into of forward Christians but they are talking against those of other parties except a few true entire Christians who are throughly possessed with the loving compassionate spirit of their Lord and have received the true impression of the Gospel And if you mark the cause you will find it as a sectarian spirit that prevaileth against the Catholick spirit of Christianity And in no sect more than in those that pretend to be the only Catholicks and to do all this against the Sectaries as such What bitter lies do the Popish sects under the name of Catholicks daily vent not only against Luther Calvin and other Reformers but any that stand against the peculiar interest of their party And they that can get the upper hand-and by worldly advantages become the domineering sect do think that thereby they are exempted from the name and number of sectaries and that all are sectaries that question their authority and do not absolutely obey them In all their discourse the stigmatizing of dissenters is an ordinary part One side reproacheth the other as Hereticks and Schismaticks And the other reproacheth them as hypocrites formalists and pharisaical persecutors And every party think that all this is a part of Christian zeal and if they did it not they should be guilty of lukewarmness and neutrality and consenting to the sins of others And thus the Church of Christ is engaged in a war against it self And when all men should know them to be Christs disciples by loving one another most men may perceive that they have too much contrariety to the Christian nature by their endeavouring to make each other odious And all because instead of distinguishing the members of the same Body by their several offices and degrees we are grown to make several Bodies of them and to set one part against another How many a Kingdomes conversion from Infidelity hath been hindered and how many a faithful Minister silenced or reproached and how many excellent Christians slandered and vilified and how many blamless customs forms and practises accused and how many infirmities aggravated as mortal crimes by a siding factious disposition and to promote the cause and interest of a Sect. Therefore as you love your integrity and peace keep up an impartial universal love and honour to all Christians as such and take heed of a dividing spirit DIRECT XX. Be very suspicious of your Religious passions and carefully distinguish between a sound and a sinful zeal lest you should father your sin on the spirit of holiness and think that you are most pleasing God when you offend him WE are seldome more mistaken in justifying our selves than in our Passions And when our Passions are Religious the mistake is both most easie and most perillous Easie because we are apt to be most confident and not suspect them the matter seeming so great and good about which they are exercised And Perilous because the greatness and goodness of the matter doth make the errour the greater and the worse I have shewed before how easie it is to think that our Religious passions are all the works of the spirit of God For we are apt to estimate them by the depth and earnestness which we feel But excellent persons have been here mistaken as Iames and Iohn were And not only so but when the passion is up the judgement it self is seldome to be far trusted For it inclineth us to err in all things that concern the present business Therefore still remember the difference between true zeal and false And know that he that is upright in the main and whose zeal for Christianity is sound may yet have much zeal that is unsound with it First It is an ill sign when your zeal is raised about some singular opinion which you have owned and not for the common salvation and substance of the Christian faith or practise Or at least when your odd opinion hath a greater proportion of your zeal than many more plain and necessary truths Secondly when your zeal is moved by any personal interest of your own By honour or dishonour By any wrong that is done you or any reputation of wisdome or goodness which lieth on the cause Or at least when your own interest hath too large a proportion in your zeal Thirdly when your zeal is more for the interest of your party than for the Universal Church and the common cause of Godliness and Christianity and can be content that some detriment to the whole may further the interest of the party Fourthly when your zeal tendeth to hurt and crueley and would have God rather to glorifie his Iustice by some present notable judgement than his Mercy by patience and forgiving And when your secret desire of fire from heaven or some destruction of the adversaries is greater than your desire and prayer for their conversion The sure mark of true zeal is that it is zealous Love It maketh you love your neighbours and enemies more fervently than others do But false zeal maketh you more inclined to their suffering and to reproach and hurt them Fifthly It is an ill signe when your zeal is beyond the proportion of your understanding And your prudence and experience is as much less than other mens as your zeal is greater True zeal hath some equality of Light and Heat Sixthly It is an ill sign when it is a zeal which is easily kept alive and hardly restrained For that sheweth the slesh and the Devil are too much its friends The true zeal of the spirit doth need the fuel of all holy means and the bellows of meditation and prayer to kindle it and all is too little to keep it up in the constancy that we desire But carnal zeal will burn of it self without such endeavours Seventhly It is an ill signe when some sect or false-teacher was the kindler of it and not the sober preaching of the truth Eighthly And it is an ill sign when it burneth in the same soul where lust and wrath and pride and malice burn And when it prospereth at the same time when the love of God and a heavenly mind and life decay The zeal of a sensualist of a proud man of a covetous man of a self-conceited empty person can hardly be thought a spiritual zeal 9. And it is an ill sign wâ—en it carrieth you from the holy rule and pretendeth to come from a spirit which will
not be tryed by the Scripture Or when it driveth you to use means which God forbiddeth in his Word and putteth you upon ways which the sealed Law and Testimony condemn It cannot be of God which is against Gods Word 10. Lastly it is a suspicious sign when it is contrary to the judgement experience and zeal of the generality of the most wise experienced tryed sober godly Christians and so to the ordinary working of Gods Spirit in other men who are as good as you For Gods Spirit is not contrary to it self By all these signs you may easily perceive how the dividing zeal of a Sect as a sect doth differ from the genuine Christian zeal The one is a zeal for some singular opinion The other is a zeal for Godliness and Christianity The one is kindled by some interest of our own religious reputation the other is kindled by the interest of the will and glory of God The one is for the strengthning of a Party The other is to increase the Church Universal and promote the common cause of Christianity even when some particular truth or duty is the Matter of it yet the general cause of godliness is the end The one is a burning hurting zeal even the same which hath made matter for so many Martyrologies and frightful Histories by inquisitions torments prisons flames massacreâ— and bloody wars And the same which hath silenced so many faithful Ministers and disturbed so many States and Churches The other is a zeal of Love which maketh men fervent in doing good to others The one causeth men to revile and despise and censure and backbite and zealously to make all dissenters seem odious that the hearers may abate their love to them The other maketh us value all that is good in others and to hide their nakedness and to make them better and to provoke the hearers to love and to good works The one tendeth to divisions and sidings and separations and distances from our brethren and to feed contentions The other is a zeal for unity amity and peace The one is the complexion of the weak and childish the proud and self-conceited the peevish and surly sort of Professours The other is the zeal of solid knowledge and of the prudent humble meek and well grounded sort of Christians The one is a zeal which flyeth most outward against the sins of other men and can live with pride and covetousness and selfishness and sensuality at home such serve not the Lord Iesus but their own bellies Rom. 16. 16 17. The other beginneth at home and consumeth all these vices in the heart and as zeal increaseth humility and meekness and love and self-denyal and temperance and heavenly mindedness increase The one is easily got and easily kept and hardly kept under O how easie is it to get and keep a contemptuous censorious backbiting dividing or persecuting â—eal But the other is not so much befriended by Satan or the flesh and therefore must be preserved by prayer and meditation and very great diligence How hard is it to keep up a zealous love of God and Man and a fervour in all our heavenly and spiritual desires Abate but your diligence and this will presently decay when the fierce contending hurting separating and persecuting zeal doth need no such fuel or labour to maintain it The one is kindled by the enflaming censures of some rash and passionate Preacher that knoweth better how to kill Love than to cause it or by the singular conceits of some Sectary or Divider or by the backbitings of some Doâ—g or malicious Calumniator The other is kindled by the humble and heavenly preaching of the Gospel and by the meditations on Christs example and a study to imitate him and his Saints in patience forbearance foâ—giving others and doing good The one is a zeal which carrieth men from the Scripture to pretenses of such revelations and inspirations and impulses as have no proof but the feeling and fancy of the person or at least to abuse the Word of God and plead it for that which it condemneth It provoketh men to some unlawful practâ—se under pretense of misinterpreted texts and of good ends and meanings The other still putteth you upon good and striveth against evil and goeth for tryal of every cause to the Law and to the testimony Lastly the one is a zeal which pretendeth the spirit and yet goeth contrary to the common workings of the spirit in the most part of the best and wisest Christians But the other is the common vital heat which animateth all the body of Christ and actualeth all his living members and keepeth up love and holiness in the Church and is the same in all humble heavenly Christians in the world It will be of great use to you in order to your own and the Churches peace to understand and observe the difference between these contrary sorts of religious zeal DIRECT XXI Lend not a patient ear to back-biters much less must you hastily believe them when they speak ill of others But shew your detestation of that sin though they should be most religious people that use it and do it upon a religious pretence I Do not say that it is always unlawful to speak that which is ill of another behind his back Sometime wicked men will take occasion to justifie sin it self by the advantage of a sinners name And sometime they will magnifie the vertues of some wicked man or of some of their sect on purpose to cast reproach on godliness or to make others odious by the comparison Yet in such cases we must repress their malignity more by a defensive than an offensive opposition But the usual course of back-biting in all sorts of men is sinful The back-biter how great or learned or religious soever is but the devils minister to preach down the love of others and to exhort you to hate your brother or to abate your charity to him And he that patiently hearkeneth to such is a partaker of their sin And he that believeth them hath taken the infection Most of our odious thoughts of others and our false and uncharitable censures do come in this way For the most part men censure and separate and persecute most where they are acquainted least but go by hear-say and judge of men by back-biters mis-reports And acquaintance and familiarity usually reconcileth them and sheweth them their errour You think it is a fair excuse for you when you either believe or report evil of another to say that you heard it from very honest and religious or reverend persons or you heard it from many and confidently uttered But God hath not allowed you to receive back-biters because they are godly or because they are many This very age and time doth experimentally confute this excuse In which it is so common a thing for false reports and news to be uttered with confidence and that by multitudes and many of them religious and yet neither truth nor ground
points that no controversies or opinions will shake his faith or destroy his love to God or man Thirdly He will honour God by upright practise and shew forth the power and excellency of religion in the true success upon the heart and life His Religion which begins in solid faith will grow up into sincere Love and good works Fourthly He will be without partiality a Lover of all the servants of Christ and therefore escape temptations to faction and division because his Religion consisteth in those common truths and duties which all profess Fifthly he will not only safely receive all further truths from these principles but all his knowledge and disputes will be sanctified as being all subservient to faith and love and holiness Whereas he that taketh the contrary course and presently falleth to the study of by-opinions and layeth too much upon them will prove too like a superficial hypocrite and a deceiver of himself by thinking that he is something when he is nothing Gal. 6. 5 6. And he will make a pudder in the world for nothing as children do in the house about their babies and their bawbles He will make but an engine of his by-opinions to destroy true Piety and Christian Love in himself first and then in all that will believe him He will first make himself and then many others believe that Religion is nothing but proud self-conceit and faction And he will be the shame of his profession and the hardener of the wicked in their sin and misery by perswading them that the Religious are bnt a few ignorant whimsical fanaticks These are too sad experienced truths DIRECT XXXII Lay not a greater stress upon your different words or manner of prayer than God hath laid And take heed either of scorning reproaching or slighting the words and manner of other mens worship when it is such as God accepteth from the sincere IT is an easie thing to turn the native heat of Religion into a feaverish out-side zeal about words or circumstances or ceremonies whether it be for them or against them O what a wonder is it that by so palpable a trick as thâ—s the Devil should deceive so many and make such a stir and disturbance in the Church I know that one party will cry up Order the other will cry up Spirituality and both will say that God maketh not light of the smallest matters in religion nor no more must we And in this general position there is some truth But if nothing could be said for both their errours they would then be no deceits nor be capable of doing any mischief Some things that you contend about God hath left wholly undetermined and indifferent And some things in which your brother erreth his errour is so small a fault as not at all to hinder his acceptance with God nor with any man that judgeth as God doth Had you ever understood Rom. 14 15. you would have understood all this It would make a knowing Christian weep between indignation and compassion to see in these times what censures and worse are used on both sides about the wording of our prayers to God! How vile and unsufferable some account them that will pray in any words which are not written down for them And how unlawful others account it to pray in their imposed forms some because they are forms and some because they are such forms and some because that Papists have used them and some because they are imposed when God hath given them no command but to pray in faith and fervency according to the state of themselves and others and in such order as is agreeable to the matter and in such method as he hath given them a Rule and Pattern of But of all quarrels about forms and words he hath never made any of their particular determinations no more than whether I shall preach by the help of Notes or study the words or speak those which another studied for me It is a wonder how they that believe the Scriptures came first to make themselves believe that God maketh such a matter as they do of their several words and forms of prayer That he loveth only extemporary prayer as some think and hateth all prescribed forms Or that he loveth only prescribed Forms as others think and hateth all extemporary prayers by habit Certainly in Christs time both Liturgies by forms and also prayers by habit were used And yet Christ never interposed in the Controversie so as to condemn the one or the other He condemneth the Pharisees for making long prayers to cover their devouring widdows houses and for their praying to be seen of men But whether their prayers were a Liturgy and set forme or whether they were extemporary he taketh no notice as telling us that he condemned neither And it s like the Pharisees long Liturgy was in many things worse than ours though the Psalms were a great part of it And yet Christ and his Apostles oft joyned with them and never condemned them Nay as far as I can find the Pharisees and other Jews were not in this so blind and quarrelsome as we nor never made a controversie of it nor ever presumed to condemn either Liturgies or Prayers by habit I shall now pass by their errour who are utterly against publike prayers from a habit as having spoken of it at large elsewhere when I had opportunity I shall now only answer the contrary extreme Obj. Where hath God given any men power to prescribe and impose forms for others or commanded others to obey them Answ. First where ever he hath given any power to teach their inferiours to pray who cannot do it in a better way He hath given Parents this power where he hath bid them Bring up their Children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord Is it not by the Law of nature the Parents duty to teach their children to pray And is not the learning of the words first profitable to their learning of the sense May they not teach their Children the Lords Prayer or a Psalm though it be a Form And why not then other words which are agreeable to their State And he that taught his own Disciples a Form and Rule of Prayer and telleth us that so Iohn taught his Disciples and saith to his Apostles As my Father sent me so send I you by making them Teachers to his Church did allow them to teach either by forms or without as the cause required All the Scripture is now to Preachers a form of Teaching And when we read a Chapter we read a prescribed form of Doctrine And it haâ—h many forms of prayer and praise and forms of Baptizing administring the Lords Supper If you say that the Apostles had an infallible spirit I answer True And that proveth that that their Doctrine was more infallible than other mens but not that they only and not other men may teach by the way of forms All the Books of Sermons now written are
matter is honest good I would not prefer such a man in a Congregation before an abler man who will speak more composedly agreeable to the matter But yet I would not be so peevish as utterly to refuse to joyn with such a one But as God doth not reject his prayers notwithstanding all his weakness no more would I. And I had rather have such prayers than none at all O that men would discern what is the true worth of prayer and how little God is taken with the Oratory of them in comparison of the faith and love and desire which is the soul of prayer And O that men would lay no greater stress on their peculiar modes and words than God doth and condemn no mens prayers further than they are condemned by God nor separate from any further then God rejecteth them or commandeth our separation I cannot forbear telling you the aggravation of this kind of sin It seemeth to me akind of blasphemy against God As if you would make the world believe that God is so much for your modâ— and words that he overlooketh all the desires of the Spirit and all his promises and all mens interest in Christ and forgetteth all his love to his people so that Christ shal not intercede for them or shal not prevail unless they pray to God in the words and mode which you have fancied to be best whether with a Book or without in these words or in those Me thinks you are renewing the old controversie whether in this Mount or at Ierusalem men ought to worship and knew not that the time is come that God will neither accept men for worshipping at this Mount or at Ierusalem here or there with a book or without book but the true worshippers whom he chooseth do worship him as a Spirit in Spirit and in truth as well with Forms as without them And yet some are more wicked than barely to condemn their brethrens prayers because they be not cloathed just as their own They will also break jests and scorns at them and take this for the ingenuity of their piety Like men of several Countreys who thâ—nk the fashions of all Countryes save their own to be ridiculous and laugh at strangers as if they were cloathed in fools Coats So many do by the cloathing of other mens devotions Some scorn at extemporary prayers and some scorn at Forms and Liturgies And the Litany they call conjuring and the Responses they take for a formal jocular playing with holy things when in all these the humble heavenly Christian is lifting up his soul to God By this petulant carnal kind of zeal I remember our divisions were here raised at the first To deridâ— the Common prayer and deride them that used it was too common with some kind of religious people And they excused it by Elias his example As if Idolaters and the true worshippers of God that differ from us in a Form or Ceremony were all one I remember how some of the contrary mind were inflamed to indignation by such scorns when they were going into the Churches in London and heard some Separatists that lookt in at the Church door say The Devil choke thee art thou not out of thy pottage yet because the Common Prayer was not ended So little did men know what spirit they were of But wise and holy Mr. Hildersham Mr. Iohn â—all Mr. Bradshaw Mr. Iohn Paget and other learned Non-conformists of old did foresee and greatly fear this Spirit It is a dangerous thing to scorn and jest at any thing that is done about Gods worship though it should be it self unwarrantable while you scorn at one anothers worship of God you raise a bold unreverence and contempt of holy things in the heâ—rerâ— and perhaps before you are aware in your selves too And you will teach the Atheist to scorn you all unless 〈…〉 where the very object is to be derided as being no God you should be very suspicious of this way I am afraid of making a mock of the grossest erroneous worship of the true God It is fitter to confute it in a way that more expresseth our reverence to the Object God himself our respect to that pious affection which may be engag'd in it I have seldom seen the best tempered people inclined to this way of jesting at other mens manner of worship nor have I observed much good come by it But I have oft seen that it is the way by which young prâ—ud self-conceited persons do kindle a carnal dividing zeal and a contempt of their brethren and quench all holy sober zeal and love together DIRECT XXXIII When you are sure that other mens way of worship is sinful yet make it not any other or greater sin than indeed it is and speak not evil of that much in it which is Good And accuse not God to be a hater or rejecter of all mens service which is mixed with infirmities AS St. Iames saith 3. 2. In many things we â—ffend all but he that â—ffendeth not with his tongue is the perfect man So we may here say in the same sense In many particulars of our prayers and other worship we all offend God But he that bridleth not his tongue from the reproaching of his brothers different way of worship may prove the greatest Offendor of all It would move a charitable understanding hearer to grief and pity to read and hear one party call all prayer by habit no better than crudities whinings bold talking to God and nonsence and whatsoever bitter scorn can speak And to read and hear many on the other extreme to call the Liturgy no less than Idolatry I desire the Reader to peruse a judicious Treatise of Mr. Tombes in answer to one of this language As much as he and I have written against each others opinion about Infant Baptisme our concenting admonition to you should so much the rather be accepted in this And what pitiful arguments have they to prove this charge of Idolatry False worship of the true God is idolatry as well as worshipping a false God But such is the Liturgy Ergo This is all that these rash preachers must trouble the Church and seduce men into a hating factious zeal with But what mean these men by false worship Do they mean worship contrary to Gods word That is which is sinful And do they mean All such sinful worship or some only If they mean all such sinful worship than these words of theirs are Idolatry For they are part of their preaching which is part of Gods worship in their own sense And it is false doctrine and tendeth to mens perdition And so they and all false Teachers should be idolaters By this they would turn all sins in worship into one It is all Idolatry Is not every confused prayer sinful which hath unmeet expressions and disordered and hath wandering thoughts and dull affections Is there any of these Love-killers that dare say they pray without sin And
near to sinners as we can by Love and all the offices of Love neither following them in any sin nor flying from them in any thing that is lawful that they may be convinced that it is not humour and disdain and pride but true necessity and Gods command which maketh us differ from them as we do And that we may not be disabled by any contrary errours of our own from evincing and oppugning theirs DIRECT XLVII When ever you are avoiding any errour or sin forget not that there is a contrary extream to be avoided of which you are in danger as well as of that which you are opposing THe minds of most men are so narrow that they cannot look many wayes at once If they be intent on one thing they forget another But it is a narrow bridge betwixt dangerous gulfs which Christian faith and obedience must pass over And he that looketh on the one side with the greatest fear and caution is undone if he look not also on the other The common way of avoiding any errour oâ— vice is to run into the contrary And on those terms satan himself will be Orthodox and a reformer and an enemy to vice I gave you some instances even now He is a rare person that is so wise and happy as to flye from every errour and sin with an impartial awakened fear of the contrary And thence it is that the most judicious old experienced Christians are usually in controversies for a middle way and in the croud of contentious sects they commonly are the reconcilers Not only because they are more calm and moderate and peaceable than others but especially because they have seen the errour on both extreams when others see only the errour on one side Only in our inclination to our ultimate end that is in our Love to God we never need to fear over-doing But all the means may be perverted and turned into sin by extreams Many that observe the pollution of the Church by the great neglect of holy Discipline avoid this errour by turning to a sinful separation And many that are offended at separation avoid it by a gross neglect of Christian discipline and taking it for a needless thing Many who observe how heartlesly and hypocritically prescribed forms of prayer are used by too many do avoid it by denying the lawfulness of all forms And many who see the errour of this opinion do escape it by turning to meer formality and deriding all prayer which is not written in a book or prescribed by another If any who see how those that were baptized in Infancy are admitted to adult Communion without ever understanding or seriously owning the Covenant into which they were then entered and seeing how the Church is corrupted hereby do avoid this errour by denying the baptism of Infants And many that see the errour of the Anabaptists do avoid it by countenancing the aforesaid Church-corruption and if Infants be but baptized they never care whether they be called at years of discretion to the solemn renewing and owning of their Covenant And many that see both these extreams do plead for Confirmation as the middle way But they turn it into a meer Ceremony and defeat the ends of it and never bring the baptized to a solemn renewall of their holy Vow And many who see the Papists abuse of Confirmation do wholly cast it off and deny the healing use aforesaid Many who see the effects of Papal tyranny dislike all General Ministery which taketh the care of many Churches And many who see the incoherence of Independent Churches and the calamity of sects do incline to Papal Usurpation Many who see the evils of Indepency in respect of Council and Concord are inclined to a Regimental dependency and subordination of one Church to another as of Divine appointment And many who see that there is no proof that God ever appointed such a Regimental dependency do turn to Independency in point of Council and Concord Many who observe the grossness of their error who would have the people have the power of the Keys and govern the Church by the major Vote do deny the people the liberty of choosing their Pastors and being guided in spirituals as Volunteers And many who see this errour of denying the people liberty do give them the fore-said power of the Keyes and make them Governours of themselves by Vote Many who hear the Papists talk so much of merits and of good works do deny our own Faith and Love and Repentance the place that God hath assigned them in order to pardon and salvation in subordination to Christ And many who hear the presumptuous boast of being Righteous by Christs imputed Righteousness without any fulfilling of the Conditions of the Covenant of Grace on their parts do make as a jest of imputed Righteousness as it is taken in a sound and warrantable sense and do ascribe too much to the works of man Many who hear the Socinians make faith and obedience to be all one do deny that the faith by which we are justified is a giving up the soul in Covenant to Christ intirely in all his office even as our Redeemer and Lord and so an engagement to obedience by subjection And many that hear men say that faith justifieth us only as an instrument apprehending Christs satisfaction and meritorious righteousness as their own do confound our faith and obedience and forget that the faith by which we are justified is our becoming Christians or Assent and Consent to the Covenant which we make in Baptisme nothing more or less and not our living as Christians in after obedience which is the fruit or effect of faith And even in civil things many who observe how Turkish Tartarian Japonian China's and other Heathenish and Infidel Tyranny is the chief Resister of the Gospel and Suppresser of Christianity to the damnation of millions of souls And how Papal tyranny and Muscovian and Spanish cruelties are the chief Maintainers of ignorance and unreformedness in the Churches are ready hereupon to think dishonourably of Monarchy it self and to murmure at the power of Christian Princes and to rush into seditions and rebellions And many that see the mischiefs of seditions conspiraciesâ— and rebellions are ready to forget the grand and heynous sin of Tyranny and the calamity of Souls and Churches and Kingdoms thereby As Campanella saith The abuse of the Potestative Primality is Tyranny the abuse of the Intellective Primality is Heresie and the abuse of the Volitive Primality is Hypocrisie Though indeed he should have mentioned both extreams In a word woe be to the Reformer who feareth not running into the Extream which is contrary to the Errour and Sin which he would reform DIRECT XLVIII Think more and talk more of your faults and failings against others especially against Princes magistrates and Ministers than of their faults and failâ—ngs against you THe Reason of this Counsel is very obvious and past contradiction Another mans sin as
oppression be made mad nor driven from your innocency DIRECT LV. When you complain of violence and persecution in others take heed lest you shew the same inward sin by Church-persecution and cruelty against them or any others BUt because I know that guilt causeth impatience and passion disposeth men to mistakes and false reports before I proceed I must here foretell you 1. That I mean not by Separatists all that are so called by interessed injudicious persons But those 1. that account true Churches of Christ to be no Churches 2. or that account it unlawful to hold Communion with those Churches whose communion is not unlawful because they are faulty or because they differ from them in some opinions or circumstances of worship 3. especially if they practise and perswade others to practise according to these two opinions of which the first is the higher sort of separation and the second the lover And secondly That by Church-dividers I mean both these and all such whose principles and practises are against that love of a Christian as a Christian and that forbearance of dissenters which should be exercised to all the members of Christ and who fly from the ancient simplicity and primitive terms of Church-communion and adde as the Papists do their own little novelties as necessary things And those that do causlesly separate from their own lawfully called Pastors For ubi Episcopus ibi Ecclesia where the true Pastor is there the Church is what ever place it be that they assemble in as Cyprien once said And lastly those that are of uncharitable humerous peevish contentious and fiery spirits and will stir up mâ—tinies and â—idings and causeless diviâ—ions in any Church where they come And truly they that think of the present state of Hartford and some other Churcheses in New England which I will not here make a Narrative of me thinks should fear Separations Schismes or Divisions from oâ— in the Churches called Independent as much as those of a different Discipline do as to theirs if not somewhat more on several accounts Thirdly And remember that I am not here speaking of any mens former faults by way of uncharitable bitterness insulting or reproach but verily brethren if we are not impartially willing to know the truth of eveâ—y side and of our own selves as well as otheâ—s we choose deceit and resist the light and provoke God to forsake our understandings Do we not yet know where Iudgment hath begun after such plagues and flames and Church convulsions And do we not yet know where Repentance must begin Enquire for good news whence you will I vvill enquire whether we are awakened to a true Repentance and by that I will fetch my prognosticks of our fâ—ture state Not whether you cry out against other mens sins but against your own and that particularly with all their aggravations and whether Professoâ—rs of Religiousness do as heartily lament their own notorious publick scandals as they expect that drunkards and fornicators and the friends of loosness should lament theirs Till we see this what promise have we of the pardon of our dreadful temporal penalties to say nothing of the greater Woe to the Land and People that can multiply sin and cannot Repent And wo to them that pretend Repentance and love to be flattered in their sin and cannot endure to be admonished but take all the discoveries of their sin to be injurious reproach among the prophane we take this to be a deadly sign of impenitency And is it so bad in them and good in us It is part of my office to cry with holy Bradford REPENT O ENGLAND and to say after Christ Except ye Repent ye shall all Perish And can I call men to Repent when I must not dare to tell them of what Nor to mention the sin which is most to be repented of I use all this preface because I know that Guilt and Impenitency are touchy and tender and galled and querulous and such will bestow the time in backbiting their Monitor which they should bestow in lamenting their sin But shall I therefore forbear and betray their souls and betray the Land through cowardly silence Must I shew that I haâ—e Professours by not admonishing them Lev. 19. 17. when I must shew that I love the looser sort by my sharp reproofs Must I not fear them that can kill the body and must I fear to displease a professed Christian by calling him to Repentance in a time of Judgments Lord hide not my own miscarriages from my â—ight and suffer me not to take any sin that I have committed to have been my innocency or duty lest I should dare to father sin on God and lest I should live and die without Repentance and lest I should be one that continueth judgments and danger to the Land stir up some faithful friend to tell me with convincing evidence where it is that I have miscarried that Contrition may prepare me for the peace of remission O save me from the plague of an impenitent heart that cannot endure to be told of sin from that ungodly folly which taketh the shame that Repentance casteth upon sin to be cast upon God and Religion which bind us to Repentance and Confession Nay in this place I am not mentioning things past so much to humble you as necessarily to inform you of the groundlesness of your present arguings that you may see the truth Fourthly Note also that I lay not any miscarriages on any whole parties Anabaptists or others For I have found that all parties of Christians indeed have some good experienced sober charitable persons and some self-conceited and contentious novices 1 Tim. 3. 6. But I speak only of the persons that were guilty and no more Fifthly Lastly remember that while I seem to compare the faults of one sort of persons with anothers it is none of my intent to equal them much less to equal the state of the several sorts of Offenders as to the rest of their lives But only to mention so much of the similitude as is nenessary to represent things truly and impartially to your view Read on now with these Memento's in your eye And if after so plain a premonition you will venture to charge me with that which I disclaim do it at your own peril I stand or fall to the judgment of God and look for a better reward than the hypocrites which is to have the good opinion of men be they professours of piety or profane And with me by Gods grace it shall hereafter be accounted a small thing to the hindering of my fidelity to Christ and mens souls to be judged of men 1 Cor. 4. 3. And if there should be any Pastors of the Churches who instead of concurring to heal the flocks of these dividing principles shall rather joyn with backbiters and encourage them in their misreports and slanders because it tendeth to the supposed interest of their party or themselves Let them prepare to
testimony for it in the world And Gods promise of reward doth tell you that you labour not in vain Is that in vain which Heaven is promised to Quest. But what is it that you would have 〈◊〉 do for Love and Peace and against the contraries Answ. First Preach and write if it be your calling Secondly Let the cause of Love and Peace be much in your secret and open prayers to God Thirdly Instruct all that learn of you with principles of Love and Peace and labour to plant them deep in their minds and make them as sensible of the evil of the contraries as they are of any other sin Unless Divines and Parents do take the way to bring up the people and children under this kind of doctrine that Love and peace may become their Religion the Church is never like to be recovered Fourthly In all your conference labour seasonably and prudently to inculcate these matters on the hearers minds and to bear your testimony against cruelty and division Fifthly Put such books into peoples hands as plead best the cause of Love and Peace Among others get men to read these Bishop Usher's Sermon on Eph. 4. 3. at Wansted before King Iames Bishop Hall's Peace-maker Mr. Ieremiah Burroughs of Heart-divisions and Mr. Stillingsteet's Irenicon and all Mr. Duries Sixthly Disgrace not your Doctrine by the badness of your own lives but be as much more Holy than them as you are more Peaceable that they may see that it is not a carnal unholy Peace that you desire But these things belong to the following Directions Finally Brethren farewel Be perfect be of good comfort Be of one mind Live in Peace And the God of Love and Peaâ—e shall be with you 1 Cor. 13. 11. Phil. 4. 9. 1 Thes. 5. 23. And the God of Peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly Rom. 16. 20. Now the God of Peace be with you all Amen Rom. 15. 33. Martyrdome for Love and Peace is as honourable and gainful as Martyrdome for the Faith Part. II. DIRECTIONS TO THE PASTORS HOW TO Esteem and use Christs Flock EVEN The weak ones and the quarrelsome Children And what must be done by themselves in the first place both to prevent and heal DIVISIONS THe Practise of which the Author doth humbly and earnestly beg of them as with tears upon his knees for the sake of Christ that purchased the weakest with his blood for the sake of those that must live in peace with Christ for ever for the sake of those who are in danger of turning to Popery or contemning Godliness through the scandal of our Divisions to their own damnation for the sake of these poor distracted Churches for the sake of the King that he may have the comfort of Governing a quiet and united people and for their own sakes that they may give up their account with joy to the chief Shepherd and Bishop of our souls and not with terrour for the consuming and scattering of his flock And that he may both begin and end with Divine Authority the Author humbly beggeth of them all that England may but SEE and FEEL that the PASTORS do VNDERSTAND BELIEVE CONSIDER and OBEY that will of God which these following Texts of Scripture do express Psal. 15. 4. In whose eyes a vile person is contemned but he honoureth them that fear the Lord. Math. 25. 40 45. Verily I say unto you in as much as ye did it not to one of the least of these my Brethren ye did it not to me Math. 18. 6 10. But who so shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me it were better for him that a milstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the Sea Take heed that ye Despise not one of these little ones for I say unto you that in Heaven their Angels do alwayes behold the face of my father which is in heaven II For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost 2 Cor. 4. 3. But if our Gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lest 1 Cor. 9. 16. For necessity is laid upon me yea wo is unto me if I preach not the Gospel Act. 20. 20 24 28 33. I have taught you publickly and from house to house But none of these things move me neither count I my life dear unto myself so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Iesus Take â—eed therefore to your selves and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers to feed the Church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood I have coveted no mans silver or gold or apparel 1 Pet. 5. 2 3. Feed the flock of God which is among you taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly nor for filthy lucre but of a ready mind neither as being Lords over Gods heritage but being ensamples to the flock And when the chief Shepherd shall appear ye shall receive a Crown of Glory that fadeth not away Luk. 22. 24 25. And there was a strife among them which of them should be accounted the Greatest And he said unto them The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship over them and they that exercise authority upon them are called Benefactors But ye shall not be so but he that is greatest among you let him be as the younger and he that is chief as he that doth serve I am among you as he that serveth 1 Thes. 5. 12 13. Know them which LABOUR AMONG you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you and esteem them very highly in Love for their WORK sake and be at peace among your selves 1 Tim. 5. 17. Let the Elders that Rule well be counted worthy of double honour Especially they who labour in the WORD and DOCTRINE Phil. 1. 15 16 17 18. Some indeed preach Christ even of envy strife and some also of good will The oâ—r preach Christ of contention not sincerely supposing to add affliction to my bonds What then Notwithstanding every way whether in pretence or in truth Christ is preached and I do therein rejoyce yea and will rejoyce Act. 28. 30 31. And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house and received all that came in unto him preaching the Kingdome of God and teaching those things which concern the Lord Iesus Christ with all confidence no man forbidding him Rom. 14. 1 2 3 4. Him that is weak in the faith receive ye but not to doubtful disputations For one believeth that he may eat all things Another who is weak eateth herbs Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not And let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth For God hath received him Who art thou that judgest another mans servant To his own Master he standeth or falleth yea he shall be holden up For God is able to make him stand One man esteemeth one
sin which caused it and remember that you have aggravated your own transgression If you are children in parts and goodness your selves you are unfit either to upbraid the people with their childish weaknesses or to cure them DIRECT III. In all your publick Doctrine and private Conference inculcate still the necessary conjunction of Holiness and Peace and of the Love of God and Man And make them understand that Love is their very Holiness and the sum of their Religion the end of Faith the heart of Sanctification and the fulfilling of the Law And that as Love to God uniteth us to Him so Love to man must unite us to one another And that all Doctrine or practice is against God and against Christ and against the great work of the Spirit and is enmity to the Church and to mankind which is against Love aâ—d Unity Press these things on them all the year that your hearers may be bred up and nourished with these principles from their youth IF ever the Church be recovered of its wounds it must be by the peaceable Disposiâ—ions of the Pastors and people And if ever men come to a peaceable Disposition it must be by peaceable Doctrine and principles And if ever men come to peaceable Principles it must be by the full and frequent explication of the nature pre-eminence necessity and power of Love That they may heat of it so much and so long till Love be made their Religion and become as the very Natural Heat and Constitution of their souls And if ever men be generally brought to this it must be by daily sucking it from those breasts which nourish them in the infancy and youth of their Religion and by learning it betimes as the sum of Godliness and Christianity And if ever they come to this the Aged experienced ripe and mellow sort of Ministers and private Christians must instil it into Schollars and into the younger sort of Ministers that they may have nothing so common in their ears and in their studies as Uniting-Love That they may be taught to know that God is Love and thaâ— he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God and God in him 1 Ioh. 4. 16. And that the Love of God doth ever work towards his image in man 1 Ioh. 4. 7 11 12 20. And that all men as men have some of his Image in their Nature as they are Intellectual Free Agents exalted above the bruits Gen. 9 6. And therefore we must Love men as men and Love Saints as Saints That it is Love to God and man which is the true state of Holiness and the New creature and which Christ came to recover lapsed man to and which the Holy Ghost is sent to work and all the means of grace are intended and fitted for and must be used for or they are misused In a word that FAITH WORKING BY LOVE or LOVE and THE WORKS OF LOVE KINDLED BY THE SPIRIT BY FAITH IN CHRIST is the sum of all the Christian Religion Gal. 5. 6 13 22. 1 Tim. 1. 5. He that crieth up Holiness and Zeal without a â—ue commemoration of Love and Peace doth first deceive the hearers about that very Holiness and Zeal which he commendeth whilest he lamely and so falsly representeth and describeth it and doth not make them know how much of Holiness consisteth in Love nor that true zeal is Love it self in its fervâ—ur and intense degree And so people are enticed to think that Holiness is nothing but the passions of fear and grief and earnest expressions in preaching and praying or scrupulousness and singularity about some controverted things or some other thing than indeed it is And they are tempted to think that Christian zeal is rather the violence of partial passions and the fervor of wrath and the making things sinful which God forbiddeth not than the fervors of Love to God and man And when the mind is thus mocked with a false Image of Holiness and Zeal it is cast into a sinful mold and engaged in the pursuit of an erroneous dangerous course of life And at last it cometh to an enmity and contempt of that which is Holiness and Zeal indeed For it accounteth Love but a Moral-vertue which they ignorantly take for a diminutive title of the great and primitive duties required by the light and law of nature it self And zealous Love is accounted by them but a carnal and selfish compliance and temporizing and a pleasing of men instead of God And â— zealous promoting of Unity and Peace is taken but for a cowardly neutrality and betraying of some truth which should be earnestly contended for And on the other side they that preach up Love to man and Peace and Concora without putting first the Love of God and a Holy and Heavenly mind and life they will cheat the poor ignorant carnal people by making them believe that God and Heaven may be forgotten and good neighbourhood to each other is all that is needful to make them happy And they will tempt the more religious sort to sin more against Love and Peace than before Because they will think that it is but a confederacy for Satan against Christ and a submission to the wills of proud usurpers to strengthen their worldly interest against godliness which these preachers mean when they plead for peace And thus as I have known ungodly Preachers by crying down Schism bring Schism into request while it was no such thing as real schism which they meant in theâ—r exclamations till at last the true eruption of schism with its monstrous effects made good people see that such an odious sin there is Even so I have known that a carnal Preacher contemning Holiness and crying up Love and Peace hath tempted the people to have too light thoughts of Love and Peace because it was but a confederacy in sin with a neglect of godliness which the preacher seemed to cry up Till riper knowledge better taught good people to perceive that Love and Peace are more Divine and excellent things than carnal preachers or hearers can imagine The wisedome from above is first pure then peaceable Let it therefore be a true conjunction of Holiness and Peace which you commend DIRECT IV. If others shew their weakness by any unwarrantable singularities or divisions shew not your greater weakness by passions impatiency or uncharitable censures or usage of them especially when any self-interest doth provoke you NOne usually are so spleenishly impatient at the weakness of Dissenters or Separatists as the Pastors are And what is the cause Is it because they abound most in Love to the souls of those who offend or them who are endangered by them If so I have no more to say to such But when we see that the Honour and Interest of the Pastors is most deeply concerned in the business and that they are carried by their impatiency into more want of Charity than the other express by their separations and when we see that they
well enough bear with themselves in such sins as this or in others as great and that they can beat with as great sins in the people with too much patience when their own interest concurreth not to raise their passions in such cases we have reason enough to fear lest pride and selfishness have too great a part in much that is said and done against schism in the world Is it a greater shame for children to cry and wrangle with the Nurse and one another or for the Nurse or Parents to go to law with them for it or to hate them and turn them out of doors Is it a fault for children to be so impatient as to cry and quarrel And is it not a greater fault in Parents that pretend to greater wisdome to be impatient with them for it I know you will say that Parents must not be so patient with sin as to leave their children uncorrected But I answer correction must not be the effect of impatiency but of Love and Wisedome and dislike of sin and must be chosen and measured in order to the cure of it It s one thing to be angry for God against sin and its another thing to be angry for our selves against the crossing of our wils and interests And it s one thing to correct so as tendeth to a cure And another thing to be revenged or do mischief or to cast out of doors Are not you guilty of Ministerial weaknesses in preaching and praying and of many omissions in your private oversight And do you think that it is meet for the people therefore to revile you with odious titles and stir up the Magistrate against you for your infirmities Is it seemly for them who are the fathers of the flock and should excel the people in Love and lowliness in patience and gentleness and meekness to be so proud and passionate as to storm against the most conscientious persons if they do but set light by us and cast off our Ministery though perhaps they hear and submit to others who are as able and as faithful and more profitable to them than we When we can â—asiâ—er bear with a swearer or drunkard or the families that are prayerless and ungodly than with the most religious if they do not choose our Miniâ—â—â—â—y but prâ—â—er some others before us as more edifying When we can bear with them that have no understanding or seriousness in Religion at all but make the world or their lusts their idols but cannot bear with the weak irregularities of the most upright and devout If they were never so irregular in preferring us before others and in leaving others to follow us we can easily bear with them and think their disorders may be well excused And to shew the height of our pride we still are confident whether we are uppermost or undermost whether we have publick liberty or are forbidden to preach that we are the persons only that are in the right and therefore that all are in the right that follow us and all are in the wrong that turn away from us That it is Unity and duty to follow us and adhere to us and all are Schismaticks who forsake us and choose others And thus the selfishness and Pride of the Pastors making an imprudent and impatient stir against all who dislike them and applauding all how bad soever who adhere to them and follow them is as great a cause of the disorders of the Church as the weakness and errours of the people DIRECT V. Distinguish between those who separate from the Universal Church or from all the Orthodox or purest and Reformed parts of it and those who only forsake the Ministery of some one person or sort of persons without refusing Communion with the rest AS many occasions may warrant a removal from a particular Church but nothing can excuse a separation from the Vniversal Church so he that separateth only from some particular Churches and yet is a member of the Vniversal Church may also be a member of Christ and be saved He may be a Christian who is no member of your flock yea or of any particular Church But he is no Christian who is no member of the Vniversal Church Paul and Barnabas may in the heat of a difference part from one another and yet neither of them part from Christ or the Church-Universal I do not excuse the fault of them who sin against any one Church or Pastor But I would not have the Pastors therefore sin as much by making their fault greater than it is nor to suffer their own interest partially to call men Schismaticks or Separatists in a sense for which they have no ground If they can learn more by another Minister than by me what reason have I to be offended at their edification though perhaps some infirmity of judgement may appear in it A true mother that knoweth her child is like to thrive better by a nurses milk than by her own will be so far from hatred or envy either at the nurse or child that she will consent and be thankful and pay the nurse Solomon made it the sign of the false mother that could bear the dividatur the hurt of the child for her own commodity and of the true mother that she had rather lose her commodity than the child should suffer And Paul giveth God thanks that Christ was preached though it was by them that did it in strife and envy to add affliction to his â—ands Phil. 1. He is not worthy of the name of a Physician who had rather the patients health were deplorate than that he should be healed by another who is preferred before him If I knew that man by whom the salvation of my flock were like to be more happily promoted than by me whatever infirmity of theirs might be the cause I should think my self a servant of Satan the envious enemy of souls if I were against it DIRECT VI. Distinguish between those who deny the Being of the Church or Ministery from which they separate and those who remove only for their own edification as from a weaker or worse Minister and from a Church more culpable and less pure FOr these last are not properly Separatists in a full sense Though they think it unlawful to joyn with you as supposing that you impose some sin upon them or that you deprive them of discipline or some ordinance of God Whether they be in the right or in the wrong yet still they hold inward Communion with you in faith and love and in the same species of worship And this is such a communion as we hold with many forreign Churches with whom we have no local present communion DIRECT VII Distinguish between those who hold it simply unlawful to have communion with you and those who only hold it unlawful to prefer your assemblies before those which they judge more pure but hold it lawful to communicate with you occasionally yea and statedly when they can have
any thing he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know But if any man love God the same is known of him v. 4. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those that are weak 12. But when ye sin against the brethren and wound their weak conscience ye sin against Christ. 13. Wherefore if meat make my brother to offend I will eat no flesh while the world standeth lest I make my brother to offend Ioh. 13. 3. Jesus knowing that the father had given all things into his hands and that he was come from God and went to God he riseth from supper and laid aside his garments and took a towel and girded himself After that he poureth water into a bason and began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded 12 13. So after he had washed their feet and had taken his garments and was set down again he said unto them Know ye what I have done to you Ye call me Master and Lord and ye say well for so I am If I then you Lord and Master have washed your feet ye also ought to wash one anothers feet For I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done to you Verily verily I say unto you that the servant is not greater than his Lord neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him If ye know these things happy are ye if ye do them Qu. To what purpose do you set together all these words of Scripture without any exposition or telling us what you conclude from them Answ. I purposely avoid glosses and collections that you may not say that I obtrude any thing on you of my own which is not the mind of your Lord himself And I set them together that they that overlook them may have a deeper apprehension than they have had First What is the true spirit of a Christian and nature of Christianity Secondly What is the office and work of the Ministery and which way they are to win souls and convince or silence gain-sayers and extirpate errours and prevent or cure schismes and secure the Churches peace And as for them that can seriously peruse all these words of the spirit of God and yet can find in them no matter of correction or instruction without a Commentary and argumentation I have no more to say to them at this time but to add Christs next words Ioh. 13. 18. I speak not of you all I know whom I have chosen And I shall annex a few texts which characterize the contrary spirit Contrary I say to CHRISTIANITY and the faithful MINISTERY and with them I shall conclude 1 Ioh. 3. 12 13. Not as Cain who was of that Wicked One and slew his brother And wherefore slew he him Bâ—cause his own works were evil and his brothers righteous Heb. 11. 4. By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Câ—in v. 13. Marvel not my brethren if the world hate you Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer And ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abâ—ding in him We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren Ioh. 8. 44. Ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye will do he was a murderer from the beginning 1 Sam. 25. 25. 17. As his name is so is he Nabal is his name and folly is with him He is such a son of Belial that a man cannot speak to him Read the story of Doeg 1 Sam. 22. Read also Ezra 4. 13 14 15 17. Esth. 3. 8. Haman said to the King There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the Provinces of thy Kingdome and their Laws are divers from all people neither keep they the Kings laws therefore it is not for the Kings profit to suffer them Dan. 3. 12. There are certain Jews that O King have not regarded thee they serve not thy Gods nor worship the golden Image which thou hast set up Dan. 6. 5. We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel except we find it against him concerning the Law of his God 7. All the Presidents of the Kingdome the Governours and Princes the Counsellors and Captains have consulted together to establish a royal statute and to make a firm decree that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for 30 dayes save of thee O King he shall be cast into the den of Lions v. 11. These men assembled and found Daniel praying and making supplication before his God which he did three times a day as aforetime 13 They said that Daniel that is of the captivity regardeth not thee O King nor the Decree that thou hast signed but maketh his prayers three times a day Amos 7. 12 13. Amazâ—ah said to Amos O thou Seer go flee thee away into the Land of Juda and there eat bread and prophesie there But prophesie not again any more at Bethel for it is the Kings Chappel and it is the Kings Court. Math. 23. 29 30 31. Wo unto you Scribes Pharisees Hypocriteâ— because ye build the tombs oâ— the Prophets and garnish the sepulchres the righteous and say If we had been in the dayes of our fathers we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the Prophets Wherefore ye be witnesses to your selves that ye are the children of them which killed the Prophets Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers Ioh. 11. 48. If we let him thus alone all men will believe on him and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation Act. 4. 1 2. And as they spake to the people the Priests and the Captain of the Temple and the Sadduces came upon them being grieved that they taught the people And they laid hands on them and put them in hold v. 17. That it spread no further among the people let us straitly threaten them that they speak henceforth no more in this name 18. And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus Gal. 4. 29. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit even so it is now 3 Ioh. 9. 10 11. I wrote to the Church but iâ—â— otrephes who loveth to have the pre-eminence among them receiveth us not and not content therewith neither doth he himself receive the Brethren and forbiddeth them that would and casteth them out of the Church Beloved follow not that which is evil but that which is good He that DOTH GOOD is of God but he that doth evil hath not seen God 1 Thes. 2. 14 15. For ye also have suffered like things of your own Countrymen even as they have of the Jews who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own Prophets and have persecuted us and they please not God and are contrary to all men
Bible But I pray you mark it the way of God is to shame the sinner how good soever in other respects that the sin may have the greater shame and Religion may not be shamed as if it allowed men to sin nor God the Author of Religion be dishonoured nor others be without the warning But the way of the devil is To hide or justifie the sin as if it were for fear of disparaging the goodness of the persons that committed it that so be may thereby dishonour Religion and Godliness it self and make men believe that it is but a cover for any wickedness and as consistent with it as a looser life is and that he may keep the sinner from repenting and blot out the memory of that warning which should have preserved after-ages from the like falls Scripture shameth the Professours though a David Solomon Peter Noah or Lot that the Religion professed may not be shamed but vindicated Satan would preserve the honour of the Profâ—ssâ—urs that the Religion prosessed may bear the shame and so it may fall on God himself When God turneth Lots wife into a Pillar of Salt Satan is willing to seem so tender of the honour of the godly as to take it down that it may be forgotten God saith to the Israelites that when those that pass by shall ask why hath God done all this great â—vil against this people the posterity shall recount their ancestors sins and say Because they sinned against the Lord their God c. But Satan could find in his heart to pretend more tenderness of the names and honour of the Church so he might but undo the present age by impeniâ—ency and after ages by taking Gods publick warnings from before their eyes On these terms he will be all for the honour of professours But God will make men more tender of his honour and less tender of our own and more willing openly to take shame to our selves to vindicate the honour of Religion before he will give us a 〈◊〉 discharge It is the nature of true Repentance to cry out as publickly as we can to all the world and be glad to leave it upon record It was not God or Religion that ever encouraged me to these sins but it was my own doing Religion is clear but I am guilty Pardon this long excursion on this subject And if you cannot bear it I cannot help that I made not the sore nor galled place which is so tender I only mind you in answer to your objection that Faction and opinions will raise persecutions and have done even by such as you yet do not separate from I know none of you that separate from the Anabaptists and Separatists who were the authors of these aforesaid persecutions nor do I urge you to it Therefore do but impartially judge of the sin Obj. But it is one thing to persecute for particular opinions and interests as almost all parties have sometimes done and another thing to perseâ—nte for Godliness it selfe Answ. I confess it is and the difference between these two is very great But I pray you consider first that they are but few perhaps not one of all that you separate from that ever persecuted you any way at all Nor can you prove that ever they so much as allowed of it Secondly That they whom you and I do suffer by do not believe that they persecute us for Godliness but think that here the case is more defensible than yours was For you had no just authority over us When the Anabaptâ—sts did pull down the Ministers they pull'd down the Magistrates too And therefore it was a perscution of equals without authority But those that we Ministers suffer by now are our lawful Rulers who have made Laws to require us to subscribe and say and swear and do the things which we do not And therefore they think that we suffer but for a different opinion joyned with disobedience It is not all men whom they forbid to preach but us who dissent and do not obey them It is not all men that are godly whom they imprison but those that meet to worship God in a place and manner differing from theirs and forbidden by them So that how can you say that this is not for differing opinions Obj. But we forbid not them to hold their own Church-communion though we separate from them we never denied them the liberty of their consciences Answ. Some of your judgement denied many of them much of that liberty which consisteth in worshipping of God in their own way when you were in power But suppose they had not it is but another way of uncharitableness The vice expressed seemeth to be the same For you condemn them as unfit for Christian-Communion and therefore you exclude them from yours And you take their Church-communion among themselves to be but a prophanation of holy things which maketh them the more impious and therefore the more odious And you tolerate it in them as you tolerate mens folly and madness or leprosie or plague because you cannot cure it And I pray you judge whether there be any more Christian Love in this kind of dealing than there is in that which you call persecution Or at least wheâ—her it proceed not from the same uncharitableness I suppose you to be spiritual and not carnal persons at least in profession and therefore that you are not so tender of the flesh as to take its suffering to be any great matter to you in comparison of any of the sufferings of the soul. When you refuse Communion with men as judging them unfit for fellowship with the visible Churches of Christ you judge them the visible members of the devil and condemn them to the loss of the greatest priviledges on earth and to be left out with the dogs with Publicans and Heathens Though you think that you have no more to do your selves in the execution of this sentence but to separate from them yet you declare that you think that all others should do the same So that your tolerating their Communion among themselves is no great signification of your charity The sum of all that I say to you is this It is but one and the same sin in the Persecutor and the Divider or Separatist which causeth the one to smite their brethren and the other to excommunicate them the one to cast them into prisons as Schismaticks and the other to cast them out of the Church as prophane the one to account them intollerable in the land and the oâ—her to account them intollerable in the Church the one to say Away with them they are contumacious and the other to say Away with them they are ungodly The inward thoughts of both is the same that those whom they smite or separate from are bad and unlovely and unfit for any better usage When Love which thinketh no evil till it is necessitated and believeth all things which are at all credible and hopeth all things which
are not desperate and covereth sins instead of condemning without proof would equally cure them both And let me yet conclude with this double protestation against the carping slanderer who useth to falsifie mens words First That I intend not in all this any flattery of the ungodly or making them better than they are or forbearing plain reproof or Church-discipline nor any unlawful communion with the wicked nor countenancing them in any of their sins nor neglecting to call them to repentance Secondly That while I here name persecution my purpose is not to mark out any persons or party above others or determine who they be that are the persecutors But only to detect the deceitfulness of our hearts when we most complain of it and to shew that wherever that sin is indeed it cometh but from the same principle as sinful separation doth even from the death of Love to others Thirdly and I add that though I here aggravate the persecution of unjust excommunications or separations as robbing men of the priviledge of Christians yet leaving them the common liberties of men and subjects it is none of my purpose to equal this absolutely with that destroying cruelty which leaveth them neither and will not suffer them to enjoy so much liberty as Heathens and Infidels may enjoy or as Paul had under such Act. 28. ult DIRECT LVI Keep still in your thoughts the state of all Christs Churches upon Earth that you may know what a people they are through the world whom Christ hath communion with and may not be deceived by ignorance to separate from allmost all Christs Churches while you think that you separate from none but the few that are about you THousands of well meaning people live as if England were almost all the world And do boldly separate from their Neighbours here which they durst not do if they soberly considered that almost all the Christian world are worse than they But narrow minds who can look but little further with their Reason than with their eye-sight do keep out at once both Truth and Love It is a point that I have often had occasion to repeat and yet will not forbear to repeat it here again It is but about one sixth part of the known world who make any profession of Christianity and are baptized besides how much peopled the unknown part of the world may be we know not Of this sixth part the Ethiopians Egyptians Syrians Armenians the Greek Churches the Muscovites and all the Papists are so great a body that all the Protestants or Reformed Churches are little more than a sixth part of this sixth The Papists being about a fourth or fifth part and the other Christians making up the rest And of these Protestants Sweden Denmark Saxony and many other parts of Germany making up the greatest part are such as are called Lutherans And of the other half which are supposed to be more Reformed there is scarce any of so Reformed lives as these in England and Scotland And among these how great a number are they that you separate from If you look to the Papists their worship is by the Mass If you look to the Muscovians they have a Liturgy much more blameable than ours and have a few Homilies instead of preaching If you look to the Greek Church to the Armenians the Abassines and all the Eastern and the Southern Churches in Asia and Africa they also worship God by Liturgies much more lyable to blame than ours and have but little preaching among them besides Homilies and the Members of their Churches are commonly far more ignorant than the worst of ours even than the rudest part of Wales If you look to the Lutherans they have Liturgies and Ceremonies and Images in their Churches though not adored and have far worse Preachers and of worse lives and more unprofitable preaching than is usually found with us and the people more ignorant and vicious If you look to the remnant called the more Reformed Churches in Holland France Helvetia Germany though they have much less of Liturgy or Ceremonies yet are their Church-members usually as ignorant as ours and more addicted to intemperance and there is no less scandal in their lives than among ours Now this being the true state of the world and though we daily pray that it may be better yet it is no better I would only intreat you but to think of it as it is and that to answer me deliberately these few Questions Quest. 1. Do you believe that all baptized professed Christians not denying any essential part of Christianity are Christs Universal Visible Church Qu. 2. Do you not believe that this Church is only One and that every particular Church and every Christian is a part of it Qu. 3. Do you not believe that it is unlawful in any case whatsoever to separate from it And that to separate from the Universal Visible Church is visibly to separate from Christ Qu. 4. Do you not believe that to give a Bill of Divorce to the Universal Church or to many hundred parts of it or to any one part and to declare that they are none of the Church of Christ is not great arrogancy and injury to men and unto Christ himself Qu. 5. Dare you say before God Let me have no part in any of the prayers of all these Churches on earth who use a Liturgy as culpable as ours because I will have no Communion with them Do you set so light by your part in their prayers Q. 6. If you travelled or lived in Abassia Armenia Greece or any Christian Country where their worship is not Idolatry nor substantially wicked nor they force not the worshippers to any false Oaths subscriptions or other actual sin would you refuse all communion with them and all publick worshipping of God Or would you not rather joyn with them than with no Church at all Qâ— 7. When you remember on the Lords days that now all the Christian world are congregate and are calling upon God and praising him in the name of one Christ and in the profession of one Faith dare you think of being a Body separated from them all And can you think that Christ disowneth them all save you Qu. 8. Can you think it agreeable to the gracious nature design and office of Jesus Christ to cast off and condemn so many hundred parts of the Church-universal and to accept that one part only which you joyn with Judge by his actions and expressions in the Scriptures Qu. 9. If there were bâ—t ten persons of your mind in all the world would you believe that God would save none but those ten or accept the worship of no more or that it were lawful to have communion with none but those ten If not how can you think so in a case so neer it Qu. 10. Can you prove that Christ doth separate from all the Christians of the world which you separate from or that they have no visible Commâ—nion with him or