separate from Christian Congregations for that they have not been otherwise baptized than in their Infancy and which deny Church Communion with them to be lawful for that reason and practise upon it accordingly For this is a Causless and unwarrantable rent and breach made in the body of Christ the universal Church which is Schism in the formality of it Nay it is Schism of a higher nature than ordinary The Schism in the Church of Corinth and the like in other Churches which was so much condemned in the Apostles Epistles as that scarce any thing was more was but a proud uncharitable and unpeaceable faction and siding in a particular Church which did not proceed so high as to separation of one part of the Church from the other in publick worship and Church Communion Nor was such a thing at all practised then by any Christians upon any occasion though there were great disorders among them but only by such as St. Jude saith were sensual not having the spirit ver 19. And if Schism was so highly condemned when it never rose to that height among Christians as to deny Communion one with another in the publick worship to be lawful What can we think of such a Schism then as for you without cause to deny the lawfulness of holding Communion with almost all the Churches of Christ in the World except those few Congregations which have been rebaptized and to practise accordingly not to mention your censuring them to be no true Churches nor any member of them properly a Christian but people of the World If the little Schisms in the Church which never proceeded to separation were thought of such ill consequence by the Apostles as that they laboured hardly in any thing more in their Epistles than to prevent and suppress them Then certainly such a Schism as yours cannot in reason but be of as much more a criminal nature and of so much worse consequence as the unchurching of almost all Christian Churches in the World is worse than those lesser divisions in the Church were notwithstanding which they kept on foot their Communion in the solemn worship The Schism which consisted in separation we see was perpetrated by none then but those vile Gnosticks who though they pretended to more knowledge and perfection than was in them they withdrew from yet such was the opinion the Apostles had of them and their separation as that they were not afraid to say they were sensual not having the spirit Which I note not as judging you to be as bad men as those Gnosticks were setting aside your Schism but to put you in mind that notwithstanding the great disorders that were in those Churches and the want of the due exercise of Discipline in the Church of Corinth and several of the seven Churches of Asia yet no good Christians then ever attempted to erect separate Communities for reformation sake much less were ever encouraged so to do by the Apostles but the quite contrary Now if the Apostles had such a deep sense of the mischievous nature and effects of Schism as put them upon such strenuous endeavours to prevent or supress it as we find they used Methinks this should awaken you to reflect upon your selves and what you have done by your separation in making such a rent as you have done in the Church of God and what the effects of it have been I know you cannot be without all sense of what sad effects our Church divisions have produced Such as is the exposing of our holy Religion to the scorn and contempt of Atheists Infidels and Papists and the tempting of those to become such which were not so before and such as is the discomposing unsetling and confounding the minds of many well meaning and well-designing but injudicious people to the betraying them into the hands of Seducers who have made their advantage of our divisions and such as is the diverting of mens minds from the serious consideration study and practice of the weightier matters of Religion and the engaging them in contentious Janglings and uncharitable Censurings and Revilings to the destruction of true Christian Charity and Piety and the placing Religion much in opinion and in being of a different form and party and such as is the exposing of us all to the danger of the breaking in of Popery by strengthening their hands who are of that way and by weakening our own and by incouraging them in hopes of prevailing at last to practise upon us and by all their Arts to improve the advantage we have put into their hands by our divisions and distractions You cannot be ignorant how many have taken their way to Quakerism and Scepticism through your Congregations like wandering stars having first left the Parochial Assemblies have promised themselves this and that satisfaction first in one new form and then in another until they have run themselves out of breath and at last quite lost themselves and seldom returning And if upon review and examination you find as doubtless you may that your separation which with the separation of others hath brought forth such bitter fruit hath proceeded on mistaken grounds and been undertaken without any just cause what work then will here be for repentance that ever you have been accessary to such mischiefs as those before-mentioned are and what need is there for you that are Leaders to sound a retreat to your followers I can assure you it hath been matter of no small humbling to some when they have perceived the bad effects of such separation that ever they had their hands in it The sense of which bad effects also first put them upon such a serious review of the grounds on which they first set out in it as by means whereof they came to discover the weakness and unsoundness of those grounds And as what I have herein done to help you to a sight of your mistake is intended as a real service to you so I ought to presume that it cannot but be judged to be so by such as are sincere lovers of truth if they can receive thereby any such benefit as is designed them by it And if any shall receive conviction and yet for their reputation sake among their party and for fear of the reproach of inconstancy shall still persist in their way contrary to the conviction of their own mind let them consider that such will hardly be able to buy the truth with the price of liberty estate or life that are scared from a publick owning of it by the corrupt breath of such injudicious and heady persons which cannot excuse them by answering for them to God to whom every one must give an account for himself Let it be remembred who and what they were who believed on Christ and yet would not confess that they did because they loved the praise of men of their own party more than the praise of God Joh. 12.42 43. and who they were that could not believe because they
respects than such as amount to saving grace or internal holiness Then your principle and the principle of others in the Congregational way cannot be sound when you and they assert That none are to be owned as members of the visible Church so as to be received into Church Communion who are not in the Judgment of Charity savingly sanctified For we see others than such are in Scripture account owned as really members of the visible Church And therefore the opinion and practice both of you and them in this can be no other than an innovation and humane invention and which hath been one principal cause of so much division in the Church and of the sad effects of it as we have already seen I have nothing to say against exercising as much Charity in your opinion of others as you can But that 's no judgment of Charity nor of truth neither to judg those no visible Church Members for want of saving Grace which yet are so in the judgment of God himself by the Scriptures And men should not pretend to be wiser than their Maker or think to find out better methods than he hath pitcht upon for the promoting his ends his own Glory and mans Salvation But when they do they lightly do in the total and at the long run but frustrate and disappoint those ends or greatly hinder them and promote those of a worse nature The Judgment of Charity in this matter is a rule arbitrary and uncertain and will vary as mens opinions and affections vary and he shall be a good Christian in the charitable judgment of some that shall be denied to be so in the judgment of others To set up this judgment of Charity for a rule in this matter is indeed a way like unto which there is none that I can think of so prepared and fitted to make parties and Sects in the Church as that is But to own all to be of the visible Church who are converted from a false to the profession of the true Religion and the little Children of such and the successors of such in the same profession until they desert the Church or are worthily and deservedly and in a regular way of proceeding Excommunicated is to walk by an open manifest certain and fixt rule which had it been duly observed would have preserved the Church in Unity and Peace which now is lamentably divided and disturbed by introducing other measures Which brings me to the next thing to be enquired into The next thing then which as I say we will enquire into is how or in what respect little Children were members and a part of the Old Testament Church and capable of the then initiating Ordinance And by what hath been before proved I think we may safely conclude that it was not meerly upon the account of their natural descent from Abraham or from Abrahams Seed according to the flesh For Abraham as he was Father to the Church or Church members as such it was not in his natural but his religious capacity that he was so it was as he was a believer that he was and yet is the Father of Believers And accordingly all that were of the Church whether young or old were so upon a religious account in one respect or other The Church is not a Natural Political or Civil Community but a Religious or Spiritual Community And therefore all persons and so little Children that were of the Church must needs in one respect or other have been persons of a Religious or spiritual consideration This I think is past dispute And yet I think that the little Children which were of the Church could not be looked upon to be in that religious capacity actively or by any act of their own while but little ones but were passively such This considered I know not upon what better to place the visible Church-membership of Infants or to attribute it to than Gods electing and calling them to be his people and their Parents dedicating and devoting them to God and his service First God chose them to be his people among the rest Deut. 4.37 Because he loved thy fathers therefore he chose their seed after them This was the adoption of which St. Paul speaks Rom. 9.4 Now Gods thus chusing them to be his people and declaring that he had chosen them as he did in promising to be their God was one degree of separating them from the rest of the World and by which they became a holy seed relatively holy I mean But this was not all but they became his people by Gods calling them to be so as well as by his election and promise The Lord by his Prophet stiled the whole body of the people of the Jews Israel my called Isa 48.12 By this call of his they were in a further degree separated to God as his people and differenced from the Heathen Nations that were under no such call Now God then calleth persons to be his people when he placeth them in such circumstances or vouchsafeth them such means as by which they do or will come to take him for their God and to imbrace the Religion which is of God Now as to the manner of this call it is either extraordinary or ordinary As for Abraham himself he seems to have been called by God in a way extraordinary by his appearing and speaking to him as he did in Mesopotamia Acts 7.2 But his seed and posterity were called in an ordinary way by being educated from their Childhood in Abrahams Religion by their Parents deriving it from Abraham and so successively from one Generation to another from Generation to Generation according to Psal 78.5 6. The Lord established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a Law in Israel which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their Children that the generation to come might know them even the Children which should be born who should arise and declare them to their Children that they might set their hope in God And in this way the little Children who were then members of the Church as all confess were called to that Church membership unless you can suppose that any can be Members of the Church without being called to it And it was doubtless the Election and Call aforesaid by which little Children were brought into that spiritual relation to God and his people which qualified them for a solemn admission into the Church by the Church initiating Ordinance for the time then being which other Children were not duly capable of who were not under that Election and Call God's placing those Infants in such circumstances as was their being under the care and tutorage of such Parents as would issue in their owning God for their God and his Religion for the way of their worshiping and serving him was his calling of them in the beginning of it unto such a profession And the Scripture useth to reckon little Children as having begun to do this or that
Church of God When the promised Messias was come and the promise thereby fulfilled and a new Revelation made touching his being come and that Jesus the Son of the blessed Virgin was he some of them believed this and so kept their standing in the Church in as much as by that belief they continued to be the Spiritual Seed of Abraham as they were before by their former Faith Whereas the other Jews who did not believe this but opposed the profession of it in those that did ceased thereby to be so much as nominally or by profession the spiritual Seed of Abraham and so became broken off from the Church being now his Seed but after the flesh only This which is indeed the plain truth and easie to be understood is point-blank against your contrary opinion and assertion on which you much build touching the dissolution of the Church which had been Jewish when the Church as Christian did commence The belief of a new Revelation did not make a new Church but the Church in being before had thereby a new illumination and their faith changed into a belief that that now was done which they believed before would be done The Church considered as well before as after the entrance of the Gospel into the World is resembled by one standing Olive-Tree that had some branches broken off and others grafted in And as the same Church continued under the Gospel which did exist or was in being before so the very same Church-members kept their place and standing in it which were of it before except such as were broken off by unbelief And if so then those little Children which were of the Church immediately before their Parents became Christian did not cease to be so by their Parents becoming such nor by any alteration which the Gospel made For if those who were broken off were broken off by unbelief according to the Apostles express assertion Then unless those little Children I speak of were guilty of unbelief in themselves or had it imputed to them from their Parents they could not be broken off but still kept their place and standing in the Church of God But guilty of unbelief by imputation of it from their Parents they could not be for they were Believers Nor could they be any more guilty of it by any act or omission of their own than they were while as Abrahams Spiritual Seed they were of the Church before And therefore the only reason and cause of the dischurching of those who were dischurched not being found in those little Children they could not possibly be dischurched by any alteration which the Gospel made You may further observe how that such expressions are used in the holy writings of the New Testament as do denote the Children of believing Parents to be holy to be separated to God now as well as they were in old Testament times Thus when the Apostle speaks of the Hebrew Christians and their Seed of which the Christian Church was first constituted as the first-fruits unto God and how it was like to continue as the root or stock into which the believing Gentiles in part were already and were further to be grafted he saith thus in Rom. 11.16 If the first-fruits be holy the lump is also holy and if the root be holy so are the branches In old Testament times if the root were holy if the Parents Abrahams Spiritual Seed were holy the branches their little Children were holy also as coming under the same denomination with their Parents And we here see the Apostle asserts the same thing to be now and to take place under the Gospel dispensation He doth not say in reference to times past if the root were holy so were the branches but with reference to the time present if the root be holy so are the branches And as here St. Paul speaks of the Sanctification of the Seed of the Hebrew Believers so elsewhere he asserts the sanctification of the Children of the believing Gentiles when he saith The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband else were your Children unclean but now are they holy 1 Cor. 7.14 If we should read this Text according to your interpretation of it thus else were your Children Bastards but now they are Legitimate we should impose such a sense upon the Apostles words as would represent him as speaking untruly For certainly the Children of Heathen Parents born in lawful Wedlock were no Bastards although the Parents were neither of them Believers nor neither of them sanctified by faith or by means of the faith of the other Whereas the holiness of the Children here spoken of did depend upon the faith of one of the Parents if one of them had not been sanctified by means of the faith of the other their Children would have been unclean and yet not Bastards neither provided the Parents were lawfully Married before either of them believed If then your interpretation be not the true sense of the Text and you see for what reason it cannot then what can so reasonably be assigned for it and so agreeably to the current tenour of the Scriptures as those Childrens being separated together with their Parents from Heathenism to Christianity from Idols to God from being without God and Christ in the World to be related to him as members of his Church chosen and called out of the World by which they became relatively holy Unto all that hath been already said let us add in the last place that little Children together with their Fathers are expresly called Disciples Acts 15.10 Where it 's said Why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the neck of the Disciples which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear That which is here called a putting a yoke upon the neck of the Disciples was the urging the necessity of proselyting the believing Gentiles with their Children by Circumcision after the manner of Moses ver 1. Now the manner of initiating Proselytes of the Gentiles according to the Law of Moses was to Circumcise the Father and his Male Children too if he had any Exod. 12. And therefore the Children of the believing Fathers as well as their Fathers themselves must needs be understood to be those Disciples upon whose necks this yoke was endeavoured to be put This being the plain and genuine sense of this Text in all probability I must needs say it is but a faint put off and weak evasion to escape the force of the testimony given in this Text to the Discipleship of some Infants for you to alledge that it was the doctrine only of the false Teachers imposed upon the Parents and other grown persons who only and not their Infants were able to understand it that was the yoke the only yoke that was endeavoured to be put upon the neck of the Disciples here and that therefore they only must be here meant by the Disciples upon whose neck the yoke was
of many Zech. 2.11 Many Nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day and shall be my people As the Nation of the Jews were Nationally Gods people and God was the God of Israel so here it 's foretold that many Nations nationally should be joined to him and be his people also and consequently he must be the God of those Nations in the same sense in which they are his people Thus far the matter is so evident that one would think that nothing but an inveterate prejudice and prepossession of a contrary opinion unduly taken up and an averseness to confess your selves to have been mistaken should hinder you from accepting of a conviction in this matter and of yielding up your judgments as conquered by the truth To proceed then yet farther If Nations professing the true Religion are in a more general sense Abrahams spiritual Seed and a people joined to the Lord so as to be his people Then it is as well the duty of the people of such Nations to associate and knit together in Christian Congregations for publick worship in the places where they reside as it was for the Primitive Christians who lived in Rome in Corinth in Cenchrea by Corinth c. to associate as they did in the same places for the same end and accordingly those Churches were called by the names of the places where they did reside And our Parochial distribution is no more a cause of quarrel than that was that the Church of Corinth and the Church at Cenchrea were distinct upon the only account that the members of each lived in distinct places And as the distribution of the whole Nation of Professors of Christianity into particular Parochial Assemblies best answers the Primitive pattern so it best answers the ends of Church association such as are the watching over conferring with admonishing exhorting and comforting one another and the assembling together for publick worship And when the Christians in a Nation are thus disposed of into Congregations in the places where they live weak and strong together it is no ways agreeable to primitive practice nor to the general ends of Church association nor to the common good of particular Churches or of the whole body of Christians in a Nation for the stronger the wiser the better the more spiritual in those Parish Churches to withdraw themselves from the more ignorant weak and carnal Christians residing in the same place with them into distinct and separate Communities so long as they can hold Communion with them without sinning in so doing This the Primitive Christians did not and if no such thing had been done in our Nation the Church of God amongst us would doubtless have been in no such bad circumstances as now it is As God hath placed in the natural body members some more necessary and useful than others to be helpful and serviceable to the meaner more helpless and less useful for the good of the whole body so it is in Ecclesiastical bodies God saith St. Paul hath tempered the body together having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked that there should be no Schism in the body 1 Cor. 12.24 25. That there should be no Schism in the body as to be sure there will and needs must when that part is most neglected which lacketh most care and pains and withdrawn from as if it were no part of the body This becomes a sore temptation to those who are despised to set against those who despise them and that again tempts them on the other side to oppose their opposers and so the breach grows wider and wider and spreads it self through the whole body of a Nation And as the withdrawing live coals from those that are but a little kindled is the way to put out the fire so is the withdrawing of the better Christians from the worse not in a way of Church Discipline but into distinct bodies the direct way to ruine the Church and to extinguish the life and heat of Religion in those places where this is practised I nothing doubt but that those who have taken this course let the provocation to it be what it will might have consulted the real and true interest of Religion in the main much better in another way This way savours too much of self-satisfaction and neglect of others to be of Christ who would have the strong to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please themselves after his own example Rom. 15. New ways many times take much for a while which do not end so well at last Enquire for the old way and stand in the good way that in which the primitive Christians walked if ye would find rest and satisfaction in your own minds rest to your Souls And if it be matter of duty in it self and according to primitive practice for all Christian Professors in a Nation thus to unite in particular Congregations in the places where they reside and not to make any Schism after by one part withdrawing from the other into separate Communities so long as they can continue their Communion without a necessity of sinning Then if the Higher Powers in such a Nation do exercise their authority in commanding them to do this which is of it self their duty though they had not commanded it and do likewise forbid and restrain their making of Schisms by separating when they have no sufficient or warrantable cause to do it this cannot make it less their duty than it was of it self before and still would be were there no such Command or restraint from the Higher Powers No man sure can imagine that if Nero had used his authority in commanding the Primitive Christian Churches to do the same things which they were obliged to do though he had not commanded it as he did not that Nero's Command in that Case would have made it any whit less their duty but the more It is not unbecoming but very laudable no doubt for the Higher Powers to concern themselves and their authority in promoting the Christian Religion in their Dominions by taking order that God be publickly and solemnly worshipped by the Christians in the use of Gospel Ordinances That places for publick worship be provided for that end That Officers competently qualified be appointed to administer those Ordinances That fitting maintenance be appointed and provided them that they may attend that work without distraction That the people be required and commanded to attend the publick worship and that care be taken that they may not be disturbed in it and finally that Discipline be duly exercised for the purging of the Churches and for the keeping them pure Supposing the Higher Powers and the people of a Nation to be Christian the very light of nature and their love to the Religion they profess will dictate such things as these in the one to Command and the other to obey and to use all due means to prevent divisions amongst them as being most destructive
account of our divisions so as it never would have done if they never had been begun besides the hazard we run of exposing our posterities to lose the substance by our contending for circumstance and besides the temptation we have thereby put upon men to call the whole of Christianity into question and thereupon to give reins to their lusts more than ever before since the Reformation was first made I pray God so to bind the consideration of these things upon your minds that you may be awakened thereby out of I know not what dream into which a great many of the good people of this Nation have fallen There is nothing hardly in Christianity more evident than that matters of less moment are to give way to those of greater circumstance to substance conveniencies to necessaries a less convenience to a greater a greater inconveniency to a less duties only by Positive Institution to those which are morally or naturally such as might be shewed in many other Scriptures Hos 6.6 Mat. 12.4 5 6 7. besides those now touch'd on about Christian liberty And I think nothing gives a more direct contradiction to all this than the Schism that is made among us or the things by which it is made because by this you make matters of greater moment to truckle and yield to those that are less circumstance to substance matters necessary to those of conveniency a greater convenience to a less and so on For I appeal to the light of your own reason and to your Conscience whether the affairs of Religion in reference to the Church of God and to the World are so much concerned in having Gods worship and Ordinances administred in your way rather than in the way of the Church of England as they are in the peace and unity of the Church and in what depends upon them Whether the Souls of men in general both of those which adhere to you and of those which do not are advantaged by your way of administration above what they are and would be in the way of the Church of England more than they are hurt by the division and separation that is made about that difference Whether the Christian Religion be more honoured abroad in other Nations among Christians and Infidels by the one than hurt by the other Whether the Protestant Cause both at home and abroad gains more by the one than it is hurt by the other and whether more secured to posterity by the one than endangered by the other Whether error and heresie be more supprest by the one than propagated by the other and lastly whether Charity Humility and other Christian vertues or graces wherein the substance and power of Religion consists are farthered in your way above what they are and would be in the way of the Church of England more than they are hindered by Schism and separation Now if the affairs and concerns of Religion among men do in these and many other respects lose more by your Schism than they get by having the worship of God administred in your way rather than in the way of the Church of England as doubtless they do and the thing is too manifest to be denied Then you must needs be as certainly guilty of making matters of greater moment to stoop and submit to those of less as ever the Pharisees were of passing over the weightier matters of the Law and contenting themselves that they tithed Mint Anise and Cummin There is no such proportion of value in your way of external administration of holy things as different from that of the Church of England as makes it worthy to be put in competition with the peace and unity of the Church and what depends thereon For the Scripture no where lays any such injunction upon us to observe one way or manner of external administration of the right substance of worship supposing it to be done in common language as it does for the keeping of the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace nor gives any such caution against any external form of administration except that which is made in an unknown tongue as it does against the breach of the peace and unity of the Church and the many consequent ill effects thereof Nor is there any such utility in your way of administration as different from that of the Church of England as makes it worthy to be put in competition with the peace and unity of the Church I presume there is no sober serious Christian among you will say that your way of administration makes any such difference in the hearts and lives of Christians but that there were heretofore and are now Christians in Communion with the Church of England as sober righteous and godly as any among you I know nothing therein to hinder a man from being as holy and as good as he hath a mind to be It is the difference in mens more or less attendance to the substance of Christianity that makes them better or worse Christians and not their using different undetermined circumstances in the administration of worship And if it be so that your way of administration as different from that of the Church of England holds no such proportion of value or utility as makes it worthy to be brought in competition with the peace and unity of the Church Then for you to bring it into competition therewith nay to prefer it above the peace and unity of the Church and what depends thereon as it is apparent you do is a thing altogether unaccountable and a flat contradiction to that vein of Doctrine in the Scripture which I have mentioned above I know you will be ready enough to say that if it be so bad a thing in us to put undetermined circumstances in the administration of holy things into competition with the peace and unity of the Church as you say it is Then it cannot be good in them who by imposing such things upon us as conditions of Communion do put them into competition with the peace and unity of the Church also which is divided upon that account There is I grant little question but that the imposing of nothing as a condition of Communion but what is generally freest from exception is a very good way to preserve peace and unity in the Church But yet the using of some indifferent circumstances in the worship of God upon the first Reformation from Popery in this Nation was doubtless thought as convenient for the bringing people to Church then as ever a complying with the Jews in their usages not sinful in themselves was at the first Conversion of them to Christianity thought convenient to bring them to and to keep them in the Church then And though you think the case is so altered since the Reformation as that what was a reason of their use then to wit the bringing folk to Church is a reason of their dis-use and laying aside now as tending to the same end yet