divorce to either of them and think how acceptable your indeavours are to Christ who make it so small a matter to cashiere so many thousands yea whole Nations from his campe Compare wee intreat you this your way with the presidents and examples recorded in holy Scripture and see whether the precious servants of God there mentioned did ever tread this your way of Separation did Moses Joshua or Samuel did Jeremiah Ezra or Nehemiah did our blessed Saviour or his Apostles ever steer your course in order to the corruptions of the Church in their times did not they lay out their indeavours for the emendation of the whole body and did not they live in communion with the Church in their times though many ways corrupted Yea look upon the Christian Churches recorded in the new Testament did St. Paul or any other Apostle commend to the sounder part of the Churches of Corinth or Galatia any such separations as you indeavour yea what servants of God did you ever read of in holy Scripture that did withdraw or separate themselves from the body of the people worshipping the same God with them upon such pretences as you or what example do you finde in all the holy Scriptures that lookes so like your case as that of the Pharisees so branded by our Saviour Consider of the singular talents that God hath bestowed upon you and the strickt account that you must give concerning your improvement of them and seriously bethink your selves whether you might not give a better account continuing in communion with us and applying your selves strongly to our emendation helping us by your godly counsel and example and cheerfully assisting us in removing desperate contemners of God and all Religion from communion than leaving the stations where divine providence had set you to cloyster up your selves in separate Congregations and so deprive us your poor brethren of those helps and assistances which wee might justly have expected from your more eminent abilities Ransack we beseech you your hearts throughly to finde out the true root and bottome of this spirit of separation and observe narrowly whether under other specious pretences or with some pious intentions there be not a bitter root of pride and haughtiness causing you to affect singularity and desire to appear alone to the view of men thinking it below your worth to be found in communion with those whom in opinion you have layed so much below your selves Yea think sadly whether those manifold revolts that have been made from your separate Congregations to monstrous opinions and unclean conversations have not been the righteous judgement of God upon you for your too high valuations of your selves and uncharitable separations from others whereby you have deprived such poor creatures as we of those brotherly helps and incouragements which by your eminent endowments God had inabled you to yeeld and by his providence put opportunities into your hands to afford unto us What construction you make of these passages of providence we know not but truly to us the more ignorant they appear strange and formidable that whereas you fish with so great a mash that scarce one of an hundred are by you taken and admitted into your Congregations that out of this hundreth part of yours more should be found revolting to desperate opinions than of the ninety nine parts by you deserted appeareth to us strange and wonderful and such as we think may rationally put you upon a just suspition and serious re-examination of that way from which there is so easie a transition to many dreadful delusions and through which so many have already passed into the campe of the enemy Having thus directed our complaints to each of you in particular we now return unto you all to whom this our mournful supplication is intended and again prostrate our selves before you humbly beseeching you by all the tender compassions of that God who stiles himself The God of mercy by all the precious blood of Christ shed for such poor sinners by all the bowels of mercy in that Spirit who as we hope ruleth in your hearts by all the bands both natural and civil wherein we stand related unto you by the invaluable price of an immortal soul and high concernment of an everlasting state Have pity on us in our ignorance and weakness and apply your selves more earnestly to rescue us from the rage and malice of our soul-devouring enemies let your endeavours for our help be somewhat answerable to the greatness of our danger to the weight of an eternal state and to the invaluable price paid by the Lord Jesus Christ for our redemption What if you finde us peevish froward and sometimes sleighting your Christian endeavours for our good do not presently give over but remember that the great God of heaven hath waited long both upon us and you be assured that we shall in the end be convinced of your faithfulness and that what ever thanks you have from us the Lord Jesus will certainly remember this work and service of your love O dissolve not that nail that yet we have in Christs holy place restore unto us those colours which you have begun to take from us let us be entertained as Schollers though of the lowest form as Souldiers though in the meanest imployment in the Camp of Christ at least deny us not the favour vouchsased to the Gibeonites to be as hewers of wood or drawers of water for the house of our God You tell us you have rescued us from imminent danger of Popery and superstition but what comfort will this bee unto us if you now leave us and our posterity to perish in the deeper gulf of prophaneness and heathenism Consider what singular advantages you now have upon us for our good whilst we maintain the principles of Christianity and wear the colours of the Lord-Jesus Christ your principal work is now but to bring us to live up to the principles we do beleeve and to serve that Master whose livery we wear But if you leave us till those principles be obliterate and these colours thrown aside think seriously how much more hard and hopeless our condition then will be especially considering that you are not furnished with the power of miracles or extraordinary gifts which have been Gods ordinary means for converting heathens unto Christ O then delay not the time but hasten with all possible diligence unto our rescue before the Devil circumvent you and take advantage of your leaving us unto our selves as staving us off from the Ordinances of Christ to harden our hearts and draw us by degrees to contempt of those things which now we weakly prize and both you and we eternally bewail the loss of these present opportunities We are yet willing to ingage our children to the Lord in the Sacrament of Baptism we are yet willing to renue our own ingagements unto Christ in that other Sacrament if you would not dishearten and discourage us but we finde sin is of an
those that do oppose you upon this account that our children are holy being the off-spring of beleevers and yet when we would come to presâ—nt our selves to the Lord in the other Sacrament you refuâ—e and stave us off as unholy and unbeleevers In all acts of civil converse where the greatest danger of contagion from polluted persons is and which the 1 Cor. 5. 1â— Scripture most expresly forbideth with scandalous Christians you neither warn others nor do you your selves decline communion with us you eat and drink with us at your own ours and other mens tables and that without scruple so far as we perceive and yet when we would upon the command of Christ come and present our selves with you at our Masters Table you seem to fear contagion from us and alledge against us that of the Apostle With such a one no not to eat How your greater wisdome will accord these things we know not but to us the more ignorant they appear little less than contradictions and leave us in a strange amazement considering what thoughts you have of us or would have us to have of our selves whilst in some things you so sweetly own us as brethren and good Christians in others so strangely cast us off as Dogs or Swine Wee cannot think you have entertained the Popish doctrin of a real or corporal presence of Christ in this Ordinance more than in the rest and yet we cannot but wonder in what School you have learned to make this difference between Christs Ordinances that all the residue should be laid in common and onely the Communion table railed in Wee indeed hear this often alleadged that other Ordinances are converting this only confirming other Ordinances are instrumental to beget souls to Christ this only to nourish those that are begotten Now though it appeareth to us very hard to affirm that that Ordinance wherein there is a tender of Christ the principle of life unto the soul may not be a means of conveighing life even the first motions of life supernatural to the soul yet were this distinction used onely to difference the Sacrament from the preaching of the word we could more easily apprehend it but when wee finde it likewise used to distinguish it from Prayer and other the like Ordinances it quite surpasseth our shallow understanding to conceive the reason of it considering wee finde by the holy Scriptures 1 Tim. 2. 8 Jam. 1. 6 Rom. 10. 17 that repentance and faith are necessarily required in order to Prayer as well as to the Sacrament and experience assures us that a child must be born before it cryeth as well as live before it eateth But what ever difference your wisdome can finde out between this and other Ordinances sure we are that by this means it is come to passe that your censures if those your suspensions bee accounted such are made in great part frustrate and invalid in order to those ends for which our Lord Christ hath appointed censures in his Church as having little or no power to shame and consequently reclaim the offender or to preserve the sounder part from contagion for how is any man like to bee made ashamed who injoyeth full communion with the best excepting in one Ordinance and hath so many and some so honourable companions with him in the want of that or how is the sounder part like to be preserved whilst they converse familiarly with contagious persons excepting in one Ordinance and that one wherein of all others there used to be the least evaporation of corruption If these things yet move you not let us intreat you to behold the countenances of your poor people and if you find us more fair and fat in flesh since this restraint of yours than when we did eat our portion of the Kings meat then you may still detain it from us but if you see apparently that we are grown leaner and more feeble yea have more grievous and noysome spots and biles arising upon us then have pity on us and restore unto us the portion of food detained from us yea have pity on your selves and think what answer you will make unto the King when he shall please to look upon us O consider we beseech you the sad case of your poor people and instead of these unprofitable and as wee conceive unscriptural suspensions make more forcible applications to us teaching exhorting and admonishing with all earnestness not alone publikely but from house to house according to that noble pattern of St. Paul make Act. 20. 20 known to us the true nature of this Ordinance and how strong an obligation it layeth upon us of obedience to Christ whose servants we there profess our selves and then with holy Hezekiah call us to ingage our selves to the Lord in this sacred Ordinance and prove whether this will not be more effectual to recover us from sin and save our souls than these your suspensions have been And if you finde amongst our number some whose ignorance is so gross or scandal so notorious that you dare not but lay us under censures yet let those censures be inflicted in the way prescribed by the Lord Jesus Christ and let all your further proceedings with us bee according to the Rules of holy Scripture that both you and wee may expect his blessing in all your dealings with us Let those more private and publick admonitions injoyned Matth. 18. 15. by our Saviour go before your censures and prove whether he will not bless these to our emendation if after all such Christian applications made to us we go on boldly and contumaciously in sin wee then plead nothing for our selves if you censure us more deeply than a bare suspension from the Sacrament amounteth unto but till this be done and we found obstinate do not deprive us of the food by our Lord provided for us nor us of that precious opportunity of ingaging our souls more firmly unto him Make some difference wee beseech you between us though many wayes faulty and those that are desperate contemners of God and all Religion remembring that there are wandring sheep as well as dogs and swine carnal Christians and brethren walking disorderly as well as sons of Belial mentioned in Scripture that there were Numb 15. 30. many in the Church of Israel that did sin through weakness and ignorance besides those daring presumptuous sinners from whom the Lord would have no sacrifice Now if you acknowledge such a difference consider whether it be not more agreeable to the tender mercies of the Lord Jesus Christ to receive such weaklings in the faith as we amongst the better sort by whose godly counsels and example we may be edified than to leave us amongst the desperate contemners of God and all Religion by their cursed counsels and examples to be eternally ruined and destroyed O lay to heart the dreadful charge of God against his Pastors of old the diseased you have not strengthened neither have you healed
you withhold the bonds that should knit us faster unto Christ you complain of our weakness in resisting corruptions whilst you withhold the food whereby wee should bee strengthned you complain of Schism strife and division whilst by you the sacred Pledge of union is detained from us Some of you have for many years wholly laid aside this Sacred Ordinance chusing rather to deprive your selves and others whom you better approve of this heavenly banquet then to afford it unto us you complain of some of us for living in known sinnes and frequently make your proof from some neglect of duty whilst you your selves have lived many years in the notorious omission of this great duty so solemnly injoyned by the Lord Jesus Christ Others of you though you do administer this Sacrament you have raised so many stoppes and made such lofty rails about the table that few of us can come unto it as if you thought it a matter of great piety to confine the tenders of the body and bloud of Christ into a narrow room and cause those his bitter passions suffered for mankinde to be known and remembred onely by a few as if it were an honour to Christ or advantage to the world that his name and memorial should perish from the hearts and mouths of so great a part of the people professing his name and ingaged in Covenant to him Hence many of you are so far from inviting us to this heavenly banquet that you do by your preaching and otherwise continually hinder and discourage us as if wee were of our selves too forward to worship Christ and keep up his memorial aggravating to the height if not beyond the truth the danger if we come unworthily but not equally acquainting us with the like or greater danger in the total neglect of this great Command of Christ Others of you have erected a Court of ruling Elders and set up them to be Judges over us and that not in order to any crime or accusation brought against us but to examine us in order to the Sacrament without whose approbation we may not be admitted to the portion of our Masters food and have not pittied us in our infirmities when you saw us in our ignorance jealous of new erected powers and that we would hardly be convinced that the business of Sacraments did belong to any other but preaching Elders yea that we could hardly own them for Elders upon whom we saw no stamp of God by Ordination to that Office nor character of humane power by Commission from the Magistrate or by any legal choice or election from the people Others of you have combined your selves with some small parties of our neighbours and those sometimes whose private waies and principles we cannot own and have called these your Church and set up those to bee Judges over us according to whose sentence and that without any legal trial we may or may not be admitted to our Masters Table not shewing us which way this power over us should be derived unto them or giving us cause to beleeve that you or they would willingly bee so dealt withall by us or any minor party amongst your selves By these and the like means you have discouraged and disheartned us from coming to this heavenly Banquet and kept us so long fasting that our stomachs are almost wholly gone and our spirits much infeebled and we fear a dreadful guilt is contracted by our not coming to this sacred feast remembring how terrible Gods threatnings were against those that came not to his Passeover of old Numb 9. 13. and wish it may not be laid to your charge that you have so many waies hindred and discouraged us Consider we beseech you your dealings in this case and compare your practice with the rules and presidents recorded in holy Scripture for our instruction and observe whether the servants and officers of Christ there mentioned did deal with the people of their times as you have dealth with us We are indeed guilty of much ignorance and carnality the Lord humble and amend us But do you indeed think that there was none in the Camp of Israel under Moses as ignorant and carnal as we And did Moses use such means to stave off them from coming to the Passeover as you have done to hinder us Was there never a one in Israel or Judah in the daies 2 Chron. 30. of Hezekiah that had as little knowledge or appearance of real godliness as we when that holy King sent out his general summons Come to the house of God at Jerusalem and keep a Passeover to the Lord God of Israel Was there none in the Church of Corinth besides that one incestuous person against whom as just exceptions might have been made as against us when St. Paul maketh 1 Cor. 10. 16. use of their joynt communion at the Lords Table to press their non-communion at the Idols Temple What do you think of the Disciples of our blessed Saviour were they free from ignorance and carnality or Luke 18. 34. 22. 24. was there not a dreadful cloud of ignorance and carnality upon their spirits at that very time when they were by Christ himself admitted to this sacred Banquet Yea what Officer of Christ did you ever read of in holy Scripture that secluded any from Passeover or Supper unless such desperate and notorious sinners as were likewise secluded from communion in all other Ordinances of Christ If these things move you not consider we beseech you your own practice and compare your dealing in this with your other administrations and see how you will vindicate your selves from contradictions We hear you sometimes in your Sermons sweetly tendring Christ to all that be willing to receive him earnestly inviting us to come to Christ telling us that Christ expecteth no worthiness on our parts but onely a willingness to accept him tendred to us but when upon these invitations we come unto you and profess our willingness to accept the Lord Jesus Christ tendred in that holy Sacrament having no other way wherein we can so visibly yeeld obedience to your invitations you thrust us back and tell us we must not come because we are not worthy We finde you in your publick prayer owning us brethren Saints and faithful as appears in that you do not alone in communion with us but can in our name as our mouth call God Father Christ Mediator and tender up most spiritual confessions petitions and thanksgivings unto God but when we would with you approach unto the same God and Mediator in the holy Sacrament you quite disclaim this brother-hood in prayer acknowledged and alledge against our coming to it That you must not give holy things to dogs or swine Yea some of you when wee present our children to Baptism require from us a profession of our repenâ—ance for sin and faith in the Lord Jesus and upon such profession by us made do baptize our children and justifie your practise against
hardning nature and that long neglect of duty will dissolve the sense of obligation and we cannot but fear that if we be now neglected by you it may come to pass that our hearts may bee so hardned that if God should afterward raise up some Hezekiah who should call and invite us or ours to ingage our selves unto the Lord in these sacred Ordinances either we or ours should answer such gracious invitations after the same manner as the most of Israel did the summons of that holy King with scorn and contempt 2 Chron. 30. 20 O let this our imminent danger be weighed in your most advised thoughts you see how many have already turned their backs on Christ and all his Ordinances and are wholly gone after Satan and how industrious they are to draw others after them and then think what dangerous temptations you put us the weaker sort upon to revolt unto the enemy whilst you refuse to entertain us in the Camp of Christ Minde seriously we beseech you that great account that you must give to your and our Master the Lord Jesus Christ of your faithfulness in all your administrations in order to the souls of men and consider what answer you will make to him if you sleight or neglect so great a part of the purchase of his blood or what excuse you will finde when he shall arise to plead with you Did not I come from heaven and give my dearest life for the redemption of these poor souls Did not I with great endeavours even with the expence of the blood of many my holy Martyrs bring them under solemn bonds and ingagements to my self And when I saw them neglected by their former guides did not I by wondrous providences rescue them and deliver them over into your hands that you should feed and teach them And is this your faithfulness to me and mine to withhold the precious food that I provided for them to leave them to wander in the wilderness as sheep without a Shepherd yea to let loose many ravenous Wolves upon them to devour them and for an excuse of this your sloathfulness and treachery to deface my marks and badges which you found upon them that so you might plead they were none of mine Seemeth it a small thing to you O Rams and Hee-goats Ezek. 34 21. you fattest of the flock that you have taken the best of the pasture for your selves but that you have thrust with the shoulder and the side and pusht with the horns the weak and diseased of my flock till you have scattered them abroad O consider what answer you will make to the Lord Jesus when he shall arise and plead with you on our behalf and how sad your case will be if the blood of so many thousand souls perishing through your neglect and carelesness shall plead against you in the day of wrath We have indeed deserved from the Lord Jesus Christ by our unfruitfulness and many other sad miscarriages to be by him totally rejected and that his Gospel-sight should be wholly taken from us But what have we done to you that you should deal so hardly with us that you should be the instruments to bring this dreadful night of darkness on us Or that you should not rather endeavour our emendation and salvation What evil have you observed in us from which your joynt endeavours might not hope to rescue us Are wee blinde and ignorant Yet surely not so uncapable of instruction but that your joynt endeavours might even inforce the most ignorant of us to learn the fundamentals of Religion and so much as being practised would save our souls Are we wrapt and intangled in sinful lusts Surely your earnest and joynt endeavours might by the blessing of the Lord break these cords of sin and bring us by an holy violence to the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ we cannot but think that noble King Josiah had as ignorant and stubborn a people to deal withall as you and yet he not alone ingaged them to the Lord in that his solemn Passeover but made them serve the Lord all 2 Chron 34. 33 his dayes We know the donation of life supernatural lieth not in your power but it lieth in your power to acquaint us with the waies of life to cause us to attend upon the means of grace to restrain us from the outward acts of sin yea to set and keep us in such waies of worship and obedience unto Christ as that you might comfortably hope by Gods blessing on your Christian endeavours to behold us as the Crown of your labour at the great day Now consider we beseech you in your serious thoughts whether a general reformation of the body of the people of this Nation a re-ingaging them in Covenant and keeping them at the least in an external obedience unto Christ will not be more for the honour of him to whom the Nations are promised for an inheritance more agrecable to your own former Vowes and Covenants and a more likely way to make you a blessing to the people and them to you than to leave the main bulk of the people to be overgrown with thorns and briars to degenerate into an howling wilderness whilst all your care is laid out upon the culture of some few small inclosures What comfort can it be to you O Magistrates to have the bonds between Christ Jesus and this Nation continued through the revolutions of so many hundred years dissolved in your dayes Or to you O Ministers to have the foundations of Religion which you found laid in the hearts of the generality of the people of this Nation quite demolished under your administrations Or to you that call your selves the godly party to have the Christian Religion which formerly did over-spread the whole surface of this Nation now abridged to your few separate Congregations Or what heart that is not altogether stupid can behold the great endeavours and high professions for Religion found in the beginning of these times and in a sad revolt of so great a part of the Nation back again to heathenism or the like abominations and not bewail it with a flood of tears We have thus spread our mournful case before you hoping that the God of all grace and mercy in whose hand are the hearts and wayes of all the sons of men will incline your hearts to pity our sad condition and more compassionately to apply your selves unto our help for which purpose we now make our humble addresses unto him who gave his pretious blood a ransome for us O Glorious Prince and Saviour Jesus Christ the faithful and merciful high Priest of our Profession who didst for our sakes suffer and wert tempted that thou mightest be touched with the feeling of our infirmities and know experimentally to pity us in our temptations have mercy upon us have mercy upon us O blessed Saviour and grant that these our mournful complaints and supplications may pierce the ears and hearts of thy Vicegerents and Ambassadors with all the more eminent of thy pretious servants amongst us that our eternal welfare may be more cordially regarded by them that they may more faithfully and diligently lay out themselves and al their abilities for the salvation of those souls whom thou hast bought with thy pretious blood Let our Magistrates inherit the zeal of Hezekiah Josiah and other famous nursing Fathers of thy Church of old Let our Ministers as thy dear Apostle Paul be willing to spend and be spent for our salvation Let the impressions of thy tender mercies be upon all the more knowing of thy servants that they may compassionately imploy all their abilities for our emendation and salvation O thou that wept over thy Jerusalem when they would not own thee Let us who though unworthy are called by thy Name and have taken hold of thy Covenant taste of thy tender compassions Look down from heaven the habitation of thine holiness Where is thy zeal and thy strength and the sounding of thy bowels towards us Doubtless thou art our Redeemer though our Fathers be ignorant of us and our Elders will not own us thou art our Redeemer and thy name from everlasting O do not suffer us to erre from thy wayes do not harden our hearts from thy fear Wee cannot expect the like compassions from sinful man as from thee O blessed Immanuel who felt the pains of our redemption not Paul but thou O Christ wert crucified for us we cannot repose in any other arms but thine who carriest the feeble lambs in the bosome of thy love Though the Priest and Levite pass by on the other side yet thou the good Samaritan have compassion on us and poure thine oyl and wine into our wounds and the more we are neglected by men the more forcible and alluring let the cords of thy love be to us though the hearts of men melt not over our misery yet let thy bowels of compassion yern upon us and let us not lose our hold of thy Covenant but still be refreshed with thy protection and rejoyce under the shadow of all thine Ordinances Look down from heaven and behold this Vineyard and the Vine which thy right hand hath planted in this Nation make up the hedge of thy providence about it and let not the Boar of the Forrest continue to waste it or the wilde beast of the field to devour it Return O Lord and let it repent thee concerning thy servants and let not the evil that is already come upon us appear little before thee Heal thou the dreadful breaches and distractions which the cruel enemy hath caused amongst us repair the ruined walls of thy Jerusalem Grant the spirit of unity and charity to thy people of this Nation that thy family here may be truly a family of love and on their doors engraven Here is no strife for we are brethren O Lord hear O Lord forgive and heal our desolations remember not against us former iniquities let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us wee are brought very low Help us O God of our salvation for the glory of thy name deliver us and purge away our sins for thy names sake So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture shall give thee thanks for ever and teach our children to celebrate thy praise to all Generations FINIS