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A84289 An exhortation directed to the elders of the several congregations within this province of Lancaster. By the Provincial Assembly at Preston, May 1. 1655. Preston (Lancashire, England). Provincial Assembly. 1655 (1655) Wing E3866; Thomason E850_18; ESTC R207413 9,123 16

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AN EXHORTATION Directed to the ELDERS Of the several CONGREGATIONS Within this Province of LANCASTER By the Provincial Assembly at Preston May 1. 1655. LONDON Printed by J. M. for LUKE FAVVN and are to be sold at his Shop at the Signe of the PARROT in PAULS Church-yard 1655. THis Synod taking notice of the want in many Congregations and some whole Classical Presbiteries in this Province and of the languishment of others of the exercise of that order and power which our Lord Jesus Christ hath placed in his Church for the keeping out and removing thence of defilements and scandals and for the restraining and the recovering of offenders therein and perceiving that the said want and languishment arise not from the lack either of freedom to act or of warrant and call to it either from God or man nor from the prevalency of Schism either among the people or the Elders which through the special mercy of God much to be admired hath been in a great measure prevented in these parts nor because there is no occasion to use it there is alas but too much nor so much from the backwardness or aversness of the people but mainly for the lack of resolution care zeal and diligence in those who have the charge thereof lying upon them as having both been called to and undertaken it and considering on the one hand that there is a standing commission and command for it in Scripture and a perpetual need on mans part of the execution of it and on the other hand that the ceasing of it especially falling out in concurrence with the fickle backssiding and corrupt temper of these times is the inlet of many very great evils to Religion to the Church of Christ and to many particular souls Hath thought meet to bespeak by way of Exhortation all their Brethren that are in place of Rule in the Churches of this Province where any such defect is whether they be the labourers in the word and Doctrine or other Elders unto the reassuming of the tender sense of their duty in this work into their hearts and the renewed execution of it into their hands We shal not here enter into the particular remembrance and persecution of the several grounds which are to prove or motives which may press unto or parts and proceeding which are to carry on this Discipline Supposing those grounds were apprehended and weighed when the work of the Reformation of our Church in the point of Discipline was first in these late years covenanted and promoted and the Office of Government was restored among us and undertaken by you brethren And for matter both of incitement unto and delineation of the several branches of this work we refer you to the hortation of this Assembly of February the seventh 1648. The revival whereof both in memory and practice we recommend unto you Suffer us here but to suggest to your Consideration that which ye already sufficiently know that in Church-labour and in work about souls want of success want of the favour or help of civil Authority or the urgency of worldly occasions none of these is any release from duty Successesness or slow going on or the occurence of difficulty therein is no dismission from duty We are to labour and not to faint even to the utmost extent of our commission and to the utmost length of the time in which God is pleased to call us to and continue us in his work howsoever it may speed and whatsoever may be the success At the Word of Christ we must again let down our Nets for a draught though we have already toiled a whole night and caught nothing At the Mission of God we must do our Errand whether they the persons we are sent to will hear or whether they will forbear The Servant of the Lord must be apt to teach patient in meekness instructing them that oppose themselves if God peradventure will give them repentance He must Magnifie his Office or put it forth to the utmost if by any means he may provoke to Emulation his people and save some of them The distance disfavour yea or oppositeness to it of State-Superiors is no supersedeas The Commission that doth enable and the Command that doth set persons to this work is from God whose imposal no change or crosness of humane affairs affections or aspects is to infringe Civil Authority is but accidental though it maybe in its kind assistant to divine Ordinances and yet we do not conceive our selves destitute of such Warrant The Injunction for the Government that was given forth remaining as we take it stil in force and there is no man forbidding us to proceed in it But if now we were or hereafter should be either destituted by it or inhibited yet no such thing ought to take us off or to disanimate us neither should we therefore count our selves ex authorized Nor yet is a temporal calling or negotation anexcuse from this work The Kingdom of God and its Righteousness claims the first place in every ones seeking that belongs to Christ Earthly affairs may be a Christians vocation but must not be his entanglement or avocation from the business of Gods House No natural relations or civil Employments may impeach a Christians freedom to Christs Service Having spoken this word to all persons charged with this work as taken together we would now have to our Brethren of the Eldership that are called onely to Rule and to those also who labour in the word and Doctrine to each of these a word severally To our Brethren who are only called to Rule we shall say but this As their Office is not superfluous or indifferent so their Station in it is not Arbytrarie to them that it may be put on or off by them meerly upon their own choice or judgement They have put their hands to the Plough and what therefore is it for them to look back from it their Office in the valuation of the holy Ghost is a good work and worthy of double honour but withal it should be remembred it is a Work and a work wherein they are required to rule well and to rule with diligence We all owe and must come to an account unto our great Master now in heaven how we have received how we perform and how we part with any trust we have from him And the soundness and edification of the Flock the saving of others souls and their own rejoycing in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ doth depend upon the discharge of their Office Our Brethren that labour in the Word and Doctrine we wish seriously to consider how behooveful for them in that their heavie charge it is to have the Discipline up and in exercise We would hope every one of them to be sensible of the miss of it where any is both in relation to the people and to themselves As to their people how for lack of it they are exposed to if not infested with irreligion
ignorance error division a spirit of security pride and self-willedness and manifold prophaness in life and now of late very strange strong and most dangerous Satanical delusions and how the Ordinances of God which yet they retain among them are through that defect subject to inefficacy contempt and profanation much more then it might be hoped they would be if the Discipline were in force As to themselves that by the same means they are brought under much difficulty perplexity and grief of soul in and about their administrations their charge as to the knowledge of particular persons and cases being not distinctly enough known to them and so they are left uncertain to whom to apply themselves and what and how to administer so as to give to each their portion in due season Moreover hence it is that in publike Dispensations there is an offensive diversity betwixt the practise of one Minister and of another from whence arise distastes censures and stomachings betwixt Minister and Minister betwixt people and people and betwixt people and minister together with disorderly rangings of people from their proper places as there is particularly in the use of both the Sacraments And in relation to that of the Lords Supper we observe that Ministers in many if not the most places where the Government is not used find no other way to acquit themselves but either to dispense it promiscuously or to lay aside and bereave their flocks and themselves wholly of it neither of which ways we think can be justified Here is no room for discussion in relation to each of those courses Only to promiscuous admission to the Table of the Lord it being the commoner and the looser way we will say this The Church of God especially as assembled and employed about the Ordinances of the Gospel is a Temple a City a Flock an Army To expose then her communion and the Ordinances of Christ peculiar to her unto all comers is to make her a Temple without a Court Doors or Porters a City without walls Gates and Bars a Flock without Fold or Shepherd and an Army without Guard or Discipline The Temple of God which the Church of Christ is is holy the Lords Supper is an holy thing as in some other respects so in as much as the Elements of it were by our blessed Saviour both instituted and solemnly set apart by prayer unto a holy use which latter by vertue of that first institution and benediction is continually done by the Minister the prohibition of Christ is indefinite Give not that which is holy unto the Dogs And indeed the nature of holiness consists in a separation from common commerce or use the measure of which separation is the will or rule of him that is the Founder or Author of that holiness The Rule of the Gospel is If thy brother go on in an offence to the neglecting of the Churches admonition let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a Publican Again Mark them which cause offences contrary to the Doctrine which ye have learned and avoid them And again Looking diligently lest any man fail of the Grace of God Lest any root ●f bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many be defiled lest there be any Fornicator or profane person c. And else-where We command you Brethren in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that ye withdraw your selves from every Brother that walketh disorderly And if any man obey not our word note that man and have no company with him And in another place Ye have not rather mourned that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you Know ye not that a little Leaven leaveneth the whole lump Purge out therefore the old leaven that ye may be a new lump Now I have written unto you not to keep company if any man that is called a Brother be a Fornicator or Covetous or an Idolater or a Railer or a Drunkard or an Extortioner with such an one no not to eat Do not ye judge them that are within Therefore put away from among your selves that wicked person And whereas there are some who would have these five last passages all comprised in one chapter or some of them to be taken only of private converse or fellowship not of publike or Church-communion besides their presumption in putting a restriction upon the Scripture serving their own turn without warrant from it self they are confuted by the Text it self which in every one of those passages insisteth on the same thing to wit the ejection of the wicked person from among them to whom he writes the Church of God at Corinth the which he resembleth to a whole lump or mass in danger to be tainted by the corruption of that person while he was continued among them as one particle or piece thereof Yea further the Apostle in his urging upon them the performance of that act of ejection inserteth this as an Argument by which he plainly applyeth the whole discourse to this matter of the Lords Supper For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us therefore let us keep the Feast not with old leaven neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness What can the Apostle as to his Argument in hand mean by holding out Christ as our Passover which is sacrificed for us and by calling us therefore to keep the Feast with the exclusion of old leaven but that Christ in the publike administration of his Supper in his Church is the same in substance to us Christians which the Passover was to the Israelites that this Supper succeedeth in the room of that Passover and that the Rite of that Passover in the expurgation of leaven is a rule or instruction to us in our keeping of this Supper when Christs last Passover was ended and in the evening in which he was betrayed and led away to death he instituted this Supper to be a continual memorial of the Sacrifice of his death therefore as the Israelites during the feast of the Passover were to abstain from leavened bread and for that purpose they were to put away leaven out of their houses no leaven was to be seen with them in all their quarters so is the Church of Christ now to observe the Feast of their Passover the Supper of the Lord without the association of wicked persons that is not only those that are out of the Church but such as being among them and of their Brotherhood and Body have lapsed into gross sins and have not manifested their repentance and for that end when they go about the celebration of that Feast they are to look intently to the exclusion of such persons if any be from among them and to see that their Assembly be a refined or new lump This appears to us to be the clear importance of that place These are some of the rules describing the sanctimony of the Churches communion particularly in the celebration of the Lords Supper Doubtless a