A02990:216
A friendly trial of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest…A friendly triall of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest…
A friendly trial of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest dispute touching the lawfulness of a stinted liturgy and set form of prayer, Communion in mixed assemblies, and the primitive subject and first receptacle of the power of the Keys: tending to satisfy the doubtful, recall the wandering, and to strengthen the weak: by John Ball.A friendly triall of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest dispute touching the lawfulnesse of a stinted liturgie and set form of prayer, Communion in mixed assemblies, and the primitive subject and first receptacle of the power of the Keyes: tending to satisfie the doubtfull, recall the wandering, and to strengthen the weak: by John Ball.
Cambridge: printed by Roger Daniel printer to the University of Cambridge for Edward Brewster, 1640Cambridge: printed by Roger Daniel printer to the Universitie of Cambridge for Edward Brewster, 1640
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Whatsoever worship is offered up to God by the minister,1 whether in prayer conceived by himself or devised by others, it is in the name of the congregation: but every phrase, petition or branch of petition is not approved by their presence, silence, or saying Amen to the prayers in general, as in the former passage is acknowledged. The presence of the people was never deemed interpretatively a consent to every thing that was there done. The prayers which for matter God disalloweth we ought to disallow, but as God disalloweth them, and as he calleth us ⟨p. 162⟩forth to bear witness to his truth. But it is one thing to tolerate, another to approve; one thing to disallow the method or form, another the matter; one thing privately to dislike, another openly to witness against a thing as in no wise to be born withal; one thing to speak when we are called forth, another to thrust our selves forth unadvisedly. Some things are to be born with in brethren whereof we are not bound so much as to admonish them, unless we be entirely familiar and of intimate acquaintance: Some things we must bear with though upon admonition they be not amended. The people must bear with some infirmities in their minister, both in preaching and prayer, as he must with some wants in them, without so much as taking notice of them to admonish by way of censure:2 And if upon admonition he cannot be of their minds in every thing, they must not reject and cast him off, no more then he is to cut them off because in every point they conform not to his pleasure. If the parties be stubborn, and will not hear admonitions, but rather grow more perverse and desperate, even to rent and tear in pieces such as seek to reclaim them, we are not bound to make known our judgement and profession unto them, unless we be lawfully called of God thereunto. And if the greater part be in error and so stiff that they would sooner persecute the better then reform, if it be not in matters fundamental or bordering thereupon, or noxious and pernicious to be concealed, I know not that either that innocent is allowed ⟨p. 163⟩to separate from the exercises of religion for that cause, or bound to admonish them of their error.3