A02990:284
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
Chapter 11: Of holding communion with that assembly in the worship of God, where we cannot perform…
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.
This peremptory censure is as directly cross to that which followeth immediately in the same author as any thing that can be spoken.1 For if the ⟨p. 227⟩toleration or maintenance of one sinner against reproof and conviction do necessarily dischurch a society, how then did the church of the Jews continue the true church of God, wherein sin was generally, impudently, impenitently committed, and that by such as should have censured it in others; where the offenders were countenanced, and the reprovers persecuted, imprisoned, put to death? If no church in the world now hath that absolute promise of the Lords visible presence which that church then had till the coming of Christ, if the Messiah must be born in the true church, and the Lord did ever afford the Jews some or other visible signs of his presence in the greatest apostasy; this is nothing to the purpose. For if the maintenance of one wicked ungodly wretch wipeth a church out of the Lords church roll, then the Jews, who did both countenance offenders, and commit wickedness themselves and that with greediness, had blotted themselves out of that book. And if the Jews continued the church of God notwithstanding their great impiety and obdurateness, because the Lord continued the visible tokens of his presence among them, then if a church or some in the church shall tolerate or countenance iniquity in others, or practice it themselves, so long as God shall be pleased to bear with their manners, and vouchsafe unto them ⟨p. 228⟩the signs of his gracious presence and holy ordinances, it is to be reputed the true church of God, wherewith the faithful may hold communion in the branches of worship. If therefore the author had well pondered his own words, or consulted the rule of our Saviour, this labour might well have been spared. But more fully to open the weakness of this objection; Errors; as in doctrine so in practice, are of two sorts: some fundamental or bordering thereupon, which concern the very heart and life of religion, and cannot stand with faith and holiness; others not fundamental, which strike not directly at the soul of religion, though they hinder the working somewhat, or stain the work. In matters fundamental, as the profession of faith must be entire in all points of simple belief, so must the doctrine of the church in all things concerning practice: