An apology for the nonconformists ministry containing I. the reasons of their preaching, II.…

But I tell all that ask my mind, that I am not so indifferent as to the Ministers whom I must join with, as I am to the forms and modes of Worship: Not that I call their actions Nullities, or say that the Sacraments are invalid which they administer. (For their usurpation cannot rob the innocent of their right.) But yet I will not be guilty of countenancing and encouraging any soul-murderer in so great a sin.

Three sorts of Teachers I renounce Communion with (as Ministers.) 1. Those that through intolerable ignorance and insufficiency, do want those abilities which are necessary to the essence of the Ministry. 2. Those Heretics who preach against any essential article of Religion. 3. Those wicked ones who openly bend their application (not against different Sects and adversaries, for that is common to all the factious and peevish, but) against the serious practise of Godliness, Temperance, Love or Justice; and that labour to make these odious to their hearers, though their Doctrine be sound, from which they raise these malignant applications. These are the men that I will not communicate with.

Three sorts of Teachers I renounce Communion with (as Ministers.) 1. Those that through intollerable ignorance and insufficiency, do want those abilities which are necessary to the essence of the Ministry. 2. Those Hereticks who preach against any essential article of Religion. 3. Those wicked ones who openly bend their application (not against different Sects and adversaries, for that is common to all the factious and peevish, but) against the serious practise of Godliness, Temperance, Love or Justice; and that labour to make these odious to their hearers, though their Doctrine be sound, from which they raise these malignant applications. These are the men that I will not communicate with.

I confess when I read in Sulpitius Severus the History of St. Martins resolved Separation from Ithacius, Idacius, and the Synods of Bishops of those times, and the confirmation of him by Visions, and the antiquity and credibility of that History (if of almost any ancient Church History in the main), and the stupendous miracles which he is said to work, it a little staggered me, till I considered, 1. That Scripture only is our rule: And, 2. That it was not from the Episcopal Order that he separated (for he was one himself) nor from any particular Bishops that were innocent, nor yet from the Churches of the people in their Communion and Worship; but only from a prevailing company and Synod of the Bishops that were guilty of cruelty, and of bringing reproach upon the serious practisers of Godliness in those times.