Certain disputations of right to sacraments, and the true nature of visible Christianity defending…

5. And I must confess, that I take it for a great sin, to censure my Brother positively to be a Liar, and to be a child of the Devil, •nd in a state of Damnation, without clear convincing Evidence.

5. And I must confess, that I take it for a great sin, to censure my Brother positively to be a Lyar, and to be a child of the Devil, •nd in a state of Damnation, without clear convincing Evidence.

6. And it seems to me a thing utterly Improbable, if not certainly un•rue, that God should require any man as sine qua non, to his Church-entrance or admittance, that he profess true Faith and Repentance to the Minister and Church, (as before them,) and yet that both Minister and people are bound to receive this Profession abstractively as to the Faith and Repentance so professed. God knoweth the heart without Prof•ssion: it is therefore because of us that know not mens hearts, that profession is required: And must we then receive such a profession abstractively from the thing professed? Every word i• ordained to be a sign of the mind: and a profession is formally a Relative Being. The Matter of the Sign, viz. The Word, or the like, a Brute, a Parrot may possibl• have: And if the very Essence of a profession, qua talis, contein its Relation to the thing professed, and the mind of the Professor, then is it destructive to the very ends and Use of a Profession, to abstract the material Sign from the thing professed. If you s•y ⟨p. 26⟩that it is not Regeneration which they are supposed to profess: I answer, it is true Repentance, and Faith in Christ which they are supposed to profess; and that is Regeneration, or the principal part of it, in sensu passivo. To what purpose should we imagine, that men should be obliged by God to make so solemn a profession, which none of the hearers are in the least obliged to believe to be true?