A Christian Directory

§. 37. Direct. 16. Different faults must have different penalties: And excommunication or forbidding ¹men all public worship of God, must not be the penalty of every dissent. Is there no smaller penalty sufficient if a doubtful subscription or ceremony be scrupled, than to silence Ministers therefore from preaching the Gospel, or excommunicating men, and forbidding them to worship God at all except they can do this? This is the highest ecclesiastical penalty that can be laid on men for the greatest heresy or crime: Doubtless there are lesser punishments that may suffice for lesser faults.

§. 37. Direct. 16. Different faults must have different penalties: And excommunication or forbidding ¹men all publick worship of God, must not be the penalty of every dissent. Is there no smaller penalty sufficient if a doubtful subscription or ceremony be scrupled, than to silence Ministers therefore from preaching the Gospel, or excommunicating men, and forbidding them to worship God at all except they can do this? This is the highest ecclesiastical penalty that can be laid on men for the greatest heresie or crime: Doubtless there are lesser punishments that may suffice for lesser faults.

1. 1Direct. 16.

§. 38. Direct. 17. Every friend of Christ and the Church must choose such penalties for Ministers and ¹private Christians who offend, as are least to the hinderance of the Gospel, or hurtful to the peoples souls: Therefore silencing Ministers is not a fit penalty for every fault which they commit! The providence ⟨p. 75⟩of God (as I said before) hath furnished the world with so few that are fit for that high and sacred work, that no man can pretend that they are supernumeraries, or unnecessary, and that others may be substituted to the Churches profit: For the number is so small, that all are much too few; and so many as are silenced, so many Churches (either the same or others) must be unsupplied or ill-supplied. And God working ordinarily by means, we may conclude that silencing of such Preachers doth as plainly tend to mens damnation, as the prohibiting of Physicians doth to their death, and more. And it is not the part of a friend either of God or men, to endeavour the damnation of one soul, much less of multitudes, because a Minister hath displeased him: If one man must pay for another mans sins, let it be a pecuniary mulct, or the loss of a member, rather than the loss of his soul. It is more merciful every time a Minister offendeth, to cut off a hand or an arm of some of his flock, than to say to him, Teach them no more the way to salvation, that so they may be damned. If a Father offend, and his children must needs pay for ll his faults, it is better beat the children or maim them, than forbid him to feed them, when there is none else to do it, and so to famish them. What Reason is there that mens souls should be untaught because a Minister hath offended? I know still, those men that care not for their own souls, and therefore care as little for others, will say, What if the People have but a Reader, or a weak, ignorant, lifeless Preacher? Doth it follow that therefore the people must be damned? I answer, no: No more than it followeth that the City that hath none but Women Physicians must dye of their sicknesses, or that they that live only upon Grass or Roots must famish. Nature may do more to overcome a disease without a Physician in one than in another. Some perhaps are converted already, and have the Law written in their hearts, and are taught of God, and can make shift to live without a Teacher: