Church concord

1. That difference in Practice will is evident: 1. Because it is impossible that all men of the same Parties should have the same degrees of Prudence, Moderation, Charity, Zeal, &c. which will make some to exclude abundance of persons that others of the same Party will admit. 2. Because if the Pastor should be moderate, he cannot promise that his Congregation will be so: And if they too rigorously refuse any Members, he is not able alone to retain them. 3. And if abundance of tolerable Christians be refused, there is no reason that for the rigour of others, they should wholly be deprived of the Communion of the Church, and the Ordinances of God. I easily foresee, that whoever was first guilty of it, it is the more Charitable Churches that will be put most upon the receiving of Members out of other Parishes: For the uncharitable will take perhaps an Hundred, and leave out and reject two Hundred of their Parishioners that should be accepted: And then the next adjoining Church cannot conscionably refuse their Entertainment.

1. That difference in Practice will is evident: 1. Because it is impossible that all men of the same Parties should have the same degrees of Prudence, Moderation, Charity, Zeal, &c. which will make some to exclude abundance of persons that others of the same Party will admit. 2. Because if the Pastor should be moderate, he cannot promise that his Congregation will be so: And if they too rigorously refuse any Members, he is not able alone to retain them. 3. And if abundance of tolerable Christians be refused, there is no reason that for the rigour of others, they should wholly be deprived of the Communion of the Church, and the Ordinances of God. I easily foresee, that whoever was first guilty of it, it is the more Charitable Churches that will be put most upon the receiving of Members out of other Parishes: For the uncharitable will take perhaps an Hundred, and leave out and reject two Hundred of their Parishioners that should be accepted: And then the next adjoyning Church cannot conscionably refuse their Entertainment.

But let us have these three Points at least agreed on, 1. That the Neighbour Pastors and Churches may be consulted with and heard, before such rejections be made, or at least afterward upon the Complaint of the rejected. 2. That those that are refused in one Parish, join with the Public Church in the next, and that, without necessity, they do not either draw into private Churches, nor yet join themselves to public Churches so distant, as are uncapable of holding such Communion with them as Church-ends require. 3. And that the Neighbour Pastors do not promiscuously receive all that are rejected by the Public Pastor at home; but only such as upon just trial are found fit.