The cure of church-divisions, or, Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being…

Let us here peruse the Texts that speak of our withdrawing from the wicked. 1 Cor. 5. Is expressly written to the whole Church, as obliged to put away the incestuous person from among them, ⟨p. 82⟩and so not to eat with such offenders. So is that in 2 Thes. 3. and that in Tit. 3. 10. A man that is an Heretic after the first and second admonition avoid: Unless it be a Heretic that hath already separated himself from our communion; And then it can be put private familiarity which we are further to avoid. In brief, there is no other place of Scripture, that I know of, which commandeth any more. I have before showed that abundance of Church corruptions, or of scandalous members, were then among them, and yet the Apostle never spake a syllable to any one Christian, to separate from any one of all those Churches: Which we cannot imagine that the Holy Ghost would have wholly omitted, if indeed it had been the will of God.

Let us here peruse the Texts that speak of our withdrawing from the wicked. 1 Cor. 5. Is expresly written to the whole Church, as obliged to put away the incestuous person from among them, ⟨p. 82⟩and so not to eat with such offenders. So is that in 2 Thes. 3. and that in Tit. 3. 10. A man that is an Heretick after the first and second admonition avoid: Unless it be a Heretick that hath already separated himself from our communion; And then it can be put private familiarity which we are further to avoid. In brief, there is no other place of Scripture, that I know of, which commandeth any more. I have before shewed that abundance of Church corruptions, or of scandalous members, were then among them, and yet the Apostle never spake a syllable to any one Christian, to separate from any one of all those Churches: Which we cannot imagine that the Holy Ghost would have wholly omitted, if indeed it had been the will of God.