A second admonition to Mr. Edward Bagshaw written to call him to repentance for…

3. You do but cover one open sin with another;¹ even separation with uncharitable slander of many hundred godly Conformable Ministers, whom you accuse of this consent. I know scarce any one of my acquaintance whom I take for a faithful diligent Pastor, and whom I persuade men to hear, but they are grieved at the heart for the silencing of so many and such. I hear some complain of it privately, and some lament it publicly, and earnestly pray that God would restore them; But I never heard one of them own it.

3. You do but cover one open sin with another;¹ even separation with uncharitable slander of many hundred godly Conformable Ministers, whom you accuse of this consent. I know scarce any one of my acquaintance whom I take for a faithful diligent Pastor, and whom I perswade men to hear, but they are grieved at the heart for the silencing of so many and such. I hear some complain of it privately, and some lament it publickly, and earnestly pray that God would restore them; But I never heard one of them own it.

1. 1Slander.

4. I plead not for Undoing, Pernicious silence: I think too many are deeply guilty by it: My testimony in this case is visible among the Writings whose number you prove me proud by. But if you make this a proof of the duty of separation, you will make mad work of it. For, 1. You know not mens opportunities to speak: And where there is no opportunity, there its no duty. 2. You know not who hath spoken their dissent plainly and who not. It may ⟨p. 99⟩he some have done it in the Convocation: It may be some have done it privately,¹ and some publicly already in due season. And we are not to expect an account from them of all that they say. 3. To whom is it that you would have all the Country Ministers speak against our silencing? To those that did it they have no access; and they are out of hearing. And must they needs talk to the people of their superiors actions, and speak against them behind their backs? 4. If we know that one, two, twenty have spoken or written plainly in reproof of a sin, are all the Ministers in the Land bound to do the same over again? Must they all leave their flocks to come up to London to do it? Or must they every one publish his reproof in Print? 5. All silence, or not-reproving is not a seeming consent: much less in Gods sight little different from persecution. Were all the Churches in the Empire Persecutors, or to be separated from, which did not reprove the Emperors for banishing Athanasius, and Chrysostom and such others? Of all the silenced Ministers in London or England, how small a number is there that have [sharply reproved] the silencers? And perhaps they that have done it most sharply may have been more sharp than did beseem them.