A30136:200
A confession of my faith and a reason of my practice
A confession of my faith and a reason of my practice, or, With who, and who not, I can hold church-fellowship, or the communion of saints
London: printed for Francis Smith, 1672
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Answ. If they be such as eat out the bowels of a Church, so soon as they are detected, he must be either be kept out, while out, or cast out, if in: For it must be the prudence of every community, to preserve its own unity with peace and truth: The which the Churches of Christ may do; and yet as I have showed already, receive such persons as differ upon the point of Water-baptism: For the doing or not doing of that, neither maketh nor marreth, the bowels or foundation of Church communion.
Answ. If they be such as eat out the bowels of a Church, so soon as they are detected, he must be either be kept out, while out, or cast out, if in: For it must be the prudence of every community, to preserve its own unity with peace and truth: The which the Churches of Christ may do; and yet as I have shewed already, receive such persons as differ upon the point of Water-baptism: For the doing or not doing of that, neither maketh nor marreth, the bowels or foundation of Church communion.
Object. But this is receiving for opinion sake; as before you said of us.
Answ. No, We receive him for the sake of Christ, and grace, and for our mutual edification in the ⟨p. 124⟩Faith; and that we respect not opinions, I mean in lesser matters, 'tis evident; for things wherein we differ are no breach of communion among us; We let every man have his own Faith in such things to himself before God.