An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

As a godly man may be truly godly, and yet subject to many failings. ⟨p. 71⟩Thus a Church also may be truly Gods Church, the Body of Christ, yet many distempers and sad confusions amongst them. This truth is worthy of all diligent prosecution, because many men, though otherwise good, out of a tenderness and misguided zeal, may separate from our Congregations, deny them to be true Churches, and all because they see many things amongst us that are matter of grief, and a great stumbling block to them. This I confess is, and hath been a sad temptation; but a particular Christian is is not to excommunicate and unchurch a Church, till God hath given a Bill of Divorce to it, and hath cast it quite off. An impatience to bear any evil, or disorders in a Church, is not presently to be commended and yielded to, to the utmost. A Christian must have wisdom, and a sound mind, as well as zeal and a tender conscience. Even the Reformed Churches did not wilfully and voluntarily depart from the Church of Rome, but did stay to cure and heal Babylon, until they drave them away with fire and sword. So that our leaving the Roman Church was not a Schismatical separation, but a forced discession or departure from them. But of this it may be more afterwards.

As a godly man may be truly godly, and yet subject to many failings. ⟨p. 71⟩Thus a Church also may be truly Gods Church, the Body of Christ, yet many distempers and sad confusions amongst them. This truth is worthy of all diligent prosecution, because many men, though otherwise good, out of a tenderness and misguided zeal, may separate from our Congregations, deny them to be true Churches, and all because they see many things amongst us that are matter of grief, and a great stumbling block to them. This I confess is, and hath been a sad temptation; but a particular Christian is is not to excommunicate and unchurch a Church, till God hath given a Bill of Divorce to it, and hath cast it quite off. An impatiency to bear any evil, or disorders in a Church, is not presently to be commended and yielded to, to the utmost. A Christian must have wisdom, and a sound mind, as well as zeal and a tender conscience. Even the Reformed Churches did not wilfully and voluntarily depart from the Church of Rome, but did stay to cure and heal Babylon, untill they drave them away with fire and sword. So that our leaving the Roman Church was not a Schismatical separation, but a forced discession or departure from them. But of this it may be more afterwards.