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…

Secondly, It may so fall out, that there be such a malice and poison in the hearts of those that do govern and rule in the Church, that they will excommunicate and cast out those that are true believers from the Church, and will not let them have any Church-society. Now in such cases, if the godly cannot obtain any public Church-privilege, which yet they desire, this will lie on those that cast them out, Luke 6. 22. John 16. 2. Our Saviour tells the Disciples it shall be their portion, They shall be cast out of the Synagogues, separated from company, even as they did a blind man healed, confessing Christ, whom yet Christ met and encouraged. This then is no new thing. Yea Bernard complained in his time, Heu Domine qui sunt in Ecclesiâ primi, sunt in persecutione primi.

Secondly, It may so fall out, that there be such a malice and poison in the hearts of those that do govern and rule in the Church, that they will excommunicate and cast out those that are true believers from the Church, and will not let them have any Church-society. Now in such cases, if the godly cannot obtain any publick Church-priviledge, which yet they desire, this will lie on those that cast them out, Luke 6. 22. John 16. 2. Our Saviour tels the Disciples it shall be their portion, They shall be cast out of the Synagogues, separated from company, even as they did a blind man healed, confessing Christ, whom yet Christ met and encouraged. This then is no new thing. Yea Bernard complained in his time, Heu Domine qui sunt in Ecclesiâ primi, sunt in persecutione primi.

Thirdly, If there be such a general and universal pollution, that a Christian at least for the present knoweth not what Church to join to, where he can have communion without partaking of gross Idolatry. It's a Rule avouched in the Canon-Law, Causa, non separatio facit, Shisma. Those that would not bow their knee to Baal in Elijah's time, were not Schismatics; for there was a just cause to refuse such Idolatry; if then it be truly with a man, as it was in supposition with Elijah, that he is left alone, Idolatry hath filled the whole Church visibly; in such a case, though that be hardly to be seen, he is to abstain from Church-societies, till God make way for it. For then it is, as if a Christian, should by some accident be cast upon a Country of Infidels and Pagans, as some Christians have been, there cannot be had any Church-society at all.