The dying man's testament to the Church of Scotland, or, A treatise concerning scandal…

Again, 3. We would distinguish betwixt errors and the consequents of them, or practices following thereupon; there may be somethings truly errors that may and should be forborne in themselves, yet their consequents ought not to be forborne, and this also may be at one time, and in one Church more necessary to be adverted to, than in another, because consequents of schism, faction, division, &c. may sometimes follow on the meanest errors. And seeing these are always enemies to edification, even when they arise from the least ground, they are never absolutely to be forborne; for▪ to say, I am of Paul, and I am of Apollos, and for one to think such a man a better Preacher than an other, seemeth to be no great matter; yet when it beginneth to rent them, and to make factions in Corinth, it is not to be forborne, but to be reproved: And in the former difference of meats, the Apostle condemneth always the offence and Schism that followed on it, although he did not peremptorily decide any thing as to mens practices, or censure for the opinion it self: thus one might think the first day of the week not to be Jure Divino, and this might possibly be forborne, But if he were pressing the change of it, and refusing to observe it, or venting it to offend others, that were intolerable; thus the differences and errors concerning Church-government by Bishops, and in the Congregational way, may, we conceive, in themselves be forborne in persons where they are not vented to the ⟨p. 206⟩shaking and drawing away of others; but if pressed in practice, to the renting of a Church, and preferred or equalled to the true Government that is established by the Word, in that case they are not to be forborne, because then truth is to be vindicated, and obstructions to edification in the renting or distracting of a Church to be removed, and at on time more than at another, as such an offence doth waken a Schism, and disturb order and Union in one Church or at one time more than another: hence we see, Acts 15. somethings are put in that decree in reference to that time, only for preventing of Schism and Scandal, while the doctrine of the abolition of the ceremonial Law was not so clear; And somethings were forborne amongst the Gentiles, which were not so amongst the Jews for a time, as circumcision and all the ceremonies of the Law, which yet for a time the Jews observed;