Where any Church is guilty of Corruptions both in Doctrine and Practice, which it avoweth and professeth, and requireth the owning them as necessary conditions of communion with her, there a non-communion with that Church is necessary, and a total and positive separation is lawful and convenient. What he discourses ⟨p. 19⟩page 111, 112. upon the Question, Whether it is a sin to communicate with Churches true, as to Essentials, but supposed corrupt in the exercise of Discipline? Many of us will no doubt heartily concur with him in. But it touches not the case of many more, who do not so much fear upon the account of the neglect of Discipline, to be involved in the guilt of other mens sin; as (there seems to be little cause, that part being not incumbent upon us:) Nor, if that be his meaning, when he speaks of separating on a pretence of great purity, is it the case with most of us: but we justly fear (and therefore avoid) to be made to sin our selves, by having such things as we judge to be sinful imposed on us, as the Conditions of our Communion. And as to this case, this Reverend Author speaks our sense in this last cited Proposition, and pleads our present Cause. Nor need we more to be said on behalf of it than what is reducible to that general Proposition; or particularly, to that second thing (compared with the third) which p. 115. he says makes separation and withdrawment of communion lawful and necessary; viz. Corruption of practice, where we say as he doth, We speak not of practice, as relating to the civil conversation of men, but as it takes in the Agenda of Religion; when unlawful things of that kind, are not only crept into a Church, but are the prescribed devotion of it: Those being required (which he adds as an accession to the foregoing) as necessary conditions of communion from all the Members of their Church, which makes our withdrawing from them unavoidably necessary, as long as we judge them to be such corruptions as indeed they are. And whereas he instances only in such things as belong to the Head of Idolatrous Customs, (suppressing what might be instanced under the other Head, which he also there mentions; viz.
Where any Church is guilty of Corruptions both in Doctrine and Practice, which it avoweth and professeth, and requireth the owning them as necessary conditions of communion with her, there a non-communion with that Church is necessary, and a total and positive separation is lawful and convenient. What he discourses ⟨p. 19⟩page 111, 112. upon the Question, Whether it is a sin to communicate with Churches true, as to Essentials, but supposed corrupt in the exercise of Discipline? Many of us will no doubt heartily concur with him in. But it touches not the case of many more, who do not so much fear upon the account of the neglect of Discipline, to be involv'd in the guilt of other mens sin; as (there seems to be little cause, that part being not incumbent upon us:) Nor, if that be his meaning, when he speaks of separating on a pretence of great purity, is it the case with most of us: but we justly fear (and therefore avoid) to be made to sin our selves, by having such things as we judge to be sinful imposed on us, as the Conditions of our Communion. And as to this case, this Reverend Author speaks our sense in this last cited Proposition, and pleads our present Cause. Nor need we more to be said on behalf of it than what is reducible to that general Proposition; or particularly, to that second thing (compared with the third) which p. 115. he says makes separation and withdrawment of communion lawful and necessary; viz. Corruption of practice, where we say as he doth, We speak not of practice, as relating to the civil conversation of men, but as it takes in the Agenda of Religion; when unlawful things of that kind, are not only crept into a Church, but are the prescribed devotion of it: Those being required (which he adds as an accession to the foregoing) as necessary conditions of communion from all the Members of their Church, which makes our withdrawing from them unavoidably necessary, as long as we judge them to be such corruptions as indeed they are. And whereas he instances only in such things as belong to the Head of Idolatrous Customs, (suppressing what might be instanced under the other Head, which he also there mentions; viz.
