The true nature of a Gospel church and its government

FROM an observation hereof, and a desire to vindicate as well Christian Religion from such a scandalous Abuse as Mankind from Bondage, to such a monstrous fiction as is the present power and exercise of it, some have fallen into another extreme, denying that there is any such thing as Excommunication, appointed or approved by the Gospel. But this neither is, nor ever will be a way to reduce Religion nor any thing in it, unto its Primitive Order and Purity. To deny the Being of any thing because it hath been abused, when there could have been no abuse of it, but upon a supposition of its Being, is not a rational way to reprove and convince that abuse. And when those who have corrupted this Institution, find the insufficiency of the Arguments produced to prove that there never was any such Institution, it makes them secure in the practice of their own Abuses of it. For they imagine that there is nothing incumbent on them to justify their present possession and exercise of the Power of Excommunication; but that Excommunication it self is appointed in the Church by Christ, whereas the true consideration of this Appointment, is the only means to divest them of their power and practice. For the most effectual course to discharge and disprove all corruptions in the Agenda or Practicals of Religion, as the Sacraments, public Worship, Rule and the like, is to propose and declare the things themselves in their Original simplicity, and purity, as appointed by Christ, and recorded in the Scriptures. A real view of them in such a Proposal, will divest the minds of Men, not corrupted and hardened by Prejudice and Interest, of those erroneous conceptions of them, that from some kind of Tradition they have been prepossessed withal. And this I shall now attempt in this particular of Excommunication.

FROM an observation hereof, and a desire to vindicate as well Christian Religion from such a scandalous Abuse as Mankind from Bondage, to such a monstrous fiction as is the present power and exercise of it, some have fallen into another extream, denying that there is any such thing as Excommunication, appointed or approved by the Gospel. But this neither is, nor ever will be a way to reduce Religion nor any thing in it, unto its Primitive Order and Purity. To deny the Being of any thing because it hath been abused, when there could have been no abuse of it, but upon a supposition of its Being, is not a rational way to reprove and convince that abuse. And when those who have corrupted this Institution, find the insufficiency of the Arguments produced to prove that there never was any such Institution, it makes them secure in the practice of their own Abuses of it. For they imagine that there is nothing incumbent on them to justify their present possession and exercise of the Power of Excommunication; but that Excommunication it self is appointed in the Church by Christ, whereas the true consideration of this Appointment, is the only means to divest them of their power and practice. For the most effectual course to discharge and disprove all corruptions in the Agenda or Practicals of Religion, as the Sacraments, publick Worship, Rule and the like, is to propose and declare the things themselves in their Original simplicity, and purity, as appointed by Christ, and recorded in the Scriptures. A real view of them in such a Proposal, will divest the minds of Men, not corrupted and hardened by Prejudice and Interest, of those erroneous conceptions of them, that from some kind of Tradition they have been prepossessed withal. And this I shall now attempt in this particular of Excommunication.