Covenant-keeping the way to blessedness, or, A brief discourse wherein is shown the connection…Covenant-keeping the way to blessedness, or, A brief discourse wherein is shewn the connexion…

4. Be sure, when the Glory of God, and the spiritual good of your Brother requires it, that you carry on your reproof to Conviction. There are some things that arise only from sudden Passion, and there a transient rebuke may be enough; other things may be more deliberate, and Men are led into them more gradually; they may also be eminently reproachful to Religion, and a dangerous snare to the Souls of them that are so tempted; our connivance in such cases may not only blemish our profession, but be a great hazard to it also: At such times, and in such a case; you break your Covenant if you suffer Sin in your Brother, without using all the means which Christ hath prescribed, and in the order He hath prescribed them, till the end be obtained. If private admonition followed with gentleness and Patience, will not gain, but they still persist in evil courses, or are not humbled for such faults, you must proceed by steps as far as Christ hath bid you. And I believe there is no one thing wherein the Covenant is more universally broken, then in the neglect of this duty; and if the use of these Ordinances shall once come to cease among the Churches, and the sins of Church-members be not regularly suppressed, by reason of the unfaithfulness of Brethren, Religion will languish, and the power of Godliness fail. It is not the extending of the Covenant to Christians (as some dream) but it is the neglect of Covenant-duties towards them, that is like to be the bane of our profession, if any thing. Eli ⟨p. 111⟩indulged his Sons, and one professor indulgeth another; and it is to be feared, that if this were searched to the root and bottom of it, it would be found that the original of it is self-indulgence, and that when men wink at scandals in their Brethren, it is because they expect the like in way of retaliation: and if things once come to this pass, let any sober and prudent Man conjecture whither this be not the way to cherish Apostasy; and what then will be the end of these things?

4. Be sure, when the Glory of God, and the spiritual good of your Brother requires it, that you carry on your reproof to Conviction. There are some things that arise only from sudden Passion, and there a transient rebuke may be enough; other things may be more deliberate, and Men are led into them more gradually; they may also be eminently reproachful to Religion, and a dangerous snare to the Souls of them that are so tempted; our connivance in such cases may not only blemish our profession, but be a great hazard to it also: At such times, and in such a case; you break your Covenant if you suffer Sin in your Brother, without using all the means which Christ hath prescribed, and in the order He hath prescribed them, till the end be obtained. If private admonition followed with gentleness and Patience, will not gain, but they still presist in evil courses, or are not humbled for such faults, you must proceed by steps as farr as Christ hath bid you. And I believe there is no one thing wherein the Covenant is more universally broken, then in the neglect of this duty; and if the use of these Ordinances shall once come to cease among the Churches, and the sins of Church-members be not regularly suppressed, by reason of the unfaithfulness of Brethren, Religion will languish, and the power of Godliness fail. It is not the extending of the Covenant to Christians (as some dream) but it is the neglect of Covenant-duties towards them, that is like to be the bane of our profession, if any thing. Eli