Five disputations of church-government and worship

Brethren! (for so I will presume to call you, whether you will or not) Some experience hath persuaded me, that if we had honestly and faithfully joined in the practice of so much of Discipline, as all our principles require, it would have helped us to that experimental knowledge (by the blessing ⟨image 100⟩of God) which would have brought us nearer even in our Principles, then our idle Disputations, separated from practice will ever do. As Augustine saith of the disputes de causa mali (Lib. de utilitat. Credendi, cap. 18.) Dumb nimis quaerunt unde sit malum, nihil reperiunt n•si malum] so I may say of these disputes, while we thus dispute about the causes of disorder and division, we find nothing but disorder and division.

Brethren! (for so I will presume to call you, whether you will or not) Some experience hath perswaded me, that if we had honestly and faithfully joyned in the practice of so much of Discipline, as all our principles require, it would have helped us to that experimental knowledge (by the blessing ⟨image 100⟩of God) which would have brought us nearer even in our Principles, then our idle Disputations, separated from practice will ever do. As Augustine saith of the disputes de causa mali (Lib. de utilitat. Credendi, cap. 18.) Dum nimis quaerunt unde sit malum, nihil reperiunt n•si malum] so I may say of these disputes, while we thus dispute about the causes of disorder and division, we find nothing but disorder and division.

It is easy to conjecture of the ends and hearts of those that cry down Piety as preciseness, while they cry up their several wa•es of order: it seems they would have ordered impiety: and their order must be a means to keep down holiness, which all just order should promote. Those men that can fall in with the most notoriously ungodly, and favour and flatter them for the strengthening of their interest, do tell us what Discipline we may expect from them. If they tell us that our Churches also are corrupted, and all are not truly or eminently godly, we can say to them as Augustine (lib. de utilitat. Credend. cap. 17.) [Pauci hoc faciunt, pauciores been prudenterque faciunt: sed populi probant, populi audiunt, populi favent] yea we can say much more.