Five disputations of church-government and worship

Sect. 21. 15. By this means also you rob God of his public worship: People are taught to turn their backs on it: you teach them that it is better that God have no public Ministerial worship at all, in Prayer, Praises, Sacraments, &c. then that he should have it from any but Prelatical Ministers! O sacred doctrine! And if you had your wills for the silencing or ejecting of all that are not Ordained by Prelates, how many hundred Church-doors must be shut up in the Christian world, or worse!

Sect. 21. 15. By this means also you rob God of his publike worship: People are taught to turn their backs on it: you teach them that it is better that God have no publike Ministerial worship at all, in Prayer, Praises, Sacraments, &c. then that he should have it from any but Prelatical Ministers! O sacred doctrine! And if you had your wills for the silencing or ejecting of all that are not Ordained by Prelates, how many hundred Church-doors must be shut up in the Christian world, or worse!

Sect. 22. 16. By this means all Impiety would be cherished and let loose. When once the mouths of Ministers were stopped, the mouth of the swearer, and curser, and railer, and scorner at Godliness would be open: and so would be the mouth of the drunkard and glutton. If all that can be done, be so much too little, as experience tells us, what a case would the Nations be in, and how would iniquity abound, if Ministers were cast out?

Sect. 23. 17. Yea it might endanger the Churches, by the introduction of Infidelity or Heathenism it self. For nothing is more natural as it were, to corrupted man: and if once the Ministry be taken down, and they have none, or those that are next to none, Infidelity and Atheism will soon spring up: And it will be a more dangerous sort of Infidelity, then is among many of the open Infidels, because it would be palliated with the name of Christianity, and leave men further from conviction, then some that never heard of Christ.