A monitory letter about the maintenance [sic] of an able and faithful ministry. Directed…A monitory letter about the maintainance [sic] of an able and faithful ministry. Directed…

Brethren,

IF ever you arrive to Blessedness, i• must be by Faith, in the Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who is Revealed and Offered unto you, in the Glorious Gospel of God: And if ever you Enjoy the Offers of the Gospel, it must be by the Preachers o• it: Even by the Ministry of men set apart, for the Work of Explaining and Applying, the Great Mystery of Godliness among you.

A Ministry cannot be upheld without a Maintenance. Now, whil• s•me of your Ministers, choose to leave their Salaries unto the voluntary Contributions of the People, these are others, who (sensible of what the Great V•ettus writes, Hominum saepe tanta est Injusti•ia, •allacia, Lubricita, ac profanitas, ut Expediat Contractum intercedere,) do make their Contracts wi•h their people, for their Stipends. But it is well known▪ That tho' the Maintenance promised unto the Ministers among us, be ordinarily very small, scarce a Competency: and our Ministers are mostly of Calvins mind in this point, (as in all other they are Calvinists,) Consil••• […] ⟨p. 4⟩ut Ministris tantum Erogaretur, quantum ad ••• galitatem Ordi•• suo dignam, suffic•ret, non quod ad Lxum redndaret; Enough to supply them, in a credible and suitable Frugality would suffice them: nevertheless, they are often cheated of much, out of that Little, that has been promised unto them. The Ministers not rarely are put off with a Pay, called sometimes by the Name of, Synecdochical Pay, wherein by a certain Figure of Avaricious & Sacrilegious Rhetoric, the part goes for the whole. There are multitudes, who from one end of the year unto the other, do nothing, towards the Support of the Evangelical Ministry; and tho' a Levy do in most places Compel some to do something, yet that something is done grudgingly, as upon Compulsion, & the whole comes not up to all that had been Engaged. If the Ministers now should go to take the Remedy which the Law gives them, for the Recovery of their Arrearages, they would find the Remedy worse than the Disease, and by using the Law, wound the future success of the Gospel While they have been, by the Acts of Assemblies, Exempted from Taxes, they have in reality been Taxed above any one Rank of men whatsoever. Nor does any but the Lord Jesus Christ, who in his Infinite Wisdom orders His Holy Servants to Preach under the Cross, know the Temptation that many of them have endured, when they have been defrauded of the Due