Church Concord, Title page 1 – Preface
Church Concord: CONTAINING,
I. A Disswasive from unnecessary Division and Separation, and the Real Concord of the Moderate Independents with the Presbyterians, instanced in Ten seeming Differences.
II. The terms Necessary for Concord among all true Churches and Christians.
The First Part written 1655. The Second Part 1667. And Published this 1691. To second a late Agreement of the London Protestant Nonconformists: And a former Treatise called [The true and only terms of Church-Concord.]
By RICHARD BAXTER.
Mat. 5. 9. Blessed are the Peace-makers, for they shall be called the Children of God.
1 Thess. 5. 12, 13. We beseech you, Brethren, to know them who labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you: and esteem them very highly in Love for their Works sake; and Be at Peace among your selves.
Phil. 2. 1, 2, 3. If there be any Consolation in Christ, If any Comfort of Love, If any Fellowship of the Spirit, If any Bowels and Mercies, Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be like minded, having the same Love, being of one accord, of one Mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vain-glory: but in lowliness of Mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
1 Cor. 3. 1, 2, 3. And I, Brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual but as to carnal; to Babes in Christ—For whereas there is among you envying and strife, are ye not carnal and walk as men?
LONDON, Printed for Tho. Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside near Mercers Chapel. 1691.
THE PREFACE.
§ 1. IOwe some satisfactory account to the Reader, of the Reasons of my Publishing this Book, which I have cast by about Thirty four Years. It cannot be well understood, without the knowledge of the Case we were then in, and the Occasion of my Writing it.
The Ministers of the Churches were then (as is usual) of divers Opinions about Church-Government. 1. Some men for our Diocesane Episcopacy as stated by the Reformation. 2. Some were for a more Reformed Episcopacy, described by Bucer in Script. Angl. 1. Archbishop Usher, &c. 3. Some were for Diocesans in a higher strain, as subject to a foreign Iurisdiction, and as parts of an Universal Church, Headed by a humane Head, the Pope being Principium Unitatis. 4. Some were for National and Classical Government by Presbyters only, without Bishops. 5. And some were for a parity of Ministers and Churches, without any superior Bishops, or Synods, or Governours; but to have every Congregation to have all Governing Power in their proper Pastors. 6. And some were for each Congregation to be Governed by the Major Vote of the people; the Pastor being but to gather and declare their Votes; Among all these, the 3d sort, the Foreigners were utterly unreconcileable; and of the 6th we had no great hopes: But with the other four we attempted such a measure of Agreements as might be useful in a loose unsettled time, to keep up Christian Love and so much Concord, as that our Differences should not so much weaken us, as to frustrate all our Ministerial Labours.
§ 2. To this end I attempted a double work of Concord in Worcester-shire: 1. For the willing Ministers Episcopal, Presbyterian and Independent to Associate, in the Practice of so much of the Ministerial Office, as they were agreed did belong to Presbyters: II. To Catechize or personally by Conference instruct, all the Families and capable Persons in our Parishes, who would come to us, or admit us to come to them, in order at due appointed times.
God gave our People (in many Parishes) willing Minds, and encouraged us by unexpected great success: The most laborious Ministers took the hint, and seconded us in many Counties: First and chiefly in Westmorland and Cumberland, and then in Dorsetshire, Wil…shire, Hampshire and Essex, (and Dr. Winter, and others in Ireland)▪ The terms of our Association, the Reader may see Printed at large 1653. But theirs of Westmorland and Cumberland more large, and worthy the Consideration of the present tolerated Churches. I pray you read them.
§ 3. But when it came to closest Practice, As the Foreigners, (Prelatists) and Popular called Brownists kept off, so but few of the rigid Presbyterians or Independents joyned with us; (And indeed Worcestershire and the adjoyning Counties had but few of either sort,) But the main Body of our Association were men that thought the Episcopal, Presbyterians and Independents, had each of them some good in which they excelled the other two Parties, and each of them some mistakes: And that to select out of all three the best part, and leave the worst, was the most desireable (and ancient) Form of Government. But that so much as might Unite them in the Comfortable Service of Christ was common to them all: The most of our Ministers were Young men bred at the Universities during the Wars, and engaged in no Faction, nor studied much in such kind of Controversies; but of solid Iudgment and zealous Preachers, and eminently Prudent, Pious and Peaceable: And with them there joyned many that had Conformed, and thought both the Common-Prayer and the Directory, Episcopacy and Presbytery tolerable: And these in 1660. did Conform; but most of the rest were ejected and silenced. Though of near Ten Thousand that the Parliament left in possession, there were but Two Thousand cast out by the Prelates, we strongly conjectured before hand who those would be: Satan desired to have Power to sift us, as wheat, And the chaff and the bran stayed in, and made that which some called the best in the World: And indeed much of the bran is honoured by us as very useful: But the simila was too fine and precise for the pallates of the Great Churchmen, and was cast out in the sifting: And the Sifters did but call the [Similago] Simulatio] and such other names, and out it went with Scorns and Devestation: And the hatred of it is propagated as the natural Progeny of revived true simulation and revenge. But though fur-fur be a name of no honourable sound (or sence, as it looks to Brethren and the Church) yet for my part I do with thanks for England, and with lamentation for other Lands, consent with them that say, Few Churches are so well fed: God can use this for the cleansing and drying up the Hydropical tympanite of this Land: And Christ, I hope, will Remember the Penitent part of them, when he cometh in his Kingdom, and they that rob'd others of their Civil and Church Rites, may yet be with Christ in Paradise. Furfure pinguescunt pulli si lacte madescat. Even those that read this Praise with displeasure, taking Repentance for a Disgrace, and being loth to think they need it, may yet by Grace repent and live. Through God's great Mercy the excussed simila hath been Childrens food, though the Milstones have made it unfit for seed. But God will aliunde provide seed: Though we cannot but dread the abundance and malignity of the Seminary Tares.
§ 4. But our trouble (next to the ignorance and badness that we found most Parishes in) was Antichurches, or Separatists, that in great Towns and where they found Entertainment, did gather Congregations out of the Parochial Congregations; which being gathered on pretence that the Communion of our Churches was unlawful, employed so much of their Preaching and converse in labouring to prove it so, and in magnifying their own Opinions and ways, and vilifying others, as made many Towns become places of meer strife, that I say not of almost hostility.
§ 5. These separating Antichurches were of divers sorts: But of these it was two Parties that most hindred our Concord and Success. The Laudian Prelatists, and the rigid Independents: The former set up mostly in Great mens Houses, that had been against the Parliament; with whom they had the great advantage of the prejudice and exasperation of Minds that had suffered with and for them; and of their Power over the People that as Tenants or Servants depended on them, and the Countenances of their greatness, and a comfortable and honourable entertainment with them. These told the People that the Parish Ministers were Schismaticks and but Lay men, (except the old ones that were ordained by Diocesans.)
The other sort pretended sometimes faultiness in our Churches, as not so pure as they; and sometime Liberty to gather the willing into Churches of their Conduct, because Parish Bounds were not of Divine Right.
The Anabaptists also made us no small trouble; But the Quakers that made the loudest noise, by railing at us in our Assemblies and Markets, did little harm, being contemned because of the grossness of their Behaviour: especially when we had admitted them to publick Disputes, and shamed them before all the People.
§ 6. Our care was therefore to offer Love and Peace to the Laudians and the rigid Independents. To the first sort, we offered to consine our Ministration to that which they had nothing against, though we could not do all that they thought best: we constantly used to read the Psalms and Scripture Lessons, some Hymns, the Creed, Lord's Prayer, Decalogue, &c. and offered them the Sacrament Kneeling that were capable and willing: And some of us permitted and maintained the bare Reading Curates that in Chapels read the Liturgy to them. And Petitioned that all intolerable Priests of what side soever might be removed for better; but that no man might be ejected for being for the King. But we spake to the Deaf; and sought peace of the unpeaceable. We would have had them to set up tolerated Bishops over all Volunteers that desired it: But that they were utterly against, as thinking that the Party that would constitute their Churches would but shame them by their ignorance and vice, such a Leaden Sword did they take their Discipline to be, laying all on the force of the Magistrates Sword, when yet the Keys, which they durst not bear without the Sword (as it was done Three hundred Years) must have the Honour and Name.
§ 7. And as to the other Separatists, we treated with their chief Leaders for Union and Concord; and that occasioned the Writing of this Book. But we little prevailed with the Old Conductors, or the Young self-conceited sort of Novices. I will not dishonour the Dead so far as to name them that I treated with, and the terms offered to them, and the pretences on which they by tergiversation refused it. Their Confidence in the Soldiery that failed and shamed them, I think was it that hardened them into that Errour.
And had not the Sword for a time upheld them, all these Sects had quickly come to nothing (as indeed most of them did) by the Parts, Interest and Concord of the United Ministry: For my own part I had little hinderance, nor any Antichurch nor striving Party.
§ 8. The present Conformists I know will take occasion to call our Congregations such Antichurches now, as I wrote against then. And some on the other side will say, What need was there now to publish your old Disswasives from Separation: I will speak briefly to both these.
§ 9. I. I know none now that are so much against Schism and sinful Separation, as the moderate Nonconformists; nor any more guilty of it than those (Papists and Tories) that most fiercely talk against it. Had we not been greatly against Schism, we had never done and suffered so much as we have done to have prevented or healed it: and to have kept the Church from tearing Laws, and Canons that have battered Peace and Concord: we had never written and stoopt and humbly beg'd for Unity and Peace of malicious, ambitious, revengeful men, that made all our Endeavours fuel to increase the flames of their Cruelty. We foresaw what the Legion was like to do, to make the Church and Land like the man among the Tombes, that ragingly cut and tore himself: But the cure is too hard for us. Is it lawful and good to shut the Churches Doors against us, and throw Stones at us to drive us away, and banish us five Miles from all the Churches of the Cities and Corporations of the Land, and all places where of long time we had Preached, and to order the Iailers to keep us from the Churches, and Informers to accuse us if we come there; and then to call us Schismaticks for not coming: And is it Schism for men thus used, to worship God elsewhere?
Is there no Separation that is a Duty, because some Separation is a Sin? Is it Schism to separate from Heathens or Infidels, or from the Papal Church, or from Arrians? The Case was not then as it hath been since: The separating Party had nothing imposed upon them, that they could themselves say was against the Word of God. They had no Canons that excommunicated them ipso facto, if they should call the Churches Practice sinful. They were not cast out for not declaring Assent and Consent to all things contained in and prescribed by Three Books of fallible Imposers; They were not forced to Covenant never to endeavour any alteration, (that is, Amendment of the present Church Government: Nor to subscribe that if a King should Commission a French or Irish Army to invade the Land, to deliver it to a Foreign Prelate, it is unlawful for the Land to resist such an Army. The Corporations of England were not then constituted, by means of an Oath, that neither King, Lords, or any Person have any Obligation to be against Schism, Popery or Prophaneness, or to repent of Sin, by Swearing and Vowing it, if that Oath hath a Confederacy also against the English Prelacy, and was imposed and taken against Law. The Separatists that were against Bishops, Liturgies and Ceremonies, were then at liberty to forbear them, and to disown them. And what pretence had they then for Separation?
§ 10. II. But to the other side, I answer, 1. The Loud Accusations of Schism or Separation published against us by such as then did separate themselves from the Publick Churches, require us to undeceive those that are deceived by them, by making them know our constant enmity to Schism; and that it is they that drive us away, and not we that are driven, that are the Schismaticks▪ in England, as I proved in a Writing called [A Search for the Schismatick▪] To humble them that are the Cause, it is still necessary to shew the Evil of that Sin. It made not the Apostles Schismaticks, to be cast out of the Synagogues; no, nor Paul for separating the Christians from the blaspheming Iews, into the meeting in Tyrannus School.
2. And the surviving of the Old Sectarian spirit of Division, maketh it a Duty to shew still the Evil of it: Some cannot endure to hear those former Miscarriages blamed, but by enmity to repentance make them their own, and encourage the Evil spirit of Division: And some still keep up the dividing Principle, of the Peoples Power of the Keys, and are ready to separate from those Pastors that will not allow the whole Congregation to be Tryers or Iudges of the State of all that are to be baptized or admitted to Communion.
And if we never have more admission into more publick allowance, the World shall see that it was not long of us: But if God have so much Mercy for this Land, as to strengthen us by publick Concord, and unlock to us the Doors of the publick Churches, when I am dead, I would leave this Testimony against such as shall then refuse or resist any lawful and desirable Concord.
And as to my terms of Peace then offered to the Independents, I think it seasonable now to publish them, when God in Mercy hath newly brought us to publish our Concord in a very hopeful and comfortable form and manner, to drive home the Nail, and to be a witness against them that yet will divide.
§ 11. And because both old and late Experience telleth me who those be, though I have hereafter spoken to their Case, I will speak again though I seem guilty of repetition.
It is the raw ignorant flashy self-conceited sort of Reformers that we are in danger of, as to frustrate our Concord and Reformation. Such whether Ministers or People have torn us, and continue so to do, and are like to do so still.
Paul knew what he said, and why, when he told us a Bishop must not be a Novice, (or a young raw Christian) lest being puft up with Pride, be fall into the Condemnation of the Devil. And Act. 20. Of your own selves shall men rise speaking perverse things to draw away Disciples after them. Ignorant unstudyed Preachers, that attain to a laudable fervency in speaking what they know meet with injudicious Hearers, that being of their own temper, discern not their Ignorance, but value their Zeal, and these grow up into dividing Parties and Churches, and cherish the Vices of each other, as if it were Wisdom and holy Zeal.
The great Dividing Errour of these People is UNRULINESS, 1 Thess. 5. 14. Warn them that are unruly] Ti…. 1. 10. There are many unruly and vain alkers, Iam. 3. 8. Their tongue… are an unruly evil]. They take it for a Doctrine of Christ, that they ought not only to be unruly, but to be Rulers of the Church, and of their Rulers, and to usurp a chief part of the Pastors Office, to the Churches Confusion and their own: They think that the T…yal of all that are received into the Church by Baptism, or to it's Communion in the Lord's Supper, and of all that are admonished, suspended, excommunicated or absolved, belongeth to the Major Vote of the People: And where this is denied them, they will have …o Peace.
It's no time to palliate this mischievous Errour. I resolve here to deal plainly though briefly with the guilty, and therefore ask them,
§ 12. Q. 1. If gross Ignorance deserve casting out, do not you deserve it that are so grosly ignorant, even in a Point so plain, and of such practical moment?
Q. 2. Could you possibly be so proud as to think your selves capable of this, if you had ever had true Humility, or knowledge of your selves?
Q. 3. Do not you forfeit even the right of choosing your Pastors that know no better what a Pastor is, and that to be your Rulers is essential to their office?
Q. 4. With what Eyes and Minds do you read the Scripture, that cannot there see, that you are commanded to Obey them that have the Rule over you, for they watch for your Souls, as those that must give account, that they may do it with joy and not grief, for that is unprofitable to you, Heb. 3. 17. & v. 7. Remember them which have the Rule over you; who have spoken to you the Word of God. And v. 24. Salute all them that have the Rule over you, 1 Tim. 3. 5. A Bishop must be one that Ruleth well his own House, else how shall he take care of the Church of God. And (as the Steward of God. Tit. 1. 7. To give the Children their Meat in due season, 1 Thess. 5. 12, 13. Know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, &c. 1 Cor. 4. 1, 2. Let a man so esteem of us as of the Ministers of Christ, and Stewards of the Mysteries of God: It's required of Stewa…s that a man be found faithful?
Q. 5. Do you know what the word Pastor signifyeth? Do the Sheep Rule the Shepherd and themselves?
Q. 6. The Pastor being but one, and you, having the Major Vote, are you not his Rulers? And are you able to Rule him aright? Why do you not tell him what and whom to reprove, &c.
Q. 7. Is it not Sacrilege to usurp a sacred Office? Like Uzzah's incense, and C…rah's sin?
Q. 8. Who hath required this at your hands? Who gave you Commission to Rule the Church?
Q. 9▪ Do you not tremble to think what a charge you usurp, and what a dreadful account you undertake to give? Will you answer for all that are un…neetly Baptized, received to Communion, Excommunicated, Restored, &c. Do you not know that this is a greater and harder part of the Pastors Office, than an hours Preaching (which a well furnished man can do in the way that you like with little or no study) If he must wholly attend this work, must not you do so, if you undertake it? Do you know what it is to try so many Men and Womens Knowledge and Professions and Lives, and to hear Witnesses, and hear each person… Plea for himself, and judge? Must you not leave your Trades for it, or be treacherous? Even all of you, because the Major Vote must judge. O fearful Self-condemnation!
Q. 10. Do you not know how certainly this will turn Churches into Confusion, and the scorn of the World? Will you all agree in your Tryals? Or will not one think that person not holy enough, nor that profession of conversion satisfactory, which another approveth?
Q. 11. And where hath God given the Major Vote the Government of the Minor? If you can rest in … wrong judgment of the Usurping Majority, why not of the lawful Pastors?
Q. 12. Why would you chuse Pastors that be not wi…r to govern than your selves?
Q. 13. Do you not imitate those Diocesan… that take on them the sole Government of more Churches than they can govern: And do not you also undertake what you cannot do?
Q. 14. Do you think it is not lawful for a great Lord like Abraham, that hath a hundred or many hundred Servants, to make a Church of his Family? And do you think his Children and Servants should rule it by Vote, and try their Lord and Ladies graces?
Q. 15. Do you not know that Baptism entereth into the Universal Church as such, and not into any particular Church without a further contract? And who made you Rulers of the Church Universal? why you rather than another Church. Did the People try and judge by Vote the Baptizing of the three thousand, Act. 3. and of Cornelius, and the E…much, and the Iailor, or the Samaritans, or any one person? Prove it if you can, and defie not God's Word.
Q. 16. What if the Minister that must Baptize and give the Lord's Supper be unsatisfied in your Iudgment? Must he go against his Conscience in obedience to you?
Q. 17. Is one abused Text [Tell, and hear the Church] ignorantly repeated, enough to blind you against all this Evidence? If the King send to the City of London to cast out an ill Member, doth it follow that all the People must do it by equal Power or Vote, or some as Rulers, and others as obedient Consenters? your freedom and your choice of Rulers is not a Power to Rule. Papists and all Sects abuse this Text.
§ 13. Is not your Liberty to be governed only as consenting Volunteers enough for you, unless being many Masters you receive the greater condemnation, Jam. 3. 1. I would you would read the Third Chapter of James, and the Fourth to the Ephesians, and the Second to the Philippians, on your Knees, begging of God to cause the Scales to fall from your Eyes, and to give you his Eye salve, that you may see that you are poor, and miserable, and blind and naked: When the greatest Millenaries say, This is spoken of the new Jerusalem in another World in Paradise, do not repine that I apply it to you.
§ 14. And that you may not be proud of your Church Liberty it self (not to be forced to Sacraments and Communion, Let me tell you, what it is. It is a Liberty to be sinful, disorderly and unhappy, resulting from that Necessity which God in Nature and Scripture hath founded, in that he will make no one happy without his voluntary consent: If you will you may renounce your Baptism, and your Childrens Church-Membership, and your own: you may after a first and second Admonition Excommunicate and condemn your selves, and renounce Communion with the Universal Church, and with Christ himself; you have liberty to forsake the Assemblies and Communion of the Church, and the help and conduct of true Pastors: you have liberty to forsake God, and to be damned: O woful liberty! God will not pardon, or save you against your wills: And Kings and Bishops should not force you to take a sealed Pardon, or any of the Childrens peculiar part without your voluntary consent. As much as you blindly cry down Freewill, I think you deny not, but men have a will free and able to Sin, and to choose Destruction, till Grace cure that freedom. And verily I think to such ignorant proud Dividers as you, it is but such a freedom to choose your own Teachers, where Christian Magistrates have more Wisdom to choose for you: Not much more than for Boys to choose their own Schoolmasters or Tutors, or Servants in a Great mans Family-Church, yea or Sons, to choose their Pastor. Your most desireable Liberty is to have wiser Governours and Choosers, and to have Wit, Humility and Grace to obey them. (But yet to be the discerning Iudges of your Duty, and to do nothing against God's Law).
Q. 18. I would know why you do not also your selves Baptize and Administer the Lord's Supper? Do you not know that the Ministerial Power of the Keys lyeth more in judging decisively who should receive these Sacraments, than in the actual delivering them. Do you not as the Lay Chancellours do by the Parish Ministers, make them but the Executioners of their Decrees: You must Iudge, and your Pastors Execute, or as Cryers proclaim your Iudgments.
Q. 19. When all the Church must try the Repentance or Conversion of a Sinner, must he open his Sin before you all? If not, you will take him I doubt for no true Penitent. If yea, then by what right can you make his secret Sins to be openly known. Auricular Confession is better than such: And if an aged Person for want of use be uncapable of handsom Expressions about Religion, must he be put to shame before you all? And as Mr. Noyes▪ saith, Shall Lads thus uncover their Father's nakedness?
Q. 20. Are you sure that upon a wiser Examination than yours, most of this masterly Party would not be cast out themselves. In many things we offend all: And he that sheweth not his religious Wisdom out of a good Conversation by works of Meekness, but hath bitter envying and strifes, his glorying is a lying against the truth: Such Wisdom is not from above, but is earthly, sensual and devilish: For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
I would advise the Pastors of such masterly People, to try and examine these Tryers: I have given them a Catalogue of Questions for them at the end of my Reformed Pastor: Try whether they can tell you, whether Christ hath one▪ or two, or three Natures? Whether he was Man before the World? In what Nature he made all things? How the Godhead and Manhood are one Person? Whether each be a part of Christ's Person? What the Soul is? How they will prove against an Infidel that Christ is the Son of God? and that Scripture is true? What the definition of Faith is? and of Iustification, and of Regeneration? And the Covenant of Grace? whether it be the substance of the Holy Ghost that is given in to the Faithful, or only his Effects? An hundred such Questions, I doubt you will find them ignorant Answerers of. It's a sad case to have those try mens regeneration that know not what regeneration is. If you will abuse the Letter of the Text, the Women must Govern: Are not they of the Church? You'l say, They are forbid to speak. Ans. That's as Teachers; but what's that to Iudging? And are not you forbid to Rule, when you are commanded to OBEY?
The Church that must be Heard, is it that must be Told and Iudge. But it is the Pastors that must be Heard: For if all the People be the speaking Reprovers, it will be a clamorous Church. And how without such clamour can the multitude be heard? And must not all Dissenters have leave to enter their Dissent against the Major Vote. What if Twenty be of one Mind and Twenty one of another? Will one Voice satisfie the Consciences of the rest to acquiesce.
Q. 21. You build all this on the foundation of Rebellion against God and Governours; as if the People were the first receivers of ruling Power, and were by Nature made the Rulers (or Law-makers) by a Majority over the Minor part: which is so false, that as People they have no Ruling Power to Use or Give. All Power is of God, and none have it but by his Gift: And he never gave Power to the Children and Servants to Rule the Master of the Family; nor to the People to rule the Pastor or Church, nor to the People to Rule the Iustices or Iudges, &c. God made Governours so early, as prevented the Peoples making them in the essential part of the office. It's enough that they choose him (in Cases not Natural) that shall receive it from God.
But I wonder not that Brownists and ignorant Sectaries receive this false Principle of the Bodies Ruling Power by a Major Vote, when even Archbishop Laud and Dr. Beveridge, yea, and judicious Richard Hooker, yea and many Papist and Protestant Authors of Politicks; and some Lawyers have published it: to the deceiving of the undistinguishing Ignorant, and the confounding of Societies, Civil and Ecclesiastical, and the robbing God of his Prerogative, and feigning all Government as a Mushroom to spring out of the Earth, which cometh down from Heaven: Power is by descent from above.
Q. 22. I will ask you but this Question more, Whether now the Brethren called Congregational, the most. Able and Zealous have consented to a form of Concord which excludeth the Peoples Government, can your Consciences chuse but accuse you as proud, and Enemies of Concord, if as wiser than all these you be so foolish as to continue the Divisions.
And also when it's known that it was men of your Principles and Tempers that caused our former Confusions, and pull'd down after the King, the Parliaments of all sorts, the Protector and one another, till they set up their Quarters over the Gates, and pluckt up the Floodgates that have these Thirty years overwhelmed us, and hazarded all the Reformation: Is there after all this any excuse for Dividers, or any pretence to extenuate their Sin? A Sin that hath cost England, Holland, Germany, Poland, and many other Nations dear. Yea, a Sin that tore the very Apostolick Churches, and grieved the hearts of the Apostles, and caused them to record their vehement obtestations against it. [If there be any consolation in Christ, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfil ye my joy, that ye be like minded, having the same love, being of one accord and of one mind: Let nothing be done through strife or vain-glory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves: Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.]
Had you not been ignorant of Church History, but known what the Churches from the Apostles days till now, have suffered by an hundred sort of Sects and Heresies, and what the woful effects of them have been, and what a Scandal they proved to the beholders, and how shamefully they all ended, you would have feared the very appearance of so direful an evil, and would not have cherished a worm of so many feet in your bowels, even that IGNORANT PRIDE which hath caused all this.
What is there in this odious Sin, and this contentions Church State, that should make men professing Godliness love it, and make the cure of it so hard. Is Ruling a work of ease? Is there nothing but Honour in it? Is it not dreadful to be accountable for the ill managing of it? Do you not reproach Pastors as dumb Dogs and treacherous, that neglect their Duty: Yea, and Kings and Magistrates if they miscarry: And are not you afraid of your account of a usurped mis-performed Government? Can you judge whether your Pastors understand the Gospel in the Language that the Holy Ghost hath given it in? and whether they rightly expound a thousand difficult Texts? and whether they decide Doctrinal Controversies truly or erroneously? Or do you not rather cry up men that are of your Opinion, be it right or wrong, and love those that are sick of your Disease, and tempt such ignorant Teachers to speak and do that which pleaseth the People, for fear of incurring their censure, … losing their maintenance. It grieveth me …o hear that some are drawn so far to concur in the Peoples guilt, that they will reject from their Communion all that will communicate with the most Godly Conformists; And make Adversaries say, that the Question between us is, Whether Bishops or Women, or at least ignorant Voters, should govern the Church. They say, The publick Churches have Faults and Forms. And have you no Faults? Had the Iews Church no Forms? Is not the whole Bible a form of words for Instruction and Prayer and Praise? Obj. But they are God's Words. Ans. Then God was for Forms. But your Bibles are all Man's words: Do you think that Moses, the Prophets, or Christ were Englishmen? Or was any of the Scripture written or spoken in English by them, or by the Apostles? Do you not take every word in your Bibles on trust from English Conformists, or such men? It was Conformists (all save one) that made the Translation of the Bible which you use. The Papists say, It is a false Translation? How will you confute them, and prove that you have any Gospel or Word of God? And is not taking all your Bible as to the words on Trust from Conformists a greater degree of Communion with them, than receiving the Sacrament at their hands in form?
I advise all sober Persons to be no Members of any such Church, as will engage them to have no Communion with any others, but to be as guilty of Separation a… they are themselves.
I mean, that you make not or perform any such wicked Covenant or Condition of Communion with them, though their Leader should seem the most Zealous and Devout: To renounce Communion with all the Church of Christ, save such à Schismatical Sect, yea, or with all that have not purer Worship than our Liturgy, or that are not purer Churches, is a Sin so heinous, as should deter you from it. Though better be to be preferred, renounce not Communion with all that have not better, lest yours prove worse. Had not the Publick Churchmen been guilty of Schismatical Separation, calling men from all Churches and Worship save their own, and appropriating all Church Title and Communion to themselves, they had been more blameless than they are. But while some silence, and others separate, Concord is banished more and more.
And if the Imposing Party well consider this late Agreement, they will find that there is nothing in, it that may make them think, that the same men will be averse, to any just terms of a further Agreement, with those that have been their Ejecters. They have agreed to take no Members out of any of your true Pastoral consenting Churches, without a just hearing and satisfactory Reasons to them. But I hope you take not all your Parishioners, even Atheists, Papists and Infidels for your Church Members; No… yet all your Auditors and Catechumens, but only your Communicants: And is it not better that they be Members of Nonconformists Churches than of none? I have elsewhere cited you the Canons of a Council decreeing, That if the Bishop of the place convert not any Heathens or Unbelievers, and another convert them, they shall be his Flock that did convert them, (in my Hist. of Councils.)
Would they but first admit the Excluded to Publick Lectures where the Incumbent consenteth, it would prepare the way for further Concord. The Great Reconciler will in due time reconcile and closely Unite his own. Amen.
Apr. 11. 1691. Ri. Baxter.