The Cure of Church Divisions, Directions · Direction 12
DIRECT. XII.
Well study the gracious Nature and Office of Iesus Christ, and his great readiness to receive those that come to him, though weak in faith; and his backwardness to refuse such Commers; that so you may desire a Church-discipline that is suitable to the Nature and Office of Christ, and to the design and tenor of the Gospel.
CHrists outward Discipline is agreeable to his inward. As those that come to him by faith, he will in no wise cast out or reject; so those that come to him by profession of faith, he would not have his Ministers in any wise reject. And coming to Christ when he was personally on earth, did signifie the following of him in presente, as well as believing in him: Just so far as men will come, so far they shall be received by Christ? If they will come but towards him, he will not put them back. If they will come but to his visible Church, by a dead profession, he would not have his Ministers repulse them. The outward priviledges of the visible Church which they come to, they shall possess. If they will come over to the Church of the regenerate, they shall be saved. But where ever they stop it shall be their own doing. Many came to Christ when he was on earth, whom he never repulsed, though he was marvelled at and grudged at for entertaining them. Some came so far as to own his Name, and did Miracles by it, that yet did not follow him: whom the Apostles would have hindered, but Christ reproved them, Mar. 9. 38. Luk. 9. 49. Some came only to receive a Cure of their Diseases from him, whom his Disciples sometimes repulsed, but so did not he: when little children were brought to him, his Disciples rebuked those that brought them, as thinking them unfit for his reception: but Christ rebuked them for their forbidding of such guests. When he eat and drank with publicans and sinsinners, and when he received the kindness of a woman that had bin a great sinner, the Pharisees, censured him therefore as ungodly: But yet he would not abate his clemency. Many at this day can scarce digest it, that he sent forth a Iudas to preach the Gospel, when he knew that he was a thief and an hypocrite, and fore…new that he was a Son of perdition, and would betray him, and that the Devil would enter into him; yea, knew that he was a Devil. Ioh. 6. 70. & 13. 2. ye…, that this Iudas should be one of the twelve select Apostles, and one of the Family of Christ. Yet Christ repulsed him not; And if he did not partake of the Sacrament at his last Supper, it was not because Christ did turn him, out, but because he went away himself. And accordingly the Apostles received 3000 at once into the Church, upon their sudden profession of repentance, even of such as had killed the Lord of life. And though Simon Magus would not come out of the gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity, yet was he not kept out of the visible Church, when he professed to believe and desired baptism.
Indeed if men will not come so far as to the profession of true faith and repentance, they are not to be received into th… Church; Because the Church is a Society of such Professours: And if they will not come, they cannot be received. The Church and Sacrament must not be altered, and made another thing than Christ made it, for the receiving of another sort of men. We must not do as some that would have no profession of saving faith and repentance, but only a consent to learn, required of them that are baptized; and so baptism changed into another sort, which Christ never instituted and the Church never used to this day. But if Christians had well studied the compassions of a Saviour, and the tenour of his Gospel, and his practice upon earth, and instead of a surly flying duplicate page duplicate page from their neighbours, and groundless censuring them, were possessed themselves, with that love and tenderness which is the Evangelical temper▪ and the image of their Lord; it would put in end to many of our divisions, and bring us neerer the truth and one another.