The Cure of Church Divisions, Directions · Direction 59
DIRECT. LIX.
If through the faults of either side or both, you cannot meet together in the same particular Church or place, yet preserve that unity in Faith, Love and practise, which all neighbour Churches should maintain with one another, and use not your different Assemblies to revile each other, and kill your Love.
ALL distances are undesirable and tend to more: But yet our Unity lyeth not so much in meeting in one place, as in being of one Mind, and Heart and Life: Many occasions may warrant our corporal distance; but Heart-divisions should be most avoided. It is the principles and motives upon which you withdraw, which are more considerable than the local distance.
Therefore on one side let us take heed how we …nchurch and unchristen any with whom we do not corporally joyn: And on the other side, let us take heed how we revile them all as Sectaries and Separatists, who do not joyn with our assemblies: But let us know the reason of their practise before we peremptorily judge them.
I. Perhaps you think that such or such a Church-government, or Forms, or Ceremonies, are unwarrantable, and such and such oaths and subscriptions are unlawful, and therefore you cannot have local communion with the Churches that impose them. If it were so, yet take heed of … these no Churches of Christ, or pretending that Christ disowneth and rejecteth them. If they cast out you by imposing any thing which you think is sin, yet take heed that you excommunicate not them. If there be a difference between a weak and culpable Christian, and no-Christian, there is a difference between a weak and culpable Church, and no-Church; And as there are innumerable degrees of good or evil, strength or weakness in particular Christians, so there is in Churches also.
You may perhaps find that another Minister is more profitable to you, and another Churches principles more pleasing to you, and their discipline better in your account: And therefore you think that you are bound, to choose the best for your personal Communion. Be it so: There is yet some modesty in these terms: But do not therefore conclude that Communion with that Church which you turn from is simply unlawful; or that another may not use it who can have no better! Or that you your selves should not rather joyn with that than with none? Or that you may not occasionally sometimes communicate with them, though your more ordinary communion be elsewhere. Nor do not disown all spiritual communion with them, though in body you are absent. But when ever you pray to God, go to him as a member of the Universal Church, and and not of a Sect only: Pray for the whole Church, and desire a part in the prayers of the whole. Own them and their worship so far as Christ owneth them. While you disown their errours and failings, yet own their faith, and all that is sound in their prayers and worship; And see that you love them as members of Christ, who if weak are yet Christians, and perhaps in other respects better than you. (To say nothing whether it be they or you that are in the right.) You like not all that is done in the Lutherans Churches, much less in the Greek and Ethiopian: And yet I hope you disown not their spiritual communion as Churches though faulty, and as members of the same body. But if you are not content to choose an ordinary communion most suitable to your self, but you must conclude that such are no Ministers or no Churches of Christ: their worship is not accepted by him, it is not lawful to have communion with them, but rather to joyn with no Church, than with them; and will accordingly contemn them and irritate and alienate mens minds against them; Be sure that you prove well what you say, or wonder not if all wise and sober men do take this for downright odious schism, and one of the worst of the works of the flesh. Gal. 5. 20, 21. 1 Cor. 3. 1, 2, 3, 4.
II. On the other side if any withdraw from our Communion, let us not too hastily accuse them of schism: And when we do, let us well distinguish of schism, and not go further from them than they have gone from us, and to be our selves the Schismaticks while we oppose it.
There are many cases in which local separation may be lawful. First, As if our callings justly remove us to another place or Country. Secondly, If our spiritual advantage bind us to remove to a better Minister and more suitable society when we are free. Thirdly, if our lawful Pastors be turned out of the place, and we follow them, and turn away but from Usurpers. Fourthly, If the Pastors turn Hereticks or Wolves. Fifthly, If the publick good of the Churches require my removal. Sixthly, If any sin be imposed on me, and I be refused by the Church unless I will commit it. In these and some other such cases a remove is lawful.
And when it is not lawful, yet it may be but such a blemish in the departers, as the departer… find in the Church which they depart from; which will on neither side dis-oblige them from Christian Love, and such Communion as is due with neighbour Churches.
There is a schism from the Church, and a schism in the Church: There is a schism from almost all the Churches in the world, and a schism from some one or few particular Churches. There is a separation upon desperate intollerable principles and reasons, and a separation upon some weak but tollerable ones. These must not be con…ounded. The Novatians were tolerated and loved by the sober Catholicks, Emperours and others; when many others were otherwise dealt with.
If any good Christians in zeal against sin, do erroneously think that an undisciplin'd Church should be forsaken, that they may exercise the discipline among themselves which Christ hath appointed; It is the duty of that Church to take this warning to repent of her neglect of discipline, and then to love and honour those th…t have (though upon mistake perhaps) withdrawn. But if when they have occasioned the withdrawing by their corruption, they will prosecute the persons with hatred, revising, slanders, contempt or persecution, and continue impenitent in their own corruption, they will be the far greater Schismaticks, and err a more pernicious errour.