A Defense of the Principles of Love, Part 2 · Exception 28 – Exception 29
EXCEPT. XXVIII. Answered. When I counselled men to [note and avoid the sins and bad examples of religious men, and to study what are the common errors of the religious party where we live, that we may take a special care to escape them.] Here, 1. You impute this to my enmity against strictness.
Answ. 1. I thank you for all your admonitions;Whether we should mark and avoid the sins of Christians in the time and places where we live▪ but, truly, Brother, you quite mistake our controversie through your book; which is about Dividing the Churches, and destroying Love, and not whether my heart be malicious, wicked, or to be Anathematized! What if I be worse than Iudas? What's that to our case in hand? 2. And time will teach you, that sin is not godly strictness nor honesty; and that he that was against your sin, might be for your strictness and your honesty.
2. You question whether [any man that dares write so, is serious.] This needs no answer.
3. You [believe such counsel was never given to Christians before.] Answ. 1. Alas, that any Minister or Christian should be so unexperienced! Would you not only reproach the non-Conformists, but all Protestants, and all Christians? as if none either of their Ministers or Neighbours ever counselled men to watch and escape the sins which the Religious part are guilty of, in the time and Countrey where they are? The Jews were before Christs time the holy peculiar people of God: And did you never read, 1 Cor. 10. 1. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. It's too long to transcribe. Did you never read Heb. 3 and 4? Nor read of the sins, of the Polygamy, the putting away of wives, and other faults of the better sort, and the generality of the Jews? Did you never read how common the high place-worship was even under godly Kings? Nor yet how the Law was neglected till the book was almost unknown? Did you never read of the sins of Noah, Lot and his Family, Abraham, Isaac, Iacob, Moses, Aaron, and his sons; the company of Corah, David, Solomon, Peter, &c? Did you never read of Christs rebuke of his Disciples for their hardness of heart, their ignorance, their striving who should be greatest? And how he took that occasion to warn them by the comparison of a child, and by his washing and wiping of their feet? Nor yet of his rebuking their common expectation of a temporal Kingdom? Are not the errors of the several Religious Sects reproved by the Ancient Writers, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius, Augustine, &c. Did you never read any writing counselling men to avoid the errors and sins of the Donatists, nor the Novatians, the Monothelites, the Nestorians, Eutychians, &c? The errour of the Religious sort among the Lutherans, is Consubstantiation, Church-Images, Ceremonies, &c. The error of the Religious Calvinists is too much neglect of the Lords day: What those of the Arminians and the Anabaptists, and many other sorts are, I leave to you. Did you never read any man that warned others to avoid these sins and errors? Did you never find in the Antimonians writings, that the stricter sort of good people went too far in pressing humiliation, tears and degrees of sorrow, so as to be too dark and sparing in pressing the doctrine of Grace and Love: (And it was partly true;) Did you never hear or read, how superstition, …remetical and monastical lives, excessive fastings and austerities, were caused by the strictest people? Nor yet of touch not, taste not, handle not? Nor of some lawful things feigned to be unlawful? Nor yet that ever Paul wrote to the Corinthians, Galatians, &c. And Christ, by Iohn, to six of the Asian Churches, to know and avoid the sins of Christians, together with the hereticks among them? Nor yet that Paul said, Act. 20. Of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away Disciples after them? Nor yet that he said, I have no man like minded, (as Timothy,) for all seek their own things, and not the things that are Iesus Christs? Nor that all forsook him at his appearing before Nero? Nor that all his Disciples forsook Christ and fled? Nor that Paul said that the Ministers of Satan transformed themselves into Ministers of Righteousness? In a word, that beside all other sins, the carnal siding and divisions which Paul reproved the Corinthians for, most ages have among the stricter sort been guilty of? Would you teach your hearers to put their doctrines or practices to a Major Vote of Professors? Do you think we know the sincere from hypocrites? Or that either hypocrites or sincere are without sin? Or that we must take no warning by good mens falls? Must we all do over again, all the faults that Religious men have done these 30 years? You make my heart grieve, Brother, to think that there should be a man among us, that thinketh the Church must be built up by such doctrines, and such means as yours?
You say [We are commanded not to conform our selves to the World.] Answ. Nor to sinning Christians neither; [But first (say you) to suppose that the Religious party have generally some common errors among them, and then to advise that we should carefully study to escape them; This counsel we think Mr. Baxter Whether the Religious sort may not have some common errour to be avoided?may be the father of; nor do we envy him the honour of it.]
Answ. 1. Have the Religious sort among the Greeks, Abassines, Nestorians, Iacobites, Armenians, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Arminians, &c. no common error among them?
2. Are you for more Infallibility and Perfection than the Papists themselves?
3. Will any Christian besides you, that is sober, deny that we should study to escape them?
4. Did you ever read any sober Writer of another mind?
I beseech you take heed of this pernicious flattery of Professors: And I beseech all the Religious that love their souls, to take heed of being ensnared by such flattery, into a proud, impenitent state.
And in the grief of my heart here, I must say to the people that which I expect this brother should impute to enmity to godliness. You see by this manner of teaching what you have brought your selves and your Teachers to? I have oft grieved to observe, that many look that Preachers should make it their business to flatter them, and extoll them in the highest praises, and to prick others as deep, and vilifie them as much as may be; and this is the preaching that they are best pleased with. I know that the precious and the vile must be widely differenced, and he is no Preacher of the Gospel that doth not do it: But when the Preacher must notifie our party as precious, and cast dung on those as vile, whom uncharitable men without proof think vile, and must hide all our sins, as if to touch them were to reproach Religion it self, and must aggravate theirs, even the greatest that differ from us, or else be a flatterer and temporizer; O that such knew but what manner of spirit they are of!
You adde that I make my advice ridiculous, by forgetting that I bid men agree with the Universal Church. Answ. I said expresly, [In the necessary Articles of Faith,] And must we therefore agree with them in all their sins and errors? Or may I not say, [separate not from most or any Christians as to things true and necessary,] and yet [avoid their sins,] and [he followers of them as they are of Christ.] Alas, poor Christians, that ever you should either be instructed at this rate? or yet have need to be instructed against it?
EXCEPT. XXIX. Answered. Why, Brother, did you never till now hear either Familists, Socinians, or the grosser Quakers (such as Major Cobbet writes against, and Smith) called by the name of [a Sect,] Had you no greater thing to quarrel with? You shall call them how you will. Your anger I pass by.