The Kingdom of God Among Men, Tract 1 · Chapter 6
CHAP. VI.
The right Administration of Ecclesiastical discipline.
THe Ministers of Christ, and Stewards of the mysteries of God are Pastors of the Church, and Pastoral authority includes both teaching and ruling, and implies the peoples subjection in the Lord to their Doctrine and discipline. To bereave the Church of discipline, is to leave it unfurnished of that means, which is necessary to the preservation of all orderly Socities of mankind. It is to turn the Garden of the Lord, by plucking up the fence thereof into a Common or Wilderness.
The power intrinsecal to this Office, is not secular and coercive by temporal penalties, but purely Spiritual; which is in the name of Christ, and by authority from him the chief Pastor to watch over the Flock, to encourage them that live conformably to the Gospel by the consolations thereof, and to warn them that walk disorderly, and if any continue obstinate therein, to declare them unworthy of Church-Communion and Christian converse, and to require the faithful to have no fellowship with them, to the intent that they may be humbled and reformed.
As the Discipline of all Societies is to be regulated by their true interest and and chief scope, so is this of the Church of God. Now the Christian Church looks mainly to the honour of Christ, and the glory of Gods grace in him, and to the Salvation of men, for which ends it was ordained. And consequently its true interest lies in the conservation and augmentation of true Christianity or the power of godliness: but that Church interest which is elsewhere fixed, and levelled to an other mark, appertains to a carnal and worldly State set up in the room, and pretence of this Spiritual Society.
The Churches true and proper excellency lies not in worldly splendor, opulency and power; nor in outward rites and formal unity; nor in the stability and amplitude of a meer external State: but in the inward light and life, in the unfained faith and love, in the purity and Spiritual unity of believers, and in the security and advancement of this internal State, and of the external State in order to the internal. Wherefore the right end of discipline is not to promote temporal glory, and opinions and formalities thereunto subservient, but the Apostolick faith and worship, and the regeneration of the professors thereof, and their sincere devotion, Godly unity, Sobriety, Righteousness, Brotherly-kindness, and common Charity, and all the vital parts of Christianity: and to keep and cast out Heresie, Superstition, Profaness, Unrighteousness and all wicked error and practice, that tends to frustrate the designs of Christs Gospel: as also to prevent and remedy the causless tearing and renting of Churches, and those alienations and animosities among Christians, that proceed only from the wills and lusts of men. And the management hereof to this right end, is of far greater consequence, than any scrupulosity or preciseness about its external form and order. Nay, if an external order could be proved to be primitive and Apostolical, and were perverted and abused to inforce corrupt doctrines, scandalous and insnaring inventions and impositions; and in a Ceremonial strictness to indulge real profaness, and discourage true Godliness, it were no other then the mystery of a carnal state under a Spiritual name, having a form of godliness, but denying and suppressing the power thereof.
The right end of Discipline being such as hath been declared, it follows that its proper work is to incourage Godliness, and to disgrace open sin. Accordingly being rightly managed it admonisheth the unruly, casts out the obstinate, and restores the penitent. About these things it is active, watchfull and vigorous. What severity it hath, it exerciseth in correcting real scandals and gross breaches of Gods Law, and in maintaining the Churches peace against those that cause divisions, and offences contrary to the Doctrine which we have received, that is the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles.
But it careth little for those matters, wherein the life and power of Religion, and the Churches peace and edification is unconcerned. Much less doth it seek to quench godly zeal, and to hinder the necessary means of the increase of true godliness, or to afflict peaceable and pious Christians by any needless rigors.