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and invincible prejudices, that have taken hold on the minds of men by a secret diffusion of the poison of that grand apostacy. It were well, then, that men would not be so confident, nor easily persuaded, that they presently know how all things ought to be, because they know how they would have some things to be, which suit their temper and interest. Men may easily perhaps see, or think they see, what they do not like, and cry out schism and separation, but if they would a little consider what ought to be in this whole matter, according to the mind of God, and what evidences they have of the grounds and principles, whereon they condemn others, it might make them yet swift to hear, but slow to speak, and take off from the number of teachers among us; some are ready to think, that all that join not with them are schismatics; and they are so, because they go not with them, and other reason they have none; being unable to give any solid foundation of what they profess;' what the cause of unity among the people of God hath suffered from this sort of men, is not easily to be expressed. 2. In all differences about religion to drive them to their rise and spring, and to consider them as stated originally, will ease us of much trouble and labour. Perhaps many of them will not appear so formidable, as they are represented. He that sees a great river, is not instantly to conclude that all the water in it comes from its first rise and spring, the addition of many brooks, showers, and landfloods, have perhaps swelled it to the condition wherein it is; every difference in religion is not to be thought to be as big at its rise, as it appears to be when it hath passed through many generations, and hath received additions and aggravations from the disputings and contendings of men, on the one hand and the other engaged. What a flood of abominations doth this business of schism seem to be, as rolling down to us through the writings of Cyprian, Austin, and Optatus of old; the schoolmen, decrees of popish councils, with the contrivances of some among ourselves, concerned to keep up the swelled notion of it! Go to its rise, and you will find it to be, though bad enough, yet quite another thing, than what by the prejudices accruing by the addition of so many generations, it is now generally represented to

The great maxim, 'to the law and to the testimony,' truly improved, would quickly cure all our distempers: in the mean time, let us bless God, that though our outward man may possibly be disposed of, according to the apprehension that others have of what we do, or are, our consciences are concerned only in what he hath appointed. How some men may prevail against us, before whom we must stand or fall according to their corrupt notion of schism, we know not; the rule of our consciences, in this, as in all other things, is eternal and unchangeable. Whilst I have an uncontrollable faithful witness, that I transgress no limits prescribed to me in the word, that I do not willingly break, or dissolve any unity of the institution of Jesus Christ, my mind, as to this thing, is filled with perfect peace. Blessed be God, that hath reserved the sole sovereignty of our consciences in his hand, and not in the least parcelled it out to any of the sons of men, whose tender mercies being oftentimes cruelty itself, they would perhaps destroy the soul also, when they do so to the body, seeing they stay there, as our Saviour witnesseth, because they can proceed no farther. Here then I profess to rest, in this doth my conscience acquiesce; whilst I have any comfortable persuasion, on grounds infallible, that I hold the head, and that I am by faith a member of the mystical body of Christ, whilst I make profession of all the necessary saving truths of the gospel, whilst I disturb not the peace of that particular church, whereof by my own consent I am a member, nor do raise up, nor continue in any causeless differences with them, or any of them, with whom I walk in the fellowship and order of the gospel, whilst I labour to exercise faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ, and love towards all the saints, I do keep the unity which is of the appointment of Christ; and let men say, from principles utterly foreign to the gospel, what they please or can to the contrary, I am no schismatic.

3. Perhaps the discovery which hath been made, how little we are many of us concerned in that, which, having mutually charged it on one another, hath been the greatest ball of strife, and most effectual engine of difference, and distance between us, may be a means to reconcile in love

them that truly fear God, though engaged in several ways as to some particulars. I confess I have not any great hope of much success on this account; for let principles and ways be made as evident, as if he that wrote them carried the sun in his hand; yet, whilst men are forestalled by prejudices, and have their affections and spirits engaged suitably thereunto, no great alteration in their minds and ways, on the clearest conviction whatever, is to be expected. All our hearts are in the hand of God; and our expectations of what he hath promised are to be proportioned to what he can effect, not to what of outward means we see to be used.

4. To conclude; what vain janglings men are endlessly engaged in, who will lay their own false hypotheses and preconceptions, as a ground of farther procedure, is also in part evident, by what hath been delivered. Hence, for instance, is that doubty dispute in the world, whether a schismatic doth belong to the church, or no? which for the most part is determined in the negative; when it is impossible a man should be so, but by virtue of his being a church member. A church is that alienum solum,' wherein that evil dwelleth. The most of the inquiries that are made, and disputed on, whether this or that sort of men belong to the church or no? are of the same value and import. He belongs to the church catholic, who is united to Christ by the Spirit, and none other. And he belongs to the church general visible, who makes profession of the faith of the gospel, and destroys it not by any thing of a just inconsistency with the belief of it. And he belongs to a particular church, who having been in a due order joined thereunto, hath neither voluntarily deserted it, nor been judicially ejected out of it. Thus one may be a member of the church catholic, who is no member of the general visible church, nor of a particular church, as an elect infant, sanctified from the womb, dying before baptism; and one may be a member of the church general visible, who is no member of the church catholic, nor of a particular church, as a man making profession of the true faith, yet not united to Christ by the Spirit, nor joined to any particular visible church; or he may be also of the catholic church, and not

of a particular; as also of a particular church, and not of the catholic. And a man may be, every true believer walking orderly, ordinarily is, a member of the church of Christ in every sense insisted on; of the catholic church, by a union with Christ the head; of the visible general church, by his profession of the faith; and of a particular congregation, by his voluntary associating himself therewith, according to the will and appointment of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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A REVIEW

OF THE

TRUE NATURE OF SCHISM,

WITH

A VINDICATION

OF THE

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES IN ENGLAND

FROM THE IMPUTATION THEREOF;
UNJUSTLY CHARGED ON THEM BY MR. D. CAWDREY,
PREACHER OF THE WORD,

AT BILLING, IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.

Δοῦλον Κυρίου οὐ δεῖ μάχεθαι.—2 Tim. ii. 24.

Δεῖ τὸν ἐπίσκοπον ἀνέγκλητον εἶναι, ὡς Θεοῦ οἰκονόμον, μὴ αὐθάδη, μὴ ὀργίλον, μὴ πάροινον, μὴ πλήκτην, μὴ αἰσχροκερδή,-Τιτ. i. 7.

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