thereof, Christ ruleth in the midst of enemies P, maketh them to be at peace with his people, maketh Ægyptians to enrich them', Moabites and Philistines shelter them, Syrians bring gifts unto them, and the enemies that afflicted them, bend, and profess to serve them ". Now for the application of this doctrine, it teacheth us, 1. That Christian policy and order, prudent, meek, religious government, is a very great blessing to the church of God, and greatly to be desired: because thereby unity and concord are preserved among the sheep of Christ, and, as by a fence or hedge, they are secured from the irruption of wolves, who would devour and make a prey of them; and all leaven and chaff which would sour the lump, and corrupt the corn, is purged out, and fanned away. When the unruly are admonished, and the weak strengthened, and the feeble-minded comforted, and heretics rejected, and disorderly walkers made ashamed; this greatly tendeth both to the honour, and to the health, and safety, of the church of God. 2. It teacheth us to take heed of those who cause divisions and breaches contrary to the doctrine of Christ which we have received; who rend his seamless coat, and make their tongues and their pens bellows to blow up the flames of contention among Christians; biting, tearing, and devouring one another; of whom the apostle saith, "That they serve not the Lord Jesus, but their own belly." It is noted by Epiphanius as a wicked speech of Marcion the heretic, "Ego findam ecclesiam vestram, et mittam fissuram in ipsam in æternum"." And the apostle maketh the ground of contentions and divisions in the church to be fleshly lusts.' (1 Cor. iii. 3. Gal. v. 20) It is a great sin to make an undue separation from the true church of Christ: a sin against the communion of saints, from which the separation is made ;-a sin against the unity and peace of the church, which we all ought, with our utmost endeavours, to preserve: a sin against the spirit of Christ, which is thereby grieved, as the soul is pained by the wounds which are made upon the body: a sin against the honour of Christ, whose name is thereby exposed to contempt and reproach: a sin against a man's own edification, who thereby cutteth himself off from the means of grace, and exposeth himself to the danger of heresy and contagion. And therefore those holy fathers, St. Cyprian, Austin, and Optatus, used to set forth the atrocity and danger of this sin, by the greatness and strangeness of the judgement, wherewith God punished it in Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and those who adhered unto them, whom the earth opened her mouth to swallow up; and by the sore judgement upon the ten tribes, in their total rejection, for separating from the house of David, and the true worship of God in Jerusalem. We should therefore take special heed of departing from the true church of Christ, where his word is truly taught, and where Christ the foundation is held, for every infirmity or blemish which we may conceive to be upon it. For though the apostle reproved many corruptions and abuses in the church of Corinth, yet he blameth the contentions, emulations, breaches, and divisions, which were therein. (1 Cor. i. 11, 12, 13) Of this sort were the Novatians, Luciferians, Donatists, Audæans in the ancient church; who, for laxness of discipline, or other corruptions which they apprehended to be therein, did withdraw and keep themselves apart from their communion. To such as these it was a good speech of Optatus, "We have one faith, one baptism, one conversation;" we read the same divine testaments; we are of the same sheep-fold; we have been washed and wrought together; we are parts of the same garment, but ripped one from another. 'Sartura necessaria est;' there wants nothing but that we be sewed up and reunited again.' I shall not here enter upon any polemical discourse to vindicate our own, or other reformed churches, from that heavy charge of schism, wherewith pontificians implead us, for having forsaken the communion of the Roman church. Our learned writers have thus stated the case: 1. That it is the cause, and not the separation, that makes the schismatic. They who gave the cause, for which it is e Cyprian Ep. 65. sect. 2. Ep. 76. sect. 5. de unitat. Eccles. sect. 16. bAug. Ep. 162. et lib. 2. de Baptismo, c. 6. c Optatus cont. Parmen. lib. 1. d Contra Parmen. 1. 3. • B. Jewel's Defence, par. 5. p. 505, 506, 507.Mornay, of the Church, c. 10. p. 358.—D. Crakenthorp against Spalat. c. 79. B. White against Fisher, p. 107.-B. Laud. Dr. Chillingworth. c. 5. sect. 30, 35, 38, 51, sect. 3. c. 82. sect. 7. c. 85. sect. 1. Confer. sect. 21. p. 133, 142, 143. 59, 74. necessary to separate, are the authors of the schism: for where there is a necessary cause to separate, we are commanded by God so to do: (2 Cor. vi. 17. Rev. xviii. 4) as we find when Jeroboam had corrupted the worship of God, the priests, and Levites, and out of all the tribes such as set their hearts to seek the Lord, departed from his idolatry. (2 Chron. xi. 13, 16, and xxx. 11) For certainly one particular church may reform itself, though another will not. 2. That they gave the cause of this breach and separation, and that upon several accounts. 1. By many and great corruptions in doctrine and worship, whereby they themselves departed from the primitive purity, which errors and corruptions they obtruded and imposed upon us as conditions of their communion. 2. By great encroachments and usurpations upon the just power of princes, and liberties of churches. 3. By tyranny in excommunications, persecutions, and fiery inquisitions, frighting and thrusting us from their communion. 4. By refusing to be reclaimed, or healed of these distempers, in that they challenge a peculiar infallibility, and a power to hold all other churches under their laws and dominations.i 3. That this was not a secession from the Catholic church, nor from the primitive church (unto whose judgement we are willing to appeal), but only from the corruptions, faction, and tyranny of a particular church,—with whom notwithstanding we retain a unity still, in all points of doctrine and worship, which they hold consonant to the will of God in his word revealed; disowning nothing but those errors and additions, which they have superinduced upon the institutions of Christ. Lastly, That this is not to set up a new church', which f B. Morton Prot. Appeal, 1. 4. c. 2. sect. 9, 37, 38. B. Usher's Serm. on Eph. iv. 13. p. 7. B. White, against Fisher. p. 106. B. Laud, Confer. sect. 21. p. 135. et sect. 25, p. 192. B. Bramhall Church of England defended, p. 13, 14, 66, 181, 367, 390. Chillingworth, c. 5. sect. 25, 31, 33, 35, 40, 50, 51, 59, 62, 64, 65, 68, 69, 78, 106. 8 B. Bramhall's Defence passim.-F. Mason, de Minister. Angl. 1. 2. c. 10.-B. Laud. sect. 25. Num. 10. 11. h B. White, against Fisher, p. 106, 107.-Chillingworth, c. 5. 61. 96. B. White, p. 106.— Jewel's B. Laud sect. 24. p. 156. et sect. 35. p. 297.-Chillingworth sect. 53. Defence, p. 499.-Mornuy,of the Church, c. 10.-Crakenth. c. 79. sect. 4.-Morton. Appeal. 1. 4. c. 2. sect. 10. 43.-Gerard. Loc. de Eccles. sect. 180.-B. Laud. sect. 25. n. 18. p. 192.-Chillingworth, sect. 32, 45, 47, 94. 1 Gerard ubi Nor was never in the world before; for the church is the same: now as formerly, only sick and overgrown with corruptions then; healed, weeded, purged, and reformed now. were there wanting, in former ages, after those corruptions prevailed in the church, many witnesses who appeared for the truths then suppressed, greatly complained of the contrary abuses, and earnestly desired a reformation;—as, under the defection of the ten tribes, the Lord had seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal, (1 Kings xix. 18) and a remnant according to the election of grace, under the apostasy of the Jews. (Rom. xi. 1, 5) 3. We should be exhorted to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; not to judge, despise, or condemn one another, but mutually to edify where we agree, and to endeavour reconciliation wherein we differ; to be perfectly joined together, if it be possible, in the same judgement; to think, and to speak the same things; however, to mind the same end, to intend the same common salvation, to hold fast the same end, to pursue the same interest; and however we go in several paths of the same road, yet still to have our faces towards the same city. Arguments to persuade unto this holy unity, to obey the government of Christ under his staff Bands, are many and weighty. 1. A Contrario. Consider the unity and confederacy of Satan, and all his instruments against Christ and his church: for our Saviour telleth us, 66 that Satan is divided against himself." (Matth. xii. 26) We read of the gates of hell; whereby we understand the united powers and counsels of the kingdom of darkness against the kingdom of Christ :-and as devils, so the wicked of the world join hand in hand against the church; they consult together with one consent", and are confederate against it; they will lay down their own private enmities to combine against Christ, as Pilate and Herod did. Fas est et ab hoste doceri.' If enemies unite to destroy the church, should not we supra. sect. 179. B. Usher's Serm. p. 27, 31.-Mornay, of the Church. c. 9. p. 324. c. 10. p. 358.-Crakenth. c. 85. sect. 2.—Field, of the Church. 1. 3. c. 8, 12, et Appendix. p. 3. sect. 2.-B. Laud, Epist. Dedicat. to the King. p. 16.—Chilling. sect. 91.—Carleton, Consens. loc. de Scriptura. ep. 1. p. 9, 14.—Dr. Jo. Whiteway, sect. 50. m Matth. xvi. 18. "Psalm ii. 2. lxxxiii. 3, 8. Acts iv. 27. VOL. V. • Luke xxiii. 12. Isai, ix. 21. unite to preserve it? especially considering what a grave historian noteth, "That, in the cause of religion, every subdivision is a strong weapon in the hand of the contrary party.”P Our intestine mutinies and distempers, do the enemy's work for him. He may stand still, and please himself, to see us bite and devour one another. Again; consider the turpitude, deformity, and danger of schisms and divisions,-which are the same in a politick or ecclesiastical body, as in the natural; wherein whatsoever mangleth and separateth part from part, doth greatly weaken and deform the whole. They gratify the common enemy. Hoc Ithacus velit.' They grieve the Holy Spirit, as wounds in the body natural put the soul to pain. They dishonour the holy gospel, which is a gospel of peace. They loosen and weaken the interest of religion; for when we bite and devour one another, we are in danger to be consumed one of another. They minister occasion to profane spirits to turn atheists, and cast off all religion as a thing of uncertainty, wherein the professors thereof themselves know not how to agree. They have their foundation in carnal and sensual interests, as pride, revenge, discontent, covetousness, and other inordinate lusts, and therefore are reckoned by the apostle amongst the fruits of the flesh.''If we examine the rise and original of many of the antient heresies, whereby the peace of the church hath been torn and mangled, we shall find that some carnal end or other, as ambition, animosity, discontent, or other the like sins, have been the basis on which they were reared. It was the speech of a graceless son to his mother, "Transferam me in partem Donati, et bibam sanguinem tuum';"-as St. Austin saith, "Mater omnium hæreticorum superbia."" It is a very true speech of Baronius, "Ex officina Sardanapali prodire consueverunt hæresium sectatores." * 2. A Necessario.' From the necessity of this excellent duty and this is a twofold necessity; 'Necessitas præcepti,' because it is commanded, "Have peace one with another." (Mark ix. 50) Necessitas medii,' because peace and P History of the Council of Trent, p. 49. Hoc consilio Julianus inter Christianos dissidia fovebat, ut minore negotio debellarentur, si prius bello inter se conflictati fuissent. Baron. Ann. 392. sect. 285. r Gal. 9 Gal. v. 15. Vid, Danai t Aug. ep. 168. * Baron. An. 474. seet. 6. v. 20. 1 Cor. iii. 3, 4. Rom. xvi. 17, 18. 1 Tim. vi. 3, 4, 5. |