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ART. Church, to separate the good from the bad, to warn the XXXIII. unruly, and to put from among them wicked persons. There are several considerations that shew not only the lawfulness, but the necessity of such a practice.

First, that the contagion of an ill example and of bad practices may not spread too far to the corrupting of others: Evil communications corrupt good manners. Their 2 Tim. ii. doctrines will eat and spread as a gangrene: and therefore, in order to the preserving the purity of those, who are not yet corrupted, it may be necessary to note such persons, and 2 Thess. iii. to have no company with them.

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Jude 23. 1 Cor. v. 2, 5, 7.

2 Cor. ii. 1, 2, 3.

1 Tim. i. 20.

A second reason relates to the persons themselves, that are so separated, that they may be ashamed; that they may be thus pulled out of the fire, by the terror of such a proceeding, which ought to be done by mourning over them, lamenting their sins, and praying for them.

The Apostles made use even of those extraordinary powers that were given to them, for this end. St. Paul delivered Hymenæus and Alexander unto Satan, that they might learn not to blaspheme. And he ordered that the incestuous person at Corinth should be delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Certainly a vicious indulgence to sinners is an encouragement to them to live in sin; whereas when others about them try all methods for their recovery, and mourn for those sins in which they do perhaps glory, and do upon that withdraw themselves from all communication with them, both in spirituals, and as much as may be in temporals likewise; this is one of the last means that can be used, in order to the reclaiming of them.

Another consideration is the peace and the honour of Gal. v. 12. the society. St. Paul wished that they were cut off that troubled the Churches: great care ought to be taken, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed, and to give no occasion to the enemies of our faith to reproach us; as if we designed to make parties, to promote our own interests, and to turn religion to a faction; excusing such as adhere to us in other things, though they should break out into the most scandalous violations of the greatest of all the commandments of God. Such a behaviour towards excommunicated persons, would also have this further good effect; it would give great authority to that sentence, and fill men's minds with the awe of it, which must be taken off, when it is observed that men converse familiarly with those that are under it.

These rules are all founded upon the principles of so

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cieties, which as they associate upon some common designs, ART. so, in order to the pursuing those, must have a power to XXXII. separate themselves from those who depart from them.

In this matter there are extremes of both hands to be

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avoided some have thought, that because the Apostles have, in general, declared such persons to be accursed, or under an Anathema, who preach another Gospel, and such as 1 Cor. xvi. love not the Lord Jesus, to be Anathema Maranatha, which is generally understood to be a total cutting off, never to be admitted till the Lord comes; that therefore the Church may still put men under an Anathema, for holding such unsound doctrines, as they think make the Gospel to become another, in part at least, if not in whole; and that she may thereupon, in imitation of another practice of the Apostles, deliver them over unto Satan, casting them out of the protection of Christ, and abandoning them to the Devil: reckoning that the cutting them off from the body of Christ is really the exposing them to the Devil, who goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. But with what authority soever the Apostles might, upon so great a matter, as the changing the Gospel, or the not loving the Lord Jesus, denounce an Anathema, yet the applying this which they used so seldom, and upon such great occasions, to every opinion, after a decision is made in it, as it has carried on the notion of the infallibility of the Church, so it has laid a foundation for much uncharitableness, and many animosities: it has widened breaches, and made them incurable. And unless it is certain that the Church which has so decreed cannot err, it is a bold assuming of an authority to which no fallible body of men can have a right. That delivery unto Satan was visibly an act of a miraculous power lodged with the Apostles: for as they struck some blind or dead, so they had an authority of letting loose evil spirits on some to haunt and terrify, or to punish and plague them, that a desperate evil might be cured by an extreme remedy. And therefore the Apostles never reckon this among the standing functions of the Church; nor do they give any charge or directions about it. They used it themselves, and but seldom. It is true, that St. Paul being carried by a just zeal against the scandal, which the incestuous person at Corinth had cast upon the Christian religion, did adjudge him to this severe degree of censure: but he judged it, and did only order the Corinthians to publish it, as coming from him, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ: that so the thing might become the more public, and that the effects of it might be the more conspicuous. The

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ART. primitive Church, that being nearest the fountain, did XXXIII. best understand the nature of church-power, and the ef

fects of her censures, thought of nothing, in this matter, but of denying to suffer apostates, or rather scandalous persons, to mix with the rest in the Sacrament, or in the other parts of worship. They admitted them upon the profession of their repentance, by an imposition of hands, to share in some of the more general parts of the worship; and even in these they stood by themselves, and at a distance from the rest: and when they had passed through several degrees in that state of mourning, they were by steps received back again to the communion of the Church. This agrees well with all that was said formerly, concerning the nature and the ends of church-power: 2 Cor. x. 8. which was given for edification, and not for destruction. This is suitable to the designs of the Gospel, both for preserving the society pure, and for reclaiming those who are otherwise like to be carried away by the Devil in his snare. This is to admonish sinners as brethren, and not to use them as enemies: whereas the other method looks like a power that designs destruction, rather than edification, especially when the secular arm is called in, and that princes are required, under the penalties of deposition, and losing their dominions, to extirpate and destroy, and that by the cruelest sort of death, all those whom the Church doth so anathematize.

We do not deny but that the form of denouncing or declaring Anathemas against heresies and heretics is very ancient. It grew to be a form expressing horror, and was applied to the dead as well as to the living. It was understood to be a cutting such persons off from the communion of the Church: if they were still alive, they were not admitted to any act of worship; if they were dead, their names were not to be read at the altar among those who were then commemorated. But as heat about opinions increased, and some lesser matters grew to be more valued than the weightier things both of Law and Gospel, so the adding Anathemas to every point, in which men differed from one another, grew to be a common practice, and swelled up at last to such a pitch, that, in the Council of Trent, a whole Body of Divinity was put into Canons, and an Anathema was fastened to every one of them. The delivering to Satan was made the common form of excommunication; an act of apostolical authority being made a precedent for the standing practice of the Church. Great subtilties were also set on foot concerning the force and effect of church-censures the straining this

matter too high, has given occasion to extremes on the ART. other hand. If a man is condemned as an heretic, for XXXIII. that which is no heresy, but is an article founded on the word of God, his conscience is not at all concerned in any such censure: great modesty and decency ought indeed to be shewed by private persons, when they dispute against public decisions: but unless the Church is infallible, none can be bound to implicit faith, or blind submission. Therefore an Anathema, ill founded, cannot hurt him against whom it is thundered. If the doctrine, upon which the censures and denunciations of the Church are grounded, is true, and if it appears so to him, that sets himself against it, he who thus despises the pastors of the Church, despises Christ in whose name, and by whose authority, they are acting. But if he is still under convictions of his being in the right, when he is indeed in the wrong, then he is in a state of ignorance, and his sins are sins of ignorance, and they will be judged by that God, who knows the sincerity of all men's hearts, and sees into their secretest thoughts, how far the ignorance is wilful and affected, and how far it is sincere and invincible.

And as for those censures, that are founded upon the proofs that are made of certain facts that are scandalous, either the person on whom they are charged knows himself to be really guilty of them, or that he is wronged, either by the witnesses, or the pastors and judges: if he is indeed guilty, he ought to consider such censures as the medicinal provisions of the Church against sin: he ought to submit to them, and to such rebukes and admonitions, to such public confessions, and other acts of self-abasement, by which he may be recovered out of the snare of the Devil; 2 Tim. ii. and may repair the public scandal that he has brought 26. upon the profession of Christianity, and recover the honour of it, which he has blemished, as far as lies in him.

This is the submitting to those that are over him, and the Heb. xiii. obeying them as those that watch for his soul, and that must 17. give an account of it. But if, on the other hand, any such person is run down by falsehood and calumny, he must submit to that dispensation of God's providence, that has suffered such a load to be laid upon him: he must not betray his integrity; he ought to commit his way to God, and to bear his burden patiently. Such a censure ought not at all to give him too deep an inward concern for he is sure it is ill founded, and therefore it can have no effect upon his conscience. God, who knows his innocence, will acquit him, though all the world should condemn him. He must indeed submit to that separation from the

ART. body of Christians: but he is safe in his secret appeals to XXXIII. God, who sees not as man sees, but judges righteous judgment: and such a censure as this cannot be bound in heaven.

In the pronouncing the censures of the Church, great care and tenderness ought to be used; for men are not to be rashly cut off from the body of Christ; nothing but a wilful obstinacy in sin, and a deliberate contempt of the rules and orders of the Church, can justify this extremity. Scandalous sinners may be brought under the medicinal cure of the Church, and the offender may be denied all the privileges of Christians, till he has repaired the offence that he has given. Here another extreme has been run into by men, who, being jealous of the tyranny of the Church of Rome, have thought that the world could not be safe from that, unless all church-power were destroyed: they have thought that the ecclesiastical order is a body of men bound by their office to preach the Gospel, and to offer the Sacraments to all Christians; but that as the Gospel is a doctrine equally offered to all, in which every man must take the particular application of the promises, the comforts, and the terrors of it to himself, as he will answer it to God; so they imagine, that the Sacraments are in the same promiscuous manner to be offered to all persons; and that every man is to try and examine himself, and so to partake of them; but that the Clergy have no authority to deny them to any person, or to put marks of distinction or of infamy on men: and that therefore the ancient discipline of the Church did arise out of a mutual compromise of Christians, who, in times of misery and persecution, submitted to such rules, as seemed necessary in that state of things; but that now all the authority that the Church hath, is founded only on the law of the land, and is still subject to it. So that what changes or alterations are appointed by the civil authority must take place, in bar to any laws and customs of the Church, how ancient or how universal soever they may be.

In answer to this, it is not to be denied, but that the degrees and extent of this authority, the methods and the management of it, were at first framed by common consent in the times of persecution, the Laity, who embraced the Christian religion, were to the Church instead of the magistrate. The whole concerns of religion were supported and protected by them; and this gave them a natural right to be consulted with in all the decisions of the Church. The Brethren were called to join with the

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