14. Conclusion.
Conclusion.
R eader, I displease my own disposition as well as others in the answering of these arguments. But when I had read them, my conscience would not suffer me to see many thousand good people so misguided who have not skill themselves to discern the fallacies, and by silence to betray them.
Let it be noted that it is not all, nor the greatest objections I confess which I here deal with, having done it oft elsewhere; but these twelve militate so much against all the liturgies in the world as well as ours that I durst not pass them by in silence.
1. Some object against the faults, which they supposed to be very great in diverse by-offices, baptizing, confirmation, the Lord's-Supper-impositions, burial circumstances and forms: but these are nothing to the common worship of the Church on the Lord's Days.
2. Some object against the ministers as usurpers, being chosen by [civil] patrons and not consented to by the flocks. But this is nothing against them that are consented to by acceptance, though not by election. 1
3. Some object the heinousness of the sins of ministers' conformity as being deliberate covenanting to (I am loath to name them), and so the command, "from such turn away" [2 Tim. 3:5], with such "not to eat" [1
Cor. 5:11], and the case of Martial and Basilides in Cyprian, and that of miracle-working Martin [of Tours] (which on another occasion I have mentioned). But these sins were never so surely proved as great as alleged:
1. Every minister cannot be proved guilty of the worst part.
2. And the matter of a sin may be heinous, and yet ignorance take off much of the guilt, as it did of Paul 's persecution [1 Tim. 1:13]. An unlawful war in which thousands were murdered and countries ruined is materially one of the greatest sins in the world; and yet woe to the abundance of princes and people if ignorance excuse it not and if we must renounce communion with all countries and persons that are guilty of it.
3. And when whole countries and Churches are in sin which we cannot cure and have no government of, the case of commanded communion much differs from that which is with single offenders, and that which is in our power to choose or refuse.
4. Some object that the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth canons have excommunicated us already. Therefore we separate not, but they cast us out.
Answer: Let them that are concerned in those canons defend them if they can and justify themselves, for it's past my skill; but we are not bound
(though excommunicated) to execute them on ourselves: Let others do it if it must be done.
The End
1. Gillespie and Rutherford, amongst other reformed divines, rightly taught that a permissive, implicit consent in elections, or otherwise, whether temporally concurrent or even possibly ex post facto, seals agreements. Gillespie, A Treatise of Miscellaneous Questions (1649), ch.
2, https://books.google.com/books?id=QONhAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA4#v=onepage&q&f=false in The Presbyterian's Armoury (Edinburgh: Ogle, 1846), vol. 2; An Assertion of the Government of the Church of Scotland... (Edinburgh: Bryson, 1641), pt.
2, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A42758.0001.001/1:5.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext , p. 120;
Rutherford, Lex Rex, https://archive.org/details/lexrexorlawprinc00ruth/page/2/mode/2up? view=theater , https://archive.org/details/lexrexorlawprinc00ruth/page/34/mode/2up?view=theater
, https://archive.org/details/lexrexorlawprinc00ruth/page/36/mode/2up?view=theater
, https://archive.org/details/lexrexorlawprinc00ruth/page/46/mode/2up?view=theater
, https://archive.org/details/lexrexorlawprinc00ruth/page/188/mode/2up?view=theater ; The Due
Right of Presbyteries… (London, 1644), pt.
1, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A57969.0001.001/1:6.8?rgn=div2;view=fulltext , p. 207; pt.
2, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A57969.0001.001/1:6.13.1?rgn=div3;view=fulltext , p. 272; A Survey of the Survey of that Sum of Church Discipline Penned by Mr. Thomas Hooker… (London,
1658), bk. 2, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A57981.0001.001/1:4.9?rgn=div2;view=fulltext , pp.
257, 259; bk. 3, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A57981.0001.001/1:5.3?rgn=div2;view=fulltext , p. 307.