-- Tit. 3. The Evil of the sin of Censoriousness
you have a falling out with; for it is two to one but you will wrong him through this selfishness. 2. Avoid passion; which blindeth the judgment. 3. Avoid faction; which maketh you judge of all men as they agree or disagree with your opinions, or your side or party. 4.
Avoid too hasty belief of censures, and rebuke them. 5. Hear every man speak for himself before you censure him, if it be possible, and the case be not notorious.
Direct. XII. 'Keep still upon your mind a just and deep apprehension of the malignity of this sin of rash censuring.' It is of the greatest consequence to the mortifying of any sin, what apprehensions of it are upon the mind. If religious persons apprehended the odiousness of this as much as they do of swearing, drunkenness, fornication, &c., they would as carefully avoid it: therefore I shall shew you the malignity of this sin.
Tit. 3. The Evil of the Sin of Censoriousness 1. It is an usurpation of God's prerogative, who is the judge of all the world; it is a stepping up into his judgment-seat, and undertaking his work, as if you said, 'I will be God as to this action;' and if he be called the antichrist who usurpeth the office of Christ, to be the universal monarch and head of the church, you may imagine what he doth, who (though but in one point) doth set himself in the place of God.
2. They that usurp not God's part in judgment, yet ordinarily usurp the part of the magistrate or pastors of the church. As when mistaken censorious Christians refuse to come to the sacrament of communion, because many persons are there whom they judge to be ungodly, what do they but usurp the office of the pastors of the church? To whom the keys are committed for admission and exclusion; and so are the appointed judges of that case. The duty of private members is but to admonish the offender first secretly, and then before witnesses, and to tell the church if he repent not, and humbly to tell the pastors of their duty, if they neglect it; and when
this is done, they have discharged their part, and must no more excommunicate men themselves, than they must hang thieves when the magistrate doth neglect to hang them.
3. Censoriousness signifieth the absence or decay of love; which inclineth men to think evil, and judge the worst, and aggravate infirmities, and overlook or extenuate any good that is in others. And there is least grace where there is least love.
4. It sheweth also much want of self-acquaintance, and such heartemployment as the sincerest Christians are taken up with. And it sheweth much want of Christian humility and sense of your own infirmities and badness; and much prevalency of pride and selfconceitedness: if you knew how ignorant you are, you would not be so peremptory in judging; and if you knew how bad you are, you would not be so forward to condemn your neighbours. So that here is together the effect of much self-estrangedness, hypocrisy and pride: did you ever well consider the mind of Christ, when he bid them that accused the adulterous woman, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." Certainly adultery was a heinous crime, and to be punished with death, and Christ was no patron of uncleanness; but he knew that it was an hypocritical sort of persons whom he spoke to, who were busy in judging others rather than themselves. Have you studied his words against rash censurers; "And why beholdest thou the mote in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and behold a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite! first cast out the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote which is in thy brother's eye." I know well that impenitent sinners do use to pervert all these words of Christ, against any that would bring them to repentance for their sin; and account all men rash censurers, who would make them acquainted with their unsanctified hearts and lives. But it is not their abuse of Scripture, which will justify our overpassing it with neglect: Christ spake it not for nothing; and it must be studied by his disciples.
5. Censoriousness is injustice, in that the censurers would not be so censured themselves: you will say, 'Yes, if we were as bad, and did deserve it:' but though you have not that same fault, have you no other? And are you willing to have it aggravated, and be thus rashly judged? You do not as you would be done by: yea, commonly censurers are guilty of false judging; and whilst they take things hastily upon trust, and stay not to hear men speak for themselves, or to inquire throughly into the cause, they commonly condemn the innocent; and call good evil, and put light for darkness; and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him, when God hath cursed such with a woe.
6. And false censuring is the proper work of the devil, the accuser of the brethren; "who accuseth them before God, day and night;" and Christians should not bear his image, nor do his work.
7. Censoriousness is contrary to the nature and office of Jesus Christ; he came to pardon sin, and cover the infirmities of his servants, and to cast them behind his back, and into the depth of the sea, and to bury them in his grave; and it is the censurer's work to rake them up, and to make them seem more and greater than they are, and to bring them into the open light.
8. Censoriousness causeth uncharitableness and sinful separations in the censurers; when they have conceited their brethren to be worse than they are, they must then reproach them or have no communion with them, and avoid them as too bad for the company of such as they. Or when they have usurped the pastor's work in judging, they begin the execution by sinful separation.
9. Censoriousness is an infectious sin, which easily taketh with the younger and prouder sort of Christians, and so setteth them on vilifying others; and at this little gap there entereth all uncharitableness, backbitings, revilings, church-divisions and sects, yea, and too often rebellious and bloody wars at last.
10. Censoriousness is a sore temptation to them that are censured, either to contemn such as censure them, and go on the other hand too far from them; or else to comply with the errors and sinful humours of the censurers, and to strain their consciences to keep pace with the censorious.
And here I must leave it on record to posterity for their warning, that the great and lamentable actions, changes and calamities of this age, have arisen, next to gross impiety, from this sin of censoriousness producing these two contrary effects, and thereby dividing men into two contrary parties. The younger sort of religious people, and the more ignorant, and many women, having more zeal than judgment, placed too much of their religion in a sharp opposition to all ceremonies, formalities and opinions which they thought unlawful; and were much inclined to schism and unjust separations upon that account; and therefore censured such things as antichristian, and those that used them as superstitious and temporizers; and no man's learning, piety, wisdom or laboriousness in the ministry could save him from these sharp, reproachful censures. Hereupon one party had not humility and patience enough to endure to be so judged of; nor love and tenderness enough for such peevish Christians, to bear with them in pity, as parents do with froward infants; but because these professed holiness and zeal, even holiness and zeal were brought under suspicion for their sakes; and they were taken to be persons intolerable, as unfit to lie in any building, and unmeet to submit to Christian government; and therefore meet to be used accordingly.
Another sort were so wearied with the profaneness and ungodliness of the vulgar rabble, and saw so few that were judiciously religious, that they thought it their duty to love and cherish the zeal and piety of their censorious weak ones, and to bear patiently with their frowardness, till ripeness and experience cured them, (and so far they were right.) And because they thought that they could do them no good, if they once lost their interest in them (and were also themselves too impatient of their censure), some of them seemed (to please them) to be more of their opinion than they were; and more of them forbore to reprove their petulance, but silently suffered them to