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fulness of stature in JESUS CHRIST;" and confequently, that a conclufion, drawn either from the neglect or abuse of thofe fervices ftands on too weak ground to justify the conduct of any member of the church, as a reasonable being, in turning his back on her communion. Whereas the plain member of the church, in confequence of the falfe diftinction here made between the national church and your true church, the fallacy of which he may be unable to discover, is led to expect fomething of which he is not in poffeffion; and thereby to break away from that order and government, by which the church, as a fociety, was defigned to be held together.

The text which you have brought from scripture to establish your idea of the church, as laid down in your 199th page, appears to me most inapplicable to your purpose. "The primitive church continued ftedfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers." The churches you plead for are those focieties of Chriftians which do not continue in the Apostles' fellowship, having broken away from communion with an Apoftolic church; therefore the character of such societies does not correfpond fo much with that of the primitive church, as with that which ST. JUDE has given

of those Christians, who " separated themselves, not having the Spirit." JUDE 9.

Your quotation from HOOKER appears to be not better chofen. HOOKER is fpeaking of those focieties of Chriftians, to which the names of churches are given; which have (to make ufe of his words) fome "properties common" to them, as Chriftian focieties;" and of these properties "one of the very chiefeft is ecclefiaftical polity." And, that the reader might be at no lofs for the fenfe in which he was to be understood, HOOKER fpecifies the churches of Rome, Corinth, Ephefus, and England, as those public Christian focieties to which he gave the name of churches; churches founded upon the regular Apoftolic plan; not those self-conftituted churches which you have in view, and which HOOKER would have been one of the laft men to countenance.

Concerned, every time I take up your publication, to find myself obliged to differ from you in fo many points, I am still more forry to fay, that of all the books I ever met with, written by a member of the church, the one you have put into my hand appears to me most calculated to confound, what our SAVIOUR meant to diftinguish;' I mean, his church

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as a visible fociety, under a regularly-appointed goEcclefiaftical government is uniformly represented by you as a matter of little confideration. "In circumftantials you think we may fafely differ, without any fchifm in the body." Page 196. On the other hand, I think that government is that provident inftitution, that, by keeping the body together, was defigned to be a preservative against schifm. Government is the cement of every fociety. Take away government, and fociety becomes a rope of fand. Every man, when left to himself, is for having a government of his own, of which, of courfe, he is to be dictator; and no fociety, either religious or political, can be in a worfe condition, than when every man does what seemeth right in his own eyes. This was the cafe in Ifrael, when MICAH fet up his falfe worship. Our SAVIOUR, knowing what was in man, did not leave his church in that wild state, to which the imaginations of fome would reduce it; by fuppofing every man at liberty to choose his own religion, and make his own priest. But from the tenour of your book the reader is led to conclude, that fome new plan for directing the affairs of CHRIST'S church, preferable to that delivered by our SAVIOUR to his Apostles, had been found out; that, instead

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of any particular form of government, it had been judged more adviseable to leave Christians at large to model churches according to their respective fancies. To this end the old established marks, by which the church, as a visible fociety, has been ever distinguished in the world, are either kept out of fight, or represented as things of no moment; às circumftantials, which in no wife affect the effence of religion; (to make ufe of your language, page 196) "rather as the garb with which the body is clothed, than as the body itself."

It shall be allowed, that the Apoftolical government is the garb, with which the church, as CHRIST's body, is clothed; but if it be a garb that keeps the body, warm and comfortable, and the members of it in a proper ftate to discharge their feveral functions, and at the fame time preferves the body from those accidents, by which its very existence might otherwise be destroyed; it is a garb, which every wife man will be thankful to God for providing, and none but madmen will throw away.

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To separate the form of godlinefs, therefore, from the power of it, by placing the bishop of the church in oppofition to the collection of believers, by which you mean the government of the church in oppofi

tion to the doctrine of it; is unneceffarily to put afunder what God joined together, and thereby to lead your reader to a falfe conclufion upon a very important fubject.

This mode of writing ftrikes me as totally inappropriate to the subject to which it is applied; for it implies the denial of what is not denied. The importance of the doctrine of the church is not queftioned, nor any comparison between that and the government of it attempted. At the fame time it is to be remembered, that obedience to fpiritual governors conftitutes a part, and a confpicuous part, of that doctrine which the fcripture exprefsly enjoins. It is fruitless, therefore, to enquire which of two acts of duty be the more acceptable, when both are enjoined by the fame authority, and confequently equally indifpenfible; and certainly dangerous to form that comparison between two indifpenfible duties, which, by giving preference to the one, may tend to the depreciation of the other. But there is another still manifeft defect in this mode of writing, which thus appears to balance as it were one part of revelation against another, which is this; that it infenfibly operates with the generality of readers, to the exclufion of obedience to ecclefiaftical

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