A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics

Answ. The appearance of evil which is evil indeed, must be always avoided; but that appearance of evil which is indeed good, must not be avoided. We must not forsake our duty lest we seem to sin: that were but to prefer hypocrisy before sincerity, and to avoid appearances more than realities. The omission of a duty is a real sin; and that must not be done to avoid a seeming sin. And whom doth it appear so to? If it appear evil to the blind or prejudiced, it is their eyes that must be cured; but if it appear so to the wise, then it is like it is evil indeed: for a wise man should not judge that to be evil that is not. But I confess that in a case that is altogether indifferent, even the mistakes of the ignorant may oblige us to forbear: but the worship of God must not be so forborne. It is an irrational fancy to think that you must be uncivil, by contradicting, or covering your heads, or doing something offensive to the congregation, when any thing is said or done which you disallow. Your presence signifieth your consent to all that you profess, even to worship God according to his word, and not to all the human imperfections that are there expressed.

Direct. XIII. Distinguish carefully between your personal private duties, and the duty of the pastor or church with which you must concur. And do not think, that if the church or pastor do not their duty, that you are bound to do it for them. To cast out an obstinate, impenitent sinner by sentence from the communion of the church, is the pastor's or church's duty, and not yours, unless in concurrence or subserviency to the church. Therefore if it be not done, inquire whether you did your duty towards it: if you did, the sin is none of yours; for it is not in your power to cast out all that are unworthy from the church. But private familiarity is in your power to refuse; and with such know not to eat.

Direct. XIV. Take the measure of your accidental duties more from the good or hurt of the church, or of many, than from the immediate good or hurt that cometh to yourself. You are not to take that for the station of your duty, which you feel to be most to the commodity of your souls; but that in which you may do God most service. If the service of God for the good of many, require you to stay with a weaker minister, and defective administrations, you will find in the end that this was not only the place of your duty, but also of your benefit: for your life is in God's hands, and all your comforts; and that is the best way to your peace and happiness, in which you are most pleasing unto God, and have his promise of most acceptance and grace. I know the least advantage to the soul must be preferred before all earthly riches; but not before the public good. Yea, that way will prove most advantageous to us, in which we exercise most obedience.

Direct. XV. Take heed of suffering prejudice and fancy to go for reason, and raise in your minds unjustifiable distastes of any way or mode of worship. It is wonderful to see what fancy and prejudice can do! Get once a hard opinion of a thing, and your judgments will make light of all that is said for it, and will see nothing that should reconcile you to it. Partiality will carry you away from equity and truth. Abundance of things appear now false and evil, to men that once imagine them to be so, which would seem harmless, if not laudable, if they were tried by a mind that is clear from prejudice.

Direct. XVI. Judge not of doctrines and worship by persons, but rather of persons by their doctrine and worship (together with their lives). The world is all prone to be carried by respect to persons. I confess where any thing is to be taken upon trust, we must rather trust the intelligent, experienced, honest, and credible, than the ignorant and incredible; but where the word of God must be our rule, it is perverse to judge of things by the persons that hold them or oppose them: sometimes a bad man may be in the right, and a good man in the wrong. Try the way of the worst men before you reject it (in disputable things). And try the opinions and way of the best and wisest before you venture to receive them.

Direct. XVII. Enslave not yourselves to any party of men, so as to be over-desirous to please them, nor over-fearful of their censure. Have a respect to all the rest of the world as well as them. Most men that once engage themselves in a party, do think their honour and interest is involved with them, and that they stand or fall with the favour of their party, and therefore make them (before they are aware) the masters of their consciences.

Direct. XVIII. Regard more the judgment of aged, ripe, experienced men, that have seen the fruits of the various courses of professors of religion, than of the young, unripe, unexperienced, hot-headed sort. Zeal is of great use to execute the resolutions of a well-informed man: and the zeal of others is very useful to warm the hearts of such as do converse with them. But when it comes to matter of judgment once, to decide a case of difficulty, aged experience hath far the advantage; and in no cases more, than in those where peace and concord are concerned, where rash, hot-headed youth is very prone to precipitant courses, which must be afterwards repented of.

Direct. XIX. When fervent, self-conceited people would carry down all by censoriousness and passion, it is time for the pastors and the aged and riper sort of christians openly to rebuke them, and appear against them, and stand their ground, and not to comply with the misguided sort to escape their censures. Nothing hath more caused schisms in the church (except the pride and ambition of the clergy) than that the riper and more judicious sort of people, together with the ministers themselves, have been so loth to lie under the bitter censures of the unexperienced, younger, hotter sort; and to avoid such censures and keep in with them, they have followed those whom they should have led, and have been drawn quite beyond their own understandings. God hath made wisdom to be the guide of the church, and zeal to follow and diligently execute the commands of wisdom. Let ignorant, well meaning people censure you as bitterly as they please, yet keep your ground, and be not so proud or weak as to prefer their good esteem before their benefit, and before the pleasing of God. Sin not against your knowledge to escape the censure of the ignorant. If you do, God will make those men your scourges whom you so much overvalued: and they shall prove to their spiritual fathers as cockered children (like Absalom) do to their natural fathers, and perhaps be the breaking of your hearts. But if the pastors and the riper, experienced christians will stand their ground, and stick together, and rebuke the exorbitancies of the censorious younger ones, they will maintain the credit of the gospel, and keep the truth, and the church's peace, and the hotspurs will in time either repent and be sober, or be shamed and disabled to do much hurt.

Direct. XX. Take heed how you let loose your zeal against the pastors of the church, lest you bring their persons and next their office into contempt, and so break the bonds of the church's unity and peace. There is no more hope of maintaining the church's unity and concord without the ministry, than of keeping the strength or unity of the members without the nerves. If these nerves be weak or labour of a convulsion or other disease, it is curing and strengthening them, and not the cutting them asunder, that must prove to the welfare and safety of the body. Meddle with the faults of the ministry only so far as tendeth to a cure, of them or of the church, but not to bring them into disgrace, and weaken their interest in the people, and disable them from doing good. Abhor that proud, rebellious spirit, that is prone to set up itself against the officers of Christ, and under pretence of greater wisdom or holiness, to bring their guides into contempt; and is picking quarrels with them behind their back, to make them a scorn or odious to the hearers. Indeed a minister of Satan that doth more harm in the church than good, must be so detected as may best disable him from doing harm. But he that doth more good than hurt, must so be dissuaded from the hurt as not to be disabled from the good. "My brethren, be not many masters, (or teachers,) knowing that ye shall receive the greater condemnation," James iii. 1.

Direct. XXI. Look more with an eye of charity on what is good in others and their worship of God, than with an eye of malice to carp at what appeareth evil. Some men have such distempered eyes, that they can see almost nothing but faultiness in any thing of another party which they look at; envy and faction make them carp at every word and every gesture: and they make no conscience of aggravating every failing, and making idolatry of every mistake in worship, and making heresy or blasphemy of every mistake in judgment, and making apostasy of every fall; nay, perhaps the truth itself shall have no better a representation. As Dr. H. More well noteth, It would do much more good in the world, if all parties were forwarder to find out and commend what is good in the doctrine and worship of all that differ from them. This would win them to hearken to reforming advice, and would keep up the credit of the common truths and duties of religion in the world, when this envious snarling at all that others do, doth tend to bring the world to atheism, and banish all reverence of religion, together with christian charity, from the earth.

Direct. XXII. Keep not strange to those from whom you differ, but be acquainted with them, and placidly hear what they have to say for themselves: or else converse with them in christian love in all those duties in which you are agreed, and this (if you never talk of your differences) will do much to reconcile you in all the rest.171 It is the common way of division, uncharitableness, yea, and cruelty at last, to receive hard reports of those that differ from us behind their backs, and to believe and aggravate all, and proceed to detraction and contention at a distance, and in the dark, and never be familiarly acquainted with them at all. There is something in the apprehension of places, and persons, and things, by the eye-sight, which no reports are able to match: and so there is that satisfaction about men by familiar acquaintance, which we cannot attain by hearsay from any, how judicious soever. All factions commonly converse together, and seek no familiar converse with others, but believe them to be any thing that is naught, and then report them to be so, before they ever knew the persons of whom they speak. I am persuaded this is one of the greatest feeders of enmity, uncharitableness, contention, and slanders in the world. I speak it upon great observation and experience, I have seldom heard any man bitterly oppose the servants of Christ, but either grossly wicked, or those that never had much acquaintance with them; and I see commonly, how bitter soever men were before, when once they converse together, and grow acquainted, they are more reconciled. The reason is, partly because they find less evil and more good in one another than before they did believe to be in them; and partly because uncharitableness and malice, being an ugly monster, is bolder at a distance, but ashamed of itself before your face: and therefore the pens of the champions of malice are usually more bitter than their tongues when they speak to you face to face. Of all the furious adversaries that have raged against me in the latter part of my life, I remember not one enemy that I have, or ever had, that was ever familiar or acquainted with me; and I have myself heard ill reports of many, which by personal acquaintance I have found to be all false. Keep together, and either silence your differences, or gently debate them; yea, rather chide it out, then withdraw asunder. Familiarity feedeth love and unity.

Direct. XXIII. Whenever you look at any corruption in the church, look also at the contrary extreme, and see and avoid the danger of one as well as of the other. Be sure every error and church corruption hath its extreme, and if you do not see it, and the danger of it, you are the liker to run into it. Look well on both sides if you would be safe.

Direct. XXIV. Worship God yourselves in the purest manner, and under the most edifying ministry that lawfully you can attain; but be not too forward to condemn others that reach not to your measure, or attain not so much happiness; and deny not personal communion sometimes, with churches that are more blemished, and less fit for communion. And when you cannot join locally with them, let them have the communion of your hearts, in faith and charity, and prayer for each other. I fear not here openly to tell the world, that if I were turned loose to my own liberty, I would ordinarily worship God in that manner that I thought most pure and agreeable to his will and word; but I would sometimes go to the churches of other christians, that were fit for christian communion, if there were such about me; sometimes to the independents, sometimes to the moderate anabaptists, sometimes to such as had a liturgy as faulty as that of the Greek or the Ethiopian churches; to show by my practice, what communion my heart hath with them all.

Direct. XXV. Take heed that you interest not religion or the church in civil differences.172 This error hath divided and ruined many famous churches, and most injuriously made the holy truth and worship of God to be a reproach and infamy among selfish, partial, carnal men. When princes and states fall out among themselves, they will needs draw the ministers to their sides, and then one side will certainly condemn them, and call them all that self-interest and malice can invent; and commonly when the controversy is only in point of law or politics, it is religion that bears the blame of all: and the differences of lawyers and statesmen must be charged upon divines, that the devil may be able to make them useless, as to the good of all that party that is against them, and may make religion itself be called rebellion. And oh that God would maintain the peace of kingdoms; and kings and subjects were all lovers of peace, the rather because the differences in states do cause so commonly divisions in the church. It would make a man wonder (and a lover of history to lament) to observe in the differences between the pope and Henry the fourth, and other emperors, how the historians are divided, one half commending him that the other half condemneth; and how the bishops and churches were one half for the pope, and the other for the emperor; and one half still accounted rebels or schismatics by the other, though they were all of one religion. It is more to ruin the church, than kingdoms, that Satan laboureth so much to kindle wars, and breed civil differences in the world; and therefore let him that loveth the church's peace, be an obedient subject, and an enemy of sedition, and a lover and defender of the civil peace and government in the place that God hath set him in: for this is pleasing unto God.

I know there are some, that with too bloody and calamitous success, have in most ages given other kind of directions for the extirpation of error, heresy, and schism, than I have here given:173 but God hath still caused the most wise, and holy, and charitable, and experienced christians to bear their testimony against them. And he hath ever caused their way of cruelty to turn to their own shame: and though (like treasons and robberies) it seem for the time present to serve their turn, it is bitterness in the end, and leaveth a stinking memorial of their names and actions to posterity. And the treatises of reconcilers, (such as our Halls, Ushers, Bergius, Burroughs, and many other,) by the delectable savour of unity and charity, are sweet and acceptable to prudent and peaceable persons, though usually unsuccessful with the violent that needed them.

Besides the forecited witness of Sir Francis Bacon, &c. I will here add one of the most ancient, and one or two of this age, whom the contrary-minded do mention with the greatest honour. Justin Martyr, Dial. cum Tryph. doth at large give his judgment, that a judaizing christian, who thinketh it best to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, be suffered in his opinion and practice, and admitted to the communion and privileges of the church, and loved as one that may be saved in that way, so be it he do not make it his business to persuade others to his way, and teach it as necessary to salvation or communion; for such he doth condemn.

King James by the pen of Is. Casaubon telleth Cardinal du Perron, that "His Majesty thinketh, that for concord there is no nearer way, than diligently to separate things necessary from the unnecessary, and to bestow all our labour that we may agree in the things necessary, and that in things unnecessary there may be place given for christian liberty. The king calleth these things simply necessary, which either the word of God expressly commandeth to be believed or done, or which the ancient church did gather from the word of God by necessary consequence. – "

Grotius Annot. in Matt. xiii. 41, is so full and large upon it, that I must entreat the reader to peruse his own words; where by arguments and authority he vehemently rebuketh the spirit of fury, cruelty, and uncharitableness, which under pretence of government, discipline, and zeal, denieth that liberty and forbearance, even to heretics and offenders, (much more when to the faithful ministers of Christ,) which human frailty hath made necessary, and Christ hath commanded his servants to grant. Concluding, Ubi solitudinem fecerant, pacem appellabant (as Tertul.). Et his omnibus obtendi solet studium divini nominis; sed plerumque obtendi tantum. Nam Deus dedignatur coacta servitia; nec placere illi potest quod vi humana exprimitur. Reipsa solent qui id faciunt non nomini divino, sed suis honoribus, suis commodis et tranquillitati consulere; quod scit ille qui mentes introspicit. Atque ita fit, ut lolium evellatur cum tritico, innocentes cum nocentibus: immo ut triticum sæpe sumatur pro lolio: non enim tam bene agitur cum rebus humanis, ut semper meliora pluribus aut validioribus placeant: sed ut in grege taurus, ita inter homines, qui viribus est editior, imbecilliorem cædit: et iidem sæpe quæ pati se quærebantur, mox in alios audent. – Lege cætera.

Again, I entreat those that would escape the sin of schism, to read seriously the foresaid Treatises of peacemakers; especially Bishop Hall's "Peacemaker;" Bishop Usher's "Sermon on Ephes. iv. 3;" and Mr. Jeremy Burroughs' "Irenicum: " to which I may add Mr. Stillingfleet's "Irenicum," for the hot contenders about church government; though I believe all the substance of church order to be of divine institution: and Jac. Acontii "Stratag. Satanæ."

And it must be carefully noted, that one way by which Satan tempteth men into church divisions, is by an over-vehement zeal against dividers; and so he would draw the rulers of the world, under pretence of a zeal for unity and peace, to raise persecutions against all that are guilty of any excess of scrupulosity about church communion, or of any principles or practices which a little swerve from true catholicism: and so by the cruelty of their penalties, silencing ministers, and vexing the people, they much increase the divisions which they would heal: for when Satan cannot do his work barefaced and directly, he useth to be the forwardest in seeming to do good, and to take part with Christ, and truth, and godliness; and then his way is to over-do: he will be over-orthodox, and over-godly, and over-peaceable, that he hug the church and truth to death, by his too hard embracements. As in families and neighbourhoods, some cross words must be passed over if we would have peace; and he that for every provoking, unpeaceable word of another, will raise a storm, shall be himself the most unpeaceable: so is it in the church; he that cannot bear with the weaknesses of the younger sort of christians, who are too much inclined by their zeal against sin, to dividing ways, but will presently let fly at them as schismatics, and make them odious, and excommunicate or punish them according to his wrath, shall increase the zeal and the number of dividers, and prove himself the greatest divider.

And by this violence and destroying zeal of orthodox rulers, against the real faults and infirmities of some separating, well meaning men, a far greater number of heterodox rulers are encouraged to persecute the most learned, sober, and peaceable ministers, and the most godly and faithful of their subjects, who dare not conform to all their unrighteous edicts, and ecclesiastical laws, in things forbidden by the law of Christ: and all this is done upon pretence of promoting unity and peace, and suppressing heresy and schism. And so persecution becometh the devil's engine to keep out the gospel and godliness from the infidel world, and to keep them under in the christian world.

Sed tamen sive illud (Origenis de Redemptione futura diabolorum) error est, ut ego sentio; sive hæresis ut putatur, non solum reprimi non potuit multis animadversionibus sacerdotum, sed nequaquam tam late se potuisset effundere, nisi contentione crevisset: inquit Posthumianus in Sulp. Severi Dialog. i.

Sed non fuit animus ibi consistere, ubi recens fraternæ cladis fervebat invidia. Nam etsi fortasse videantur parere episcopis debuisse, non ob hanc tamen causam multitudinem tantam sub Christi confessione viventem, præsertim ab episcopis oportuisset affligi. Id. ibid. speaking of the bishops provoking the secular power to afflict the monks of Alexandria for defending Origen.

When the emperor Constantius would by violence force the orthodox to hold communion with the Arians, he did but make the breach the wider. Read Lucifer Calaritanus de non conveniendo cum hæreticis (in Biblioth. Patr. tom. ix. p. 1045, &c.). The emperor saith, that the orthodox were enemies to peace, and unity, and brotherly love, and that he was resolved to have unity and peace in his dominions: therefore he imprisoned the orthodox and banished them. Propterea odis nos, quia concilium vestrum malignantium execremur; propterea in exilio sumus; propterea in carcere necamur; propterea nobis solis prohibetur conspectus; idcirco reclusi in tenebras custodimur ingenti custodia: hujus rei causa nullus ad nos visendos admittitur hominum; quia videlicet noluerimus vobiscum impiis sacrilegis ullam scelerum vestrorum habere societatem. Ibid. p. 1050. Which stirred up this bishop in particular to go too far from free communion even with the penitent Arians, and heap up more scriptures against that communion which the emperor commanded, than any had done before. Nobis dicebas, Pacem volo fieri; et in corde tuo manens adversarius religionis nostræ, cogitabat per te facere nos idololatras, &c. p. 1051. Consilia vestra contra suam prolata ecclesiam reprobat Deus: nec enim potest odire populum suum, hæreditatem suam, et amare vos filios pestilentiæ, vos persecutores servorum suorum: dixisti, Facite pacem cum episcopis sectæ meæ Arrianis, et estote in unum; et dicit Dei Spiritus, vias impiorum noli exequi, neque æmuleris viam iniquorum. &c. – Dulce quibusdam videtur, quo tibi regi in amicitias jungantur suscipiendo hæresin tuam: sed amarius felle sensuri cum tecum in perpetuum cœperint in perpetua gehenna sentire, qui tecum esse deligerunt, tunc dicturi, Væ nobis, qui Constantium Imperatorem Deo præposuerimus. Abundance more he writeth to prove that the emperor being a heretic, they must have no communion with him or his bishops. And when the emperor complained hereupon, that they wronged and dishonoured him whom they should honour, the said Lucifer wrote his next book, de non parcendo in Deum delinquentibus; which beginneth, Superatum te, Imperator, a Dei servis ex omni cum conspexisses parte, dixisti passum te ac pati a nobis contra monita sacrarum Scripturarum contumeliam: dicis nos insolentes extitisse, circa te quem honorari decuerit. Si quisquam Dei cultorum pepercit apostatis, sint vera quæ dicis de nobis; and so he heapeth up as many texts for rough dealing with offending kings; I give this one instance to show the fruits of violence, as pretended for peace and unity.

Of the persecutions of the faithful in most ages, even by professed christians themselves, and God's disowning that spirit of cruelty by his special providences, all church history maketh mention: and how the names of such persecuting hypocrites have stunk in the nostrils of all sober men when their tragedy was fully acted and understood. Especially the poor churches called Waldenses, Picards, and Albigenses, have felt the grievousest effects of this tyranny, and yet have the testimony of the best and wisest men, to have been the purest and the nearest to the apostolic simplicity in all the world; and the memory of their enemies and persecutors is an abhorrence to the sons of charity and peace. Read Lasitius and Commenius of their discipline, and Bishop Usher de Eccles. succes. et statu. I will recite one notable passage mentioned by Thuanus and Commenius, the one Hist. lib. xxxvi. the other de bono Unit. et Ord. Discipl. p. 59. Maximilian, that good and moderate emperor, being one day in the coach with Joh. Crato only, (his chief physician and a learned protestant), lamenting the divisions of christians, asked Crato, which sort he thought came nearest to the apostolic simplicity: he answered, He thought that honour belonged to the brethren called Picards. The emperor said, He thought so too: which Crato acquainting them with, encouraged them to dedicate to him a book of part of their devotions; for the year before God had thus marvellously saved him from having a hand in their blood. Joachimus a Nova Domo, chancellor of Bohemia, went to Vienna, and gave the emperor no rest, till he had procured him to subscribe a mandate for the reviving of a former persecuting mandate against them: having got his commission, and passing just out of the gates of Vienna, as he was upon the bridge over the Danubius, the bridge brake under him, and he and all his retinue fell into that great and terrible water; and all were drowned except six horsemen, and one young nobleman, who, seeing his lord in the waves, catched hold of his gold chain, and held him till some fishermen came in boats, but found him dead, and his box with the commission sunk past recovery. This nobleman who survived, was sensible of God's judgment, and turned to the brethren in religion, and the mandate was no further prosecuted. (Such another story Bishop Usher was wont to tell how Ireland was saved from persecution in Queen Mary's days.)