the reasons which we have already stated, let these few be seriously considered :

1. How sad a sign do we make it to be in our people, to live in the wilful omission of any known duty? And shall we do so year after year, nay, all our days? If excuses will take off the danger of this sign, what man will not find them as well as you ?

Can slothRemember,

2. We plainly manifest laziness and sloth, if not unfaithfulness, in the work of Christ. I speak from experience. It was laziness that kept me so long from this duty. It is indeed a troublesome and painful work, and such as calls for some self-denial, because it will bring upon us the displeasure of the wicked. But dare we prefer our own ease and quietness, or the love and peace of wicked men, before our service to Christ our Master? ful servants expect a good reward? brethren, that we of this county have thus promised before God, in the second article of our agreement: "We agree and resolve, by God's help, that so far as God doth make known our duty to us, we will faithfully endeavour to discharge it, and will not desist through any fears or losses in our estates, or the frowns and displeasure of men, or any the like carnal inducements whatsoever." I pray you study this promise, and compare your performance with it. And do not think that you were ensnared by thus engaging; for God's law hath laid an obligation on you to the very same duty, before your engagement did it. Here is nothing but what others are bound to as well as you.

3. The neglect of discipline hath a strong tendency to delude immortal souls, by making those think they are Christians that are not; while they are per

mitted to live with the character of such, and are not separated by God's ordinance: and it may make the scandalous think their sin a tolerable thing, which is so tolerated by the pastors of the church.

4. We corrupt Christianity itself in the eyes of the world; and do our part to make them believe that Christ is no more for holiness than Satan, or that the Christian religion exacteth holiness no more than the false religions of the world. For if the holy and unholy are all permitted to be sheep of the same fold, without any means being used to separate them, we defame the Redeemer, as if he were guilty of it, and as if this were the nature of his precepts.

5. We keep up separation, by permitting the worst to be uncensured in our churches, so that many honest Christians think they are obliged to withdraw from us. I have spoken with some members of the separated churches, who were moderate men, and have argued with them against separation; and they have assured me, that they were of the Presbyterian judgment, or had nothing to say against it, but they joined themselves to other churches from pure necessity, thinking that discipline, being an ordinance of Christ, must be used by all that can, and, therefore, they durst no longer live without it when they might have it; and they could find no Presbyterian churches that executed discipline, as they wrote for it: and they told me, that they separated only pro tempore, till the Presbyterians will use discipline, and then they will willingly return to them again.-I confess I was sorry that such persons had any such occasion to withdraw from us. It is not keeping offenders from the sacrament that will excuse us from the further

exercise of discipline, while they are members of our churches.

6. We bring the wrath of God upon ourselves and our congregations, and so blast the fruit of our labours. If the angel of the-church at Thyatira was reproved for suffering seducers in the church, we may be reproved, on the same ground, for suffering open, scandalous, impenitent sinners.

And what are the hinderances now that keep the ministers from the execution of that discipline, for which they have so much contended? The great reason, as far as I can learn, is, 'The difficulty of the work, and the trouble or suffering that we are like to incur by it. We cannot publicly reprehend one sinner, but he will storm at it, and bear us a deadly malice. We can prevail with very few to make a public profession of true repentance. If we proceed to excommunicate them, they will be raging mad against us. If we should deal as God requireth us, with all the obstinate sinners in our parish or congregation, there would be no living among them ; we should be so hated of all, that, as our lives would be uncomfortable, so our labours would become unprofitable; for men would not hear us when they are possessed with a hatred of us: therefore duty ceaseth to be duty to us, because the hurt that would follow would be greater than the good.'

These are the great reasons for the non-execution of discipline, together with the great labour that private admonition of each offender would cost us. Now, to all this I answer,

1. Are not these reasons as valid against Christianity itself, especially in some times and places,

us.

as they are against discipline? Christ came not to send peace on earth; we shall have his peace, but not the world's; for he hath told us that it will hate Might not Bradford, or Hooper, or any that were burned in Queen Mary's days, have alleged more than all this against the duty of an open profession of the Reformation? Might they not have said, It will make us hated, and it will expose our very lives to the flames? He is concluded by Christ to be no Christian, who hateth not all that he hath, and his own life, for him; and yet we can take the hazard of worldly loss as a reason against his work ! What is it but hypocrisy to shrink from sufferings, and to take up none but safe and easy works, and make ourselves believe that the rest are no duties? Indeed this is the common way of escaping suffering, to neglect the duty that would expose us to it. If we did our duty faithfully, ministers would find the same lot among professed Christians, as their predecessors have done among Pagans and other infidels. But if you cannot suffer for Christ, why did you put your hand to his plough? Why did you not first sit down and count the cost? This makes the

ministerial work so unfaithfully executed, because it is so carnally undertaken; men enter upon it as a life of ease, and honour, and respectability, and they resolve to attain their ends, and have what they expected by right or wrong. They looked not for hatred and suffering, and they will avoid it, though by the avoiding of their work.

2. As for the making yourselves incapable of doing them good, I answer, That reason is as valid against plain preaching, reproof, or any other duty

which wicked men will hate us for. God will bless his own ordinances to do good, or else he would not have appointed them. If you publicly admonish, and rebuke the scandalous, and call them to repentance, and cast out the obstinate, you may do good to many whom you reprove, and possibly to the excommunicated themselves. I am at least sure it is God's means, and it is his last means. It is therefore perverse to neglect the last means, lest we frustrate the foregoing means, when the last are not to be used but upon supposition that the former were all frustrated before. However, those within and those without may receive good by it, if the offender should receive none; and God will have the honour, when his church is manifestly distinguished from the world, and the heirs of heaven and hell are not totally confounded, nor the world made to think that Christ and Satan do but contend for superiority, and that they have the like inclination to holiness or to sin.

3. But yet let me tell you, that there are not such difficulties in the way, nor is discipline such a useless thing as you imagine. I bless God for the small trial which I have made of it myself. I can speak by experience that it is not in vain, nor are the hazards of it such as may excuse our neglect.

I confess, if I had my will, that man should be ejected as a negligent pastor that will not rule his people by discipline, as well as he is ejected as a negligent preacher that will not preach: for ruling is as essential a part of the ministerial office as preaching.

I shall proceed no further in these confessions,