QUESTION XI. 123 waded to yield and drop their own candidates, which might be much more easily done, if the competitors were of the same opinion. SECT. VI. Inconvenience IV. Such a principle or test of communion, might in some fewyears quite change the ministers andministrations, the whole scheme and order of a church of Christ, frommoderate calvinist or lutheran, to antinomian, Pela- gian, or socinian, from christian worshippers to antichristian idolaters, and from a temple of God to a synagogue of Satan ; and according to this rule, the church has no power, nor right to prevent it. Suppose achurch ofpious lutherans, or calvinista, consisting of thirty or forty members, whereof but eleven or twelve are men ; if providentially six or seven of these die in a few years, and six or seven bold antinomians, or socinians, are admitted on the mere profession of scripture : They become the majority, and consequentlythe rulers of the wholechurch ; they chuse pastors, and appoint ministrations and orders according to their own sense of scripture ; what must all the twenty or thirty original members of the church do, that walked and worshipped many years together in holiness and comfort, according to the 'doctrine and practice of Luther, or Calvin ? Must this lesser party of men, and perhaps almost all the women of the church, sit still under such preaching, and such ministrations, as an antinomian, or a socinian pastor would entertain them with, to their weekly public sorrow, and their mourning in secret every day? Or must they quietly depart from the communion of the church, and each of them seek their better edification in new churches where they could find it ? Perhaps also this church might be possessedof many tem- poral advantages, they might have a fair and well-built placeof worship belonging to the community, with gifts or annuities for the support of the ministry and the poor; plate and linen, and other utensils for the celebration of holy ordinances given to the church: Must seven or eight professed antinomians, or socinians, by this means become the possessors of it? And the old mem- bers, while they seek their betteredification, relinquish their first society and place of worship, and all these temporal possessions at once, which were given for the sacred uses of that calvinist or lutheran church ? And yet they have their own poor to maintain still, who cannot find their edification in the socinian or anti- nomian worship ? Can that be a necessary rule of church-com- munion, which would thus injure the greatest part of the church, including the women, and rob them all of their spiritual profit, and their outward advantages at once ? The tables may be turned, and the sane inconveniences would arise to a socinian, or antinomian church, .. by admitting calvinista, or lutberans. Now if such a sort of mixed commu-
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