QUESTION IV. 75 ties agreeing to attend on their ministry, and support and encou- rage it? Yet this is a duty incumbent on all those who are ministered unto ; Gal. vi. 6. 1 Cor. ix. 13, 14. Each society is bound by the rules of the gospel to maintain and honour their own ministers who labour among them in word and doctt ne ; 1 Tim. y. I7. and 1 Thess. v. 12, 13. 5, How can the poor of Christ be fed and clothed, if chris- tians are not distributed into distinct societies, and each take care of their own poor ? Eph. 'iv. 28. To whom should the poor christians have applied of old, if not to their own societies ? For single persons cannot nor are they bound wholly to maintain them. They must therefore be distributed into distinct societies, that every popr ehristian may know where to apply for relief and that each of the richer may know also to whom they should give their constant alms, and loth upon themselves in a special manner bound to supjily. If all the poor saints in a nation were straggling abroad, and belonged to no Christian society, how should the richer persons, or richer societiesknow these areGod's poor, and of the household offaith, whom they are bound in a special manner to take care of ; Gal. vi. 10. unless they have made a profession to some church of Christ, and are known by thismeans ? So great is the necessity of these things to be done by particular societies, that christian princes andgovernors, in order to have these things regularly performed, have thrown all the dominions into the form of distinct parishes, or single con- gregations : though they have had not much regard to any rules of the New Testament, in establishing their church-worship and discipline in other parts of it. 6. How can the ordinances of censure and excommunication be ever administered, if there be no societies agreeing to walk and worship together ! If any person be charged with a fault or heinous crime, he will reply, he belongs not to any society who shall assume a right to deal with him and censure him ? And it is impossible that the wholevisible church of Christ can meet to- gether, or take cognizance of such particular causes, and give censures, unless we set up a pope, or council, or conclaveof car- dinals to do all this, and constrain all particular churches to sub- mit to their sovereign and universal dictates. There must be therefore an agreement betwixt a company of professing christians, giving up themselves to one another, and receiving each other in the Lord, in order to maintain the church of Christ in the world, his gospel or his honour ; to support his poor, or his ministers, or the purity of his church, or of any holy ordinance; Receive therefore the apostle's exhortation, Rom. xv. 6, 7. That ye may with one mind and one mouth alo- rfy God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ receive ye one another as Christ also received, us, to the glory of God.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=