QUESTION VIII. 89 admitted, it will exclude such as ought not to be excluded, and it will endanger or infringe christian liberty. REASON I. This may. admit such persons as ought not to be admitted ; for such forms of doctrine, drawn ùp by other men, will be liable to the same inconveniences that will attend any scriptural form of 'words: A child, or an ideot, may learn and repeat them by heart ; a very ignorant person, pr one who is 'very erroneous; may profess and subscribe them in his own sense : Fer when such forms have continued souse time in the world, men of very hereticalnotions and tempers, being in dány ger of being excluded front the church by such a test, will con- trive and find how to pit some perverse sense upon the words, 'and finis evade the force, and disappoint the design of them, as they have done in all ages with the words of scripture. REASON II. This mayexclude such persons as ought not to be excluded : For if a person of a truly christiap spirit, and of a pious and- unblemished character should happen to differ from this form of human si.rticles but in one sentence, or even in one word, he cannot honestly assent to, nor subscribe the whole form, though' he m is perfectly of the sae mind in all things, except in that minuté point ; and yet for this little inconsiderabledifference, he must be excluded the communion of the church, and perhaps be liable to all the immediate inconveniences of such an exclu- sion,' as tniich as if he denied every' article. There are no sy- nods, or councils of Christian bishops or presbyters, even though the laity have been mingled with theìn, but have put into their articles and confessions some little party notions, as well as the great and necessary truths of the gospel. They have ever had an itch. to determine some questions about meats, and days, and Circumstances, and ceremonies, either in faith or worship, as well as the most undoubted'and fundamentalpoints of christianity. Mint, and anise, and cummin, have been ever creeping into coq- fessions of faith among the weightier matters of faith and love. Now if subscribing to a whole set of articles be the test of com- munion, then for not eating flesh or herbs, or for waist of the anise and the citmmin, a man is excluded'the church as much as if he wanted -faith and love; which is a most unreasonable thing, and would directly contradict that great canon of the apostle; Rom: xiv. 1. Hint that is weak in thefaith receive ye, but not to döubful disputations. REASON III. It will endanger or infringe christian liberty. The imposition Of human forms of profession has been a heavy burden and sore bondage, under which most parts of the Chris- . Tian church have groaned in almost every age. It has been a sore temptation to many thousands to strain and subdue those words to new significations, to various and very foreign senses, in order to bend their consciences to a compliance with them ; and
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