SECTION IV. 45 Because you do not think yourselves bound to fasting on Ash- wednesdayor Good -fridays, do you give a Ioose to sinful appe- tites ? Whilé you pretend to free yourselves from religious bonds of confinement, do you suffer yourselves to be made slaves to sin, and to be carried away captive by the devil at his will? 2 Tim. ii. 26. Wretched and hypocritical pretence to liberty in- deed, if it be stretched to this vile extent I The asserting your liberty from all human impositions in worship will go but a very little way toward your acceptance with God, unless you are free from the bondage of corruption, and in this,respect translated out of the dominion of Satan, and brought into the glorious liberty of the sons of God and the kingdom of our Lord Jesus. Be solicitous therefore above all things about a release from the power and tyranny of sin, that you may serve the law of God with a ready mind ; and since you are called into the christian liberty, take heed that you use it not for an occasion to the flesh. This blessed advice does St. Paul give to his Galatians converts : Gal. v. 13. And the apostle Peter is jealous of the same danger among the Christians to whom he writes, and there- fore while they are sensible of their freedom, he warns them that they should not use this liberty as a cloak for iniquity ;- 1 Pet. ii. 16. Nor let that vile character ever be charged upon you which the same apostle charges on some licentious sinners who professed christianity in his day ; 2 Pet. ii. 19. that while they promise liberty to themselves and others, they are the ser- vants of corruption, andallure others into wantonness, of such he pronounces their latter end to be worJe than their beginning, and declares that the mist or cloudof darkness is reservedfor ever for them : vet. 17, 18, 19. . II. While you assert your own freedom from the imposi- tions of men in point of worship, are you as careful in that you do not impose your own private opinions, nor your own particular and unscriptural practices on your neighbours, in any religious affair whatsoever ? Do you never set up your peculiar invented phrases, your own forms of speech, and the particular and darling notions of your sect and party, as a test of the piety or orthodoxy of any of your brethren, where the scriptùre does not go before you in plain and evident language ? How reason- able and necessary is it, that you should always give your bre- thren of the church of England their liberty in full measure to judge for themselves in matters of doctrine, discipline, worship and practice, while in full measure you assume this yourselves? And take heed that you judge not the states and persons and hearts of others, in their several different practices and senti- ments, while you so constantly and justly exclaim against their authority to judge or to censure you, or to impose any on your consciences. St. Paul, in his xiv. chapter to the Romans,
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