120 A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. conference, must be maintained among fellow-members of the same church, whose opinionsare so fearfully divided ? SECT. 1II. Inconvenience IL What an unhappy station must a minister have amongst sudi a people ? How difficult to fulfil his ministrations of prayer and preachingwithout offence Or rather how impossible? Surely the work of a preacher is to explain the scripture to his hearers ; but he can hardly step out beyond the very express words, of scripture, but he breaks in upon some of their darling sentiments : He can scarce comment upon any text, 'but he opposes the one side or the other of two contrary opinions, and grieves someof the flock : He can hardly speak of'the,person of Christ Jesus the mediator, but he offends the Arian, the Samosatenian, or Athanasian : He can scarce ex- press anything about the redemption and atonement of Christ, but he awakens either the Calvinist, or the Socinian, to jealousy, and affronts their sacred doctrines : He must not ascribeglory to the Father, Son, and Spirit, lest he displease the Unitarians in his assembly ; nor must he neglect it, lest the Trinitarian take umbrage. He dares not name the word perseverance, lest the Arminianbe angry ; and if he should talk of falling from grace, the Calvinist trembles, and half despairs. And as preaching would be rendered almost impracticable, unless he confinedhim- self only to mere moral duties, such as Seneca might preach ; so all his ministrations in prayer and thanksgiving would be most unhappily perplexed and confined. He must not pray for for giveness of sins, for the antinomian believer does not want it ; nor for almighty sanctifying grace, for the remonstrant Christian knows no need of it : He must not confess original sin, for the pelagian disowns himself guilty ; nor dares he mentiona word of the imputed righteousness of Christ, orjustification byfaith alone, lest half the assembly rise in arms against him : Nor must he venture to give thanks for the free electing love of God, least two -thirds of hischurch shew a murmuring dissent. Surely there is little left for this mañto talk of in his pulpit, but what lie may borrow from Plato, Plutarch, or Epictetus. SECT. IV. To prevent this inconvenience, the patrons of this opinion assert, "'That a minister ought not to impose any particular sense on any of the controverted scriptures in his preaching :" but all his business is freely and fairly to acquaint the people with those various senses of scripture, in which the different sects of Christianity have contrived to explain it : He must represent the reasons impartially on both sides, and leave them to the judgment of the hearers, " withoutbiassing of them, as one expresses it; by the needless declaration of his own opinion :" And they tell us, " it would be much more edifying to all Christians, if ministers in their public discourses expressly asserted no other things than such as all, who read' the scrip-
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