32 AN HUM8LE ATTEM T, &C. pastoral care of such persons as you yourselves best approve and think most adapted to the salvation or souls. V. Another advantage which you who worship God in sepa- rate assemblies, are supposed to have above your brethrenof the churchof England, is this, that Me communionofyourchurches is kept more pure andfree fromunworthy and scandalous mem- bers, by the exercise ofproper disciplinetn the care that is taken about the admission to the Lord's-table, and in excluding the ignorant and the vicious from your special fellowship. When a communicant in any of your congregations grows vicious or profane, and it appears so by evident proof, he isat least private- ly admonished to abstain from the holy communion, or plainly forbid toattend on it : And in some of our congregations he is snore solemnly cast out of the church, as unworthy to partake of so holy an institution as the table of our blessed Lord: Nor is he received again until he Lath professed serious repentance, and bath behaved himselffor some syace of time as a penitent, and a person thoroughly reformed. Now where such discipline is main- tained in christian congregations, this remarkable- advantage is obtained by it, that all vicious practices are most evidently and powerfully discouraged by the exclusion of criminals from the church. If such a persons be found among us, he is shunned that he may be ashamed: the pious communicants have no cone- pany with hint, besides what is necessary and cannot be avoided, This is perfectly agreeable to the directions of the apostle. Some construe those words of St. Paul into this sense ; in 2 Mess, 16. Now we commandyou in the Haute of the Lord Jesus Christ that you withdraw yourselvesfrom every brother which walketh disorderly : but in 1 Cor. v. J0, 11. the sense is stron- ger, and more evident'; 1 wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fernicators, St.c. but now I have written unto younot to keep company, if any man who is calleda brother be a fornicatoror covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunk- ard, or an extortioner, with such an one, no not to eat. Whether this eating refer to the religious feast of the Lord's-supper, or whether to the common entertainments of the table, may perhaps be doubted by interpreters ; but this inference is certain, that if the apostle forbids familiar society with persons of this character at our common repast, much more are we forbid to hold commu- nion in the sacred feast with persons ofsuds a character. Surely the table of the Lord should be guarded and kept as pure as our own tables. 'l'he churches of Christ are and should be separate and distinguished from the world ; they should have as little chosen and voluntary society as may be with the wicked of the earth, and especially in holy things, that they may keep up a mínre venerable character and reputation of the gospel ins the world, and of the obligations that lie upon time that profess
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=