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Some Observations upon the Original Conftitution of the Chriftian Church.

In a letter to the author of the book bearing that title.

[First published in the year 1730.]

Stand ye in the ways, and fee, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls: but they faid, We will not walk therein, Jer. vi. 16.

Set thee up way-marks, make thee high heaps: fet thine heart toward the high-way, even the way which thou wentest: turn again, O virgin of Ifrael, turn again to these thy cities. Jer. xxxi. 21.

I

SIR,

Have seen your performance, wherein I find you take fome notice of the explication of my proposition. And

it being now more than a year since the principles maintained in that explication were fome way impugned in the defence of national churches, and further defended in my answer, which stands to this day without any return, I expected that some notice would have been taken by you of what I offer in that answer; as also of my fpeech before the commission, published some months before your book; especially confidering your objections are mostly obviated in these papers of mine: but feeing you have not meddled with them, perhaps because you have not seen them, I defire you will do me the justice to confider them; and when you have offered something in the confutation of them, I shall either receive light, or know how to defend my principles, without being put to the trouble of answering objections that stand sufficiently anfwered already, and must be held as answered, till fuch time as you, or some other, shew the infufficiency of the answers.

In the mean time I prefume to offer you some observations of mine upon your performance. As,

I find you still upon the old tract of the contenders for classical prefbytery against the Independents: and as I always thought, they discovered another spirit in this dispute, than in some other controverfies wherein they have been en. gaged; fo they have caft you a copy in several things, wherein I humbly judge it was not your duty to follow them. As,

1. It was always their way, to fly to human authority when they came to the pinch, in a question which is only to be decided by the word of God, and to boast exceedingly in that authority, and almost anathematise those who take upon them to differ from so many, fo learned, so godly men, for pretending to be straitened where they were not straitened, and to fee what they could not fee. You follow them exactly in this; and so do you likewife in having recourse to com mentators, when you cannot otherwise instruct your sense of a text; as if the sense of scripture were to be found out by plurality of voices among those commentators. Yea, I find you sometimes fain to use the authority of Dr Owen. But if his authority be a good argument in some cases, why not in others alfo? and if his authority be not a sufficient argument to convince yourself, why do you bring it to convince me?

2. It has been the way of these writers, to tell stories of the divisions among the Independents, and of the things that befel apostates from the congregational way, and of the sectaries, and charge them all upon congregational principles as the caufe; and herein they also copied after the Papists. But though this way of doing might pass near an hundred years ago; yet the stories of these vile writers, Edwards and Bastwick, come up again now with vast disadvantage, after they have been confuted, for so long a tract of time, by the congrega. tional churches in England, standing monuments of the falfehood of their charges, and of the vanity of their lying pro. phecies. Their vile stories and calumnies put me in mind of the methods wherein Christianity was opposed, when it came abroad in the world: and your innuendo about filly women, when you would apply the Apoftle's prophecy, that was evidently fulfilled in the Popish church, unto Independents, is very like what the Heathens faid sometimes against Chri

stians, who, they alledged, " gathered a company of the very " dregs and refuse of the people, and filly credulous women,

who, by the weakness of their sex, are easily imposed up

" on, and combined into a wicked confederacy."

3. There was never a greater application of metaphyfics unto scripture texts, to darken and perplex them, than that which has been made by the writers for classical prefbytery against the Independents; and you would ape them in this alfo. I must say, you do it in a very diverting manner on 1 Cor. xiv, 23. 24. " If therefore the whole church be come " together into one place," &c. when you tell, this must be understood in a distributive sense; and that their prophefying, and one coming in that believed not, is to be taken for their doing this in their distinct congregational meetings. Men of a very metaphysical genius have been engaged in this controversy; and, as I see by your book, that you learned some school-terms; so your reasonings upon the words if and all, in that text, upon which you make this exquisite diftinction, do convince me, that, if you had but a little more access to converse in a certain learned place, you might be inrolled among the writers for classical prefbytery against Independ. ents. I must also say this for you, that you know where to use your diftinctions; for where you imagine any shadow of scripture for you, there must be no diftinction.

4. You likewife follow the example of these writers, in the intolerable confidence which they express in an argument, they sometimes use, when scripture fails them, viz. That it would be an imputation too injurious on Chrift and his apofiles, to suppose, that they ordered otherwise than according to the Prefbyterian scheme. These writers, and you after them, put on an air of infallibility, and thereupon freely use all manner of reflections on the Independents, while, at the same time, you take the least infinuation of a reflection from an Independent, as a thing altogether intolerable. You injure not an Independent, when you tell him, as confidently as the Pope can tell Proteftants, that he is in a dangerous error and a delufion; that he is void of fenfe and candor; that he is a child, or a Jesuite, a fool, or a rogue; But if an Inde pendent should be so bold as to defire more sense, or more candor in your arguings, or affirm with confidence, that he is in the right, and you in the wrong; then, as if you were the only men that had right to judge, not only for yourselves, but for all others, you pronounce the Independent too arrogant, too uncharitable, and what not. You may say what

VOL. I.

you please, without proof, make conjectures, lay down suppositions, and explain scriptures by them, and make what inferences you will from scriptures, and the Independent must receive all for undoubted truth; but he must not open his lips without the strictest demonstration.

I know that no dispute of this kind can be carried on by fallible men, and subject to passions, without manifold discoveries of human frailty, which each of the parties in their turn will not fail to spy out very narrowly, and aggravate to the utmost, while they overlook what is amiss about themselves, or put the best construction upon it; but seeing we are liable to mistakes, and wrong biasses, an air of infallibility and contempt of the understandings of them that differ from us, as to the strength of our inferences, upon such a question as this is, very ill becomes us, at least it ill becomes Protestants. And if it were given to you and me " to lay "aside all malice, and all guile, and all hypocrifies and en. "vies, and all evil speakings; and as new born babes to de" fire the fincere milk of the word, not following a multitude " to do evil," nor "leaning to our own understanding, but "trusting in the Lord with all our heart," and giving up ourselves as weaned children to the conduct of his word, I am perfuaded we would either soon come to be of one mind in this matter, or " forbear one another in love."

Your book has confirmed me in an opinion that I have for some time entertained. I was of opinion, that it is not meet to manage the cause of classical and national prefbytery against the Epifcopalians and Independents both in one and the same book. And when I say I am confirmed in this by reading your books, I intend no reflection on your ability for dispute: for, I am perfuaded, the ablest defender of prefby. tery on earth would find himself hard put to it in a conflict with both these adversaries at once; even as a Prelatift would be in a wretched condition in an engagement with Papists and Anti prelatists at the same time. It is far the wiser course to have one of these parties for a second, when you would fight with the other. And I am not surprised at your apology for your temper, which is owing to your situation betwixt two such mi ferable comforters. The Epifcopalian was able to give you some comfort against the Independent, by his unity and order and catholic uniformity; for which he is obliged to his friend

the

the Papist; and the Independent could afford you some comfort against the Epifcopalian, by that very thing which you reckon his grand mistake; and when the Epifcopalian vexed you with the antiquity of that saying, "One bishop and one " church," the Independent could have comforted you against him exceedingly, with that ancient word of his, " One " church and one altar." But then it might be inquired, what becomes of classical prefbytery? and I confefs that is indeed the question. But I am sure the greatest Piesbyterian writers against Episcopacy have comforted themselves much with this independent cordial: and what Prefbyterian writer is it, that has not taken some comfort this way against the Epifcopalians, especially on the state of things in the three first centuries? You yourself, that complain of both these comforters, are yet obliged to take some comfort from them; and while you are warmly engaged with one of them, you are glad to have some respite from the other. If I be mistaken in this, you will correct me; but I will give you some instances. As,

1. When you write against the Episcopalians, you shew a warm zeal for the word of God, and the pattern expressly laid down there, in opposition to what crept in afterward, with the fairest shew of wisdom. But when you write against the Independents, you are for some things that your wisdom judges most necessary unto decency and order, that do not appear in the first formation of churches by the apostles; and these are such things as ecclefiaftic courts meeting in the name and authority of Jesus Christ. And it is your judg. ment, that the rulers of the churches are authorised to determine the number of judicatures in any kingdom where Christianity is universally professed, when they are to be divided or fub-divided, according to the different circumstances of churches and places; and this by virtue of the apoftolical direction, "That all things should be done decently and in or"der," or according as they find the exigencies and edification of the whole body may be best advanced. Thus, while you will not suffer the Episcopalians, for decency and order, to set one church officer over a presbytery and diocese, for the edification of the whole, you yourself, for decency and order, establish three church courts, for which you have as little scripture warrant as he has for his officer, even kirk sefsions, provincial and national synods, p. 213.258. 259. 260. And the thing you drive at in this, even the adaptis g of the government of the church to the constitutions of the kingdoms

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