"that the grand object of my pursuit is to disunite the people of God, and to divide the churches of Christ." This is utterly false, though I can hardly conceive that the writer believes what he states. But the uniting of all the people of God, i. e. of all who believe the one and only gospel of his son Jesus, is an object that lies, and will lie, very near my heart, and never shall I think that the works of the man of sin are consumed, till all that believe in every place are together, as they were of old, walking by the same rule and speaking the same things. In the progress of that consumption, however, the peace of the Antichristian churches will be disturbed from time to time, and one and another poor sinner will be snatched by the mercy of God from their ungodly ways: and this will make the serious adherents of the man of sin mourn while believers will rejoice. This will make the word of Christ be considered as causing divisions and causing fire on earth, and those who profess it cannot scripturally expect any favour from men. I had some melancholy opportunities last summer of witnessing what the writer terms “the flourishing state of the Independent Churches in England," and avow, without any scruple, that I should rejoice to hear of their present peace being disturbed, and their present flourishing prosperity being marred by the introduction of scriptural principle among them. Thus you see, my dear sir, that I could not answer the writer's assertions but in a way which must aggravate the indignation of him and all like-minded with him. I am well aware that, essentially as I differ from such men in all my views of divine truth and precept, I might yet escape the bitterness of their animosity, if my views allowed me to regard or speak of them as good men; but viewing them as very ungodly and wicked men, on account of their opposition both to the priestly and kingly character of the Lord Jesus, I hope I shall never be allowed to court their friendship or to fear their enmity. Thanking you sincerely for your kindness, I remain, &c. MY DEAR M―-It has grieved me much to have your letter of the 24th ult. so long unanswered. But it found me very ill; and I am still so much of an invalid, that I am little qualified for entering as largely into the subject as its importance demands. May the few observations I can offer be blessed to check what, I am persuaded, is a very serious error. Just at the time your letter came, we were engaged on the same subject with B- B. But, in some respects, his grounds are different to yours; for he insists that unde TUE-not even to eat with him-means, not to eat the Lord's supper with him! Upon your interpretation of the passage, as if it forbid civil intercourse with the person while under admonition, I would remark, that while he is yet under admonition, he cannot be treated as one of the black characters enumerated in that passage. For instance-if a brother falls into an act of drunkenness, the church is not at once to consider and treat him as a drunkard. If so, they should put him away from them at once; for that is the line of conduct expressly enjoined toward such wicked persons. They are to proceed in the merciful labour of restoring their fallen brother; and if he hear the word of reproof and admonition, they are to rejoice over him and confirm their love towards him: but if he reject it, then he appears in the black character of the wicked whom they are to put away from among them. And do consider what is that interval during which you are to suppose the offender precluded from civil intercourse with his brethren. But a deep ground or error lies with you as well as with B— B—, in the supposition, that when a person is put away from a church of Christ he is then to be viewed and treated completely as one who had never belonged to it. I would refer you to the Apostles' words about the incestuous person-" that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus,"-marking plainly, that the very same spirit of love and hope of mercy towards the offender which were to regulate all the former efforts to call him to repentance, were still to influence the church in the last act of discipline toward him. Accordingly, when this gracious design appeared to be accomplished in that wicked person, was he received back into the church as if he never belonged to it? No-for, if so, he would have been received on the ground of his professing the faith of Christ, without any inquiry into his repentance for any particular evil of his conduct. His verbal profession of the truth never appears to have been interrupted, and in his return to the church never to have been inquired into. He was received back as a recovered brother, just as he would have been retained if he had heard the reproof of his sin. And how suitable to that view of his recovery, under which they were called to put him away, was the merciful injunction that they should not even eat with him; that they should thus mark their abhorrence of his evil, and their affectionate concern for him. In that other view, which would cast him off (in one sense) from hope, and say, "I no longer look at a person who acts so wickedly with any idea that he can have known the truth"- there is, I am persuaded, awful pride of heart, and a sentiment very opposite to the influence of the truth in ourselves. As to the passage in Matthew, I have only time to say, that your argument would go as much against the prohibition of religious as of civil fellowship. For certainly Jesus would have as soon held the former with a publican as with a Pharisee. On the passage in Thessalonians, I can but formally avow my persuasion, that the view of it I have given in my Apostolic Traditions" is the only scriptural one. My love, &c. MY DEAR B—,—It was with great concern I heard last Sunday that I B. and his wife dined with you. In this I am persuaded you have been associating with those, with whom the divine word plainly calls us to keep no company and I had hope after the long discussion which the subject received that we were all of one mind upon it. It is so uncertain when I may have an opportunity of talking it over with you, that I adopt this mode of suggesting some considerations, though probably none of them will be new to you. I believe we agreed that almost all the directions of the word are such as naturally arise out of the Gospel, and commend themselves to the new mind by their close connexion with the faith and hope of Christ, such as we might be supposed to infer from the foundation of Christian fellowship, (if we were not so carnal) even though no precept had been given on the subject. Now, consider in this view our deportment towards those from whom we have solemnly withdrawn on account of their not hearing the word of Christ; how unsuitable is it that we should continue to indulge in social intercourse with them, and shew that we have pleasure in them, whether we consider the tendency of this in its effect on their minds, or the state of sentiment and feeling that it indicates in ourselves. Can we be taking that serious view of their evil, or be under that loving concern for their recovery, which becomes us, when we entertain this complacency in their society? and does not the manifestation of it directly tend to make them think light of what has separated them from our fellowship? Suppose, on the very day in which I have taken part with the brethren in putting away a wicked person from among us, I should bid that person to my table for the purpose of enjoying his company; could I be under scriptural views about his sin, and the solemn act in which I had professed to mark it? And if, instead of doing this on the same day, I do it after the lapse of months or years, does it not appear that I have lost sight of the principles on which I before acted towards him? Agreeably to these plain considerations I find the Scriptures speaking a uniform language about those put away from the Church of Christ. "Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." Matt. xviii. 17. "With such an one not to eat.' 1 Cor. v. 11. "Have no company with him that he may be ashamed." 2 Thess. iii. 14. Not knowing by what misinterpretation you at present get over these passages, I shall not attempt to enlarge on them; I hope and pray it may not be necessary, but that you will be led to see the plain import of them, pointing to a deportment alike mercifully calculated to keep alive in our minds a serious sense of the evil which we are called to abhor, and to present it continually in the same serious light to the mind of the offender. My indisposition continues with so little, if any abatement, that I know not whether I shall be able to go to the meeting to-morrow. But, if not, I hope to send this by M I should B—, has given us much trouble. It would seem that the church Ineeting in his house has been pursuing a course of discipline with you and Mrs. M-, which from the spirit in which it was conducted and met was likely to terminate in the most lamentable disunion. May the Lord in rich mercy prevent or heal the breach, and convince both sides of the evil, that, as we think, attaches respectively to each. P—— writes to B— about the unscriptural ground which we think they have taken in their admonition-namely, the supposition that the word does not countenance the existence of two Churches so near each other as three miles and a half. Some other things in the spirit and manner of their admonition pain us much. But my object in writing to you is to present the subject to your consideration in the form in which, I think, there was much room for at least brotherly expostulation and remonstrance. suppose you would agree with me that all needless multiplication of churches is unscriptural and contrary to all that principle of Christian unity and brotherhood which should influence disciples, and inconsistent with that manifestation of their oneness in the Lord which is an important design of their meeting. Does not the question then come to this-is the present a case of such needless multiplication? Upon this, I beseech you, dear M, and I beseech L, to deal honestly with yourselves; and say are the petty hindrances to her meeting with the brethren at B- -'s such as ought to prevent her? Are they such as would prevent her if your hearts were warm in the object? What difficulty can there be in having a common car for her conveyance such a trifling distance? You will not understand me as controverting the principle that, if two disciples be in a place where there is no Christian church accessible, they are called to observe together all the ordinances which they can observe. But I think it perfectly consistent with this admission to assert, that any such meeting falls very short in various respects of what a church of Christ is designed to be, either in the public exhibition of the truth, or in the means of mutual edification and profit: and I cannot but fear that your minds are little alive to the importance of the scriptural objects of a Christian Church, when you prefer such a meeting to what appears so easily attainable. Another weighty consideration I would suggest to you. However close your earthly connexion with L, your Christian connexion with her is no closer than with any other disciple.-Ask yourself this, if it were not your wife, but some other disciple in your neighbourhood that was prevented from meeting with the Church at B's, would you act the same part? Supposing the hindrance of that other disciple real, (which I confess I do not think the present case) how far it would be within the limits of Christian lawfulness for you to act as you do, I am unwilling at present to decide; for I do not think the decision of that question necessary: yet it may be worth your while to consider, whether one of us, who meet in Stafford Street, would be warranted in absenting himself in order to meet with an individual who, from sickness or any other cause, could not attend. I should hope I have said enough, under the divine blessing, to convince you both of the evil you have walked in, and that we shall have the joy of hearing that it is corrected. DEAR MR. T————,—The Christian like candour and sobriety with which you expressed yourself when I met you lately in the Bank, induces me to address to you the following brief observations on the pamphlet lately published by one of your society upon the subject of the Salutation. If a thing were harmless in proportion as it is weak, there could be no occasion to say a word on the subject. But it is a melancholy truth, that what is very weak may be very mischievous; and it is therefore often a necessary, though always an irksome task, to expose disingenuous imbecility. The Remarker chooses to produce a number of Greek and Latin quotations, which he says he has been at much pains to collect; while the veriest smatterer in classical learning could have easily furnished him with dozens of passages as much to the purpose. Perhaps he will suppose that this declaration adds strength to his argument. Let us see. For what purpose does he adduce these passages? In the first place, in opposition to a supposed assertion which he knows we have never advanced, though he marks it with inverted commas as if a quotation of our words, namely, "that it was no more customary at Rome, for instance, to salute with a kiss, than it is now in this country." (p. 10.) Now, it is a serious charge to bring against the Remarker, that he knows the falsehood of what he states, in saying that this has been asserted by us. But you, my dear sir, are a witness to the truth of this charge. You must well recollect, that in the meeting at Cutlers' Hall we stated distinctly, that salutation with a kiss was no more the ordinary salutation in Greece or Rome than it is here; and that when Mr. B attempted to confound this statement with the essentially different one, that it was "no more ordinary," or more frequent," he was distinctly recalled to observe the broad no |