Five Propositions to the Kings Majesty

Five Propositions to the Kings Majesty and the Army, concerning Church-Government, in the ordering of the Discipline thereof towards Communicants.

1. THat the power may be, To provoke to goodness, putting them in mind of every occasion, wherein any Christian virtue of mercifulness, Alms-giving, meekness, purity, peace-making, is more then ordinarily seasonable; and by our example, and the examples of other pious men, (present, or read of in Story, especially sacred) encouraging to abundance in well doing, and upon all occasions remembering them of the various dispensations of the love and mercy of God through Christ, wherein they have had their peculiar portion, and the infinite immarcessible Crown, that super-abundant weight of glory, which is not in the same degree poured out to all, but dispensed according to works, according to the proportion of that labor of Love, and work of Faith, that shall be observable in every Combatant of Christ's, when the great Leader and Crowner of our Faith shall come out to his day of retributions; and each of these is an excellent way to provoke all to well doing, the duty prescribed, Heb. 10.24. Let us observe one another, to sharpen or provoke (in one another) Charity and good or laudable works.

2. To give the Brother a sight, not only of his sins (the not doing of which is an argument of a most mortal enmity, a hating the Brother in the heart, whom we do not in that case rebuke, Lev. 19.17. and no man must be ever accounted otherwise then a treacherous contriver of his brothers destruction, that is guilty of it) but even of his passions, his inclinations, the weaknesses and peculiar distempers of his nature, things, of which no man is a competent judge to discern them in himself, and wherein a man may live and die ignorant, if he be not taught by another's more impartial observation, and of which there is far more reason to expect to be admonished by a friend that takes notice of them, then of a jaundice-look, or earthly breath, which being but symptoms of bodily diseases, and yet by all rules of friendship to be revealed to him who is concerned to know and seek out for cure of them, are not near so dangerous to be concealed, or unlikely to be discerned by the patient, as the more subtle secret diseases of the Soul. Thus, if the interpretation of learned men will stand good; Saint Paul received benefit by the admonition of the by-standers, Act. 23.4. without which he had not considered what was his duty to the High Priest. And thus did Christ befriend Saint Peter with the knowledge of his passionate temper (transported with zeal at the present, though he should die with Christ, he will not deny him, and afterwards, when danger was instant, transported as much with a contrary passion) and foretold him, that he peculiarly should deny him, which it seems, he never would have discerned in himself: And if anything had been armor sufficient against sear, this of all others would most probably have secured him.

3. The third is, (in case of falling into, but especially continuing in sin) frequent, repeated, importunate calling and rousing to awake, and get out of it. That title of the friend among the heathens, to be the other or second self, being far from being lessened or superseded by Christ, (but improved indeed, and applied to the divinest and most sacred offices of friendship, and the rescuing from sin, as from the most formidable danger) lays an obligation upon every friend, every brother, i. e. Christian (toward every other, that comes wit hin the reach of his warmth or influence) to supply all those offices, that every ones self, i. e. his soul, his conscience, is concerned and obliged to do. Thus when the conscience, beside the directive office, hath another of punishing and disciplining too, of playing the Erinnys with the torch within us, to scorch and light us out of our road of darkness, the Brother, the Christian, the second soul, and conscience within the fellow-Christians breast, received thus into his most venerable secrets, the knowledge of the deformities and sins of his very soul, when either he hath neglected to perform the duty of the Domestic divine guardian, the assiduous watch to keep off the hostile approaches or mines of sins, or hath not been obeyed in his warnings, he hath now this only last part of duty behind, that of becoming the Angel to Lot, calling him, leading him, forcing him out of Sodom, setting him without the Port with an escape, fly for thy life, neither stay thou in all the plain; and again re-enforcing the admonition and warning, with an escape to the mountains lest thou be consumed. And he that hath no heart to be thus importunate upon his perishing brother, may by that guess how little he hath of that Angelical temper in him.

4 The fourth degree of this duty is, (in case any or all the former, though conscientiously and diligently used, have yet been without success, then watching of seasons and opportunities, calling in prudence to assist Charity, the brain to aide the heart, either coming as God to Adam, in the cool of the day, when the tempter of the wax may probably make it more capable of impression, or (as the fathers say of God's dealing with the Elect, whom he doth, as 'tis thought, by that means infallibly work on) calling him, tempore congruo, at a fit chosen time, when in all probability a seasonable admonition may be hearkened to; great variety there is of these opportunities, not defineable particularly, but only observable by him, that not only in his duty towards God, and toward himself, but also toward his weak or sick brother doth walk circumspectly, and observingly, not as an unwise, but wise watchman, and that is the meaning of Ephes. 5.16. parallel to Dan. 2.8. rendered in the former place redeeming, in the latter gaining the time, i. e. delaying in time of the rage, or fury of the Prince, in Dan. or of the evil times, in St. Paul; and so in the heat of a violent sin, when admonition is out of its place, until the present tempest be over, and then there be more hope, or possibility for reason to be hearkened to. And as a branch of this comes in at last

5 A fifth degree of this duty (when nothing else will, and that may probably or possibly do some good, but never else, never upon weariness, or wrath, or anything, but grounds of deepest Charity) the breaking of familiar converse with him, to whom all other methods of kindness have proved succeslesse. For as in the authoritative process, when the censures of the Church are found necessary, to which only Christ designed them to the saving that which is lost, the course is to deny him the most intimate society, that of the communion of the faithful, and neither join with him in the Prayers and Lessons, nor in the participation of the Lord's Supper: so in the image of that, the society of single friends or Christians (especially where there is no place for the public censures either for want of government in a new planted Church, or where Schism hath driven it out, or where the crime is not of that nature, as to be capable of that public audience) when all the former offices of the Angelus custos have been performed improsperously, then that of the Angel with Jacob, a wrestling to get from him, to deny him the blessing of his company and familiarity, may prove seasonable, not out of a fastidious passionate displeasure to the sinner, (O, he is then the most natural proper object of pity and kindness, the incorrigible sinner is fit for anything rather then our anger or impatience) nor again, lest I be polluted by his company, (in this case 'tis with the friend as with the believing Husband, if the unbelieving Wife is willing to live with him, let him not depart, how knowest thou but that by thy Christian contrary example thou mayest yet save thy impenitent heathen brother?) but I say only on that great principle of saving Charity, that by seeing himself avoided, withdrawn from, left to converse with none (beside his sin) but fiends and flatterers, he may possibly be ashamed, and by that confusion of spirit awakened out of that snare, whence the calm, less sensible admonitions were not able to rouse him, and this perhaps was the kind that belonged to the disorderly obedient, 1 Thes. 5.14. which the Thessalonions are so earnestly entreated (peculiarly under the notion as brethren) to use in this case; and an opportunity sometime may be wisely chosen when it may prove proper and seasonable.