Again, "We beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake." (1 Thess. v. 12, 13.)
(3.) It is also a command to Christians, not to give a brother cause of sorrow and offence. Now any separation must do that. The question therefore is, whether the grounds for it are such as to compel us, from regard to our own souls, and even out of Christian charity to him, to separate from communion with the body to which he belongs, that we may thereby make him acquainted with the danger there is to his eternal salvation in remaining in a body, from which we feel obliged, for conscience sake, to come out. If we do not think we endanger our salvation by continuing in the Church, we are not justified for mere matters of opinion, and things, which we do not hold to be essentials of religion, to cast a reproach upon the body, from which we remove as from a thing unclean[1], and to give pain, doubts, and cause of dissensions, by thus withdrawing.
I proceed next to some direct arguments in support of the assertion, that separation, as such, and when not on account of some fundamental doctrine, is a sin.
1st. Hear what Scripture tells us should be our conduct towards those who cause divisions, and then consider, whether such persons are brought before us as exercising a proper liberty of choice.
"We command you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother, that walketh disorderly and not after the tradition which ye have received of us." (2 Thess. iii. 6.)
"If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine,
- ↑ "Nevertheless, I do not hesitate to express a persuasion, that our own case happily is such, in the Established Church of England, that we may rightly, and are bound to, receive the faith of our forefathers, as delivered to us in its authorized form, by the same measure of acceptance, in kind as we receive Scripture itself: not hastily taking part against it (as so many do), on account of incidental or subordinate objections; but accepting it in Christian duty, as it is, and abiding by it, until, after experiment of holy living, it shall be proved perilous, or at least inadequate, to the soul's welfare, according to the very terms of Scripture."—Miller's Bamp. Lee. p. 15. note.
