13. Submission to the disciples of a Christian church must be voluntary, and not by the constraint of force or hypocrisy. In Christ's church ALL must be free, and not a mixture of free-men and the slaves of sin.—Ed.
14. What faithfulness and plain dealing is here. If any church communicates with the profane it is offering sacrifice to the devil.—Ed.
15. One of the most touching scenes in the Pilgrim's Progress beautifully illustrates this fact. When Christian led Hopeful into Bye-path Meadow, so that they fell into the hands of Giant Despair, Hopeful says, 'I wold have spoke plainer, but that you are older than I.' That whole scene manifests the most delicate sensibility and christian feeling.—Ed.
16. How strange that pious men should have been prone to punish their fellows for non-conformity in an outward sign. They themselves were suffering inconceivable miseries under acts of uniformity in rites and ceremonies. How applicable to the framers of such acts of parliament are our Lord's words, 'Woe unto you, pharisees, who whiten and garnish the outside of a sepulchre, while within it is full of uncleanness, hypocrisy, and iniquity' (Matt 23).—Ed.
17. 'An implicit faith'; faith in things without inquiry, or in things not expressed.—Ed.
18. 'These judgments we feel and groan under.' So frightful were the persecutions of the dissenters by the church in 1670, that the narrative says, 'The town [of Bedford] was so thin of people, and the shops shut down, that it seemed like a place visited with the pest, where usually is written upon the door, "Lord, have mercy upon us."' Had the dissenters been united, the church would not have dared to exercise such barbarities—men and women in jails—some hanged for not going to church—all their goods swept away, and their children perishing.—Ed.
19. The printer had inserted 'the cause'; Bunyan's manuscript was 'a cause.' See marginal note, in his Differences in Judgment.—Ed.
20. This is a much more extensive evil than many would credit. I have met with these very expressions not only among the poor but the rich. It is an awful delusion.—Ed.
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