Mr. Cotton seems to be both for and yet against separation.
Mr. Cotton here confesseth these two things, which I leave to himself to reconcile with his former profession here and elsewhere against separation. First, saith he, if any reproach them for separation it is a sin meet to be censured. Secondly, the churches themselves may be separated from, who tolerate their members in such causeless reproachings. In these latter passages he seems, as in other his confessions and practices mentioned to be for it, sensible of shame, disgrace, or reproach to be cast on it.
Mr. Cotton’s own confessions are sufficient answers to himself.
I grant with him the failings of churches are not forthwith to be healed by separation; yet himself, within a few lines, confesseth there is a lawful separation from churches that do but tolerate their members in causeless reproaches.
Not for a sore of infirmity, but a leprosy or gangrene of obstinacy, ought a person to be cut off. Mr. Cotton deeply guilty of cruelty both against consciences and bodies in persecuting of them, yet cries out against the appearance of due severity in the church of Christ.
I confess also that it is not chirurgery but butchery, to heal every sore with no other medicine but with abscission from the body: yet himself confesseth before, that even churches of godly persons must be separated from, for immoderate worldliness: and again here he confesseth they may be separated from, when they tolerate their members in such their causeless reproachings. Beside, it is not every sore of infirmity or ignorance, but an ulcer or gangrene of obstinacy, for which I maintained that a person ought to be cut off, or a church separated from. But if he call that butchery, conscientiously and peaceably to separate from a spiritual communion of a church or society, what shall it be called by the second Adam, the Lord Jesus, who gives names to all creatures and all actions, to cut off persons, them and theirs, branch and root, from any civil being in their territories; and consequently from the whole world, were their territories so large, because their consciences dare not bow down to any worship but what they believe the Lord Jesus appointed, and being also otherwise subject to the civil state and laws thereof.[262]
CHAP. XXIII.
Thirdly, whereas I urged a speech of his own, viz. that God had not prospered the way of separation, and conceives that I understood him of outward prosperity: he affirms the puritans to have been worse used in England than the separatist, and thus writes: “The meeting of the separatists may be known to the officers in court and winked at, when the conventicles of the puritans, as they call them, shall be hunted out with all diligence, and pursued with more violence than any law can justify.”
God’s controversy for persecution.