The separatists have been professed enemies; but the puritans in many things professed friends and subjects to the bishops.
Secondly, it is a principle in nature to prefer a professed enemy, before a pretended friend. Such as have separated have been looked at by the bishops and theirs, as known and professed enemies: whereas the puritans professed subjection, and have submitted to the bishops, their courts, their officers, their common prayer and worships: and yet, as the bishops have well known, with no greater affection than the Israelites bore their Egyptian cruel taskmasters.
Mr. Cotton.
He saith, “God hath not prospered the way of separation with peace amongst themselves, and growth of grace.”
A false church may enforce a present peace greater (though false) grace than the true spouse of Christ Jesus. God’s people have found infinite sweetness and peace in some times of their holy communion. Breaches have been and must be among all God’s people, to make them celebrate the Lord’s holy ordinances according to due order.
Answer. The want of peace may befal the truest churches of the Lord Jesus [as] at Antioch, Corinth, Galatia, who were exercised with great distractions. Secondly, it is a common character of a false church, maintained by the smith’s and cutler’s shop, to enjoy a quiet calm and peaceable tranquillity, none daring, for fear of civil punishment, to question, object, or differ from the common road and custom. Thus sings that great whore, the anti-christian church, Rev. xviii. [7,] I sit as a queen, am no widow, see no sorrow: while Christ’s dearest complains she is forsaken, sits weeping as a widow, Lam. i. [1.] Thirdly, God’s people in that way, have sometimes long enjoyed sweet peace and soul contentment in England, Holland, New England, and other places, and would not have exchanged a day of such an holy and peaceable harmony for thousands in the courts of princes, seeing no other, and in sincerity seeking after the Lord Jesus. And yet, I humbly conceive, that as David with the princes, and thirty thousand Israelites, carrying the ark on the shoulders of the oxen, leaped and danced with great rejoicing, until God smote Uzzah for his error and disorder, and made a breach, and a teaching monument of Perez Uzzah, the breach of Uzzah: so in like manner all those celebrations of the spiritual ark or ordinances, which yet I have known, although for the present accompanied with great rejoicing and triumphing, yet as they have not been after the due order, so have they all met with, and still must, a Perez Uzzah, breaches and divisions, until the Lord Jesus discover, direct, and encourage his servants in his own due holy order and appointment.
Many graceless Judases amongst God’s people. Multitudes of gracious and holy persons that have professed separation.
And for growth in grace, notwithstanding that amongst all sorts of God’s witnesses some false brethren creep in as cheaters, and spies, and Judases, dishonouring the name of Christ Jesus, and betraying his witnesses: yet Satan himself, the accuser of the saints, cannot but confess that multitudes of God’s witnesses, reproached with the names of Brownists, and anabaptists, have kept themselves from the error of the wicked, and grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus, endeavouring to cleanse themselves from all filthiness both of flesh and spirit, and to finish holiness in the fear of God. I will not make odious and envious comparisons, but desire that all that name the name of the Lord Jesus may depart wholly and for ever from iniquity.
CHAP. XXIV.
Mr. Cotton.