THE DISSENTING GENTLEMAN'S THIRD and LAST LETTER, &c. I SIR, HAVE read carefully your two Defences, and attentively weigh'd the Reafons by which you further prefs my Conformity to your Church; but muft ftill fay, that though I feel the Attraction of worldly Intereft ftrongly operating with your Arguments, and giving them great Force; yet there is fomething more forcible which draws a contrary Way. Were I to never live but in the prefent World, I would foon become your Convert: But when I confider that the Purity, Simplicity, and Liberty of the GOSPEL are a facred DEPOSIT committed to my Truft; and that there is an Allegiance I owe to CHRIST, as the ONLY Lawgiver of the Church, for which I muft furely be accountable before him; I cannot but think it my Duty, and therefore, upon the whole, moft certainly my Intereft alfo, to continue my Separation, though attended with fome worldly Disadvantage and Reproach. The Grounds of my Diffent I have already lain before the World, to whofe impartial Confideration they are humbly fubmitted. "But I have left un"notic'd and untouch'd, you complain, a great B "Part "Part of your Letters." This, indeed, I have done, and fhall also of your Defence; a great Part of both being futilous, and of little Moment to the Merits of the Caufe before us. Debates of this kind, I knew, infenfibly fwell. I remark'd therefore, but upon a few of the many obnoxious Paffages with which your Letters abound, that greater Liberty might be left to prefent you with feveral strong, and to me unanswerable, Arguments for Diffent from your Church, which you had artfully forborn to mention; and which, tho' fince held up before you and peculiarly urg'd upon you, you turn gravely away from, and will not be provok'd to encounter their Force. I have prefs'd you with the Conftitution and Frame of your Church; and have fhewn you various Points in which its Structure and Form was not only quite different from, but actually repugnant to, the Church of JESUS CHRIST; confequently, that it was not, could not be any dangerous and damnable Schifm for the Servants of Jefus Chrift to feparate and withdraw from it, as you had rafhly affirmed. But to this popular and great Plea you have made no Reply at all; it ftands before you in full Strength. This Charge of Schifm is ftill rendered more completely ridiculous; by obferving,--That the very Powers which alone form'd, and which alone govern your Church, have given us leave to withdraw from it. The very AUTHORITY which made your Churh, and upon which alone it refts, hath allow'd us to fet up our Separate Churches for Worship; and hath taken thofe Churches, and the Worship perform'd in them, under its immediate Protection and Care. SECT. |