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A

A TREATISE

ON

CHURCH DISCIPLINE,

TAKEN PRINCIPALLY

FROM THE WRITINGS OF

ROBERT BARCLAY, WILLIAM PENN,

AND

ISAAC PENNINGTON.

A TREATISE, &c.

THE 5th day of the 12th month, 1778, as I was sitting in silent retirement, a fresh exercise and living engagement arose in my mind, to write somewhat for the benefit, (if might be,) of my brethren in religious fellowship, or such of them as are, or may be entangled in the reasonings of their minds, respecting the good order of the society, and the extent of church authority, supposing that the exercise of that power and authority, which Christ, as head, hath and doth commit to his body the church, and its proper officers, is an imposition; and that therein the church and its officers take too much upon them, especially in respect to restraining or rejecting such unsavoury ministry and offerings as they deem unwholesome and unedifying.

This is a very dangerous and hurtful misapprehension for any well-inclined person to labour under. I have often mourned, yea, my spirit hath frequently been bowed down, in consideration of the disunity and desolation which the subtle transformer is, and has been, busily labouring to promote amongst those who have witnessed in degree the inshinings of the spirit of truth.

Oh! saith my soul, may they be wholly redeemed out of, and preserved from the false insinuations of that old adversary, whose work is to rend, lay waste, and divide: and who hath, from age to age, been artfully suggesting to some or other of the well-inclined, that the painful and laborious endeavours of the faithful to maintain that christian discipline and authority, which is indispensably necessary in the church of Christ, was oppres sion, and done to exalt and set up themselves; when, alas! the Lord knows it is quite another thing, and that the labour, the

travail, and the prayer of their souls, is for the welfare of Zion and prosperity of Jerusalem.

Now, as I sat under this exercise of mind to feel what was my business to do in it, there were the writings of several ancient worthies, who are gone to rest, and are crowned with honour and veneration in the minds of the living among us to this day, presented to view, out of which I might collect much wholesome and edifying doctrine, full, pertinent, and convincing, in the case occasioning my exercise. I therefore have, I think I may say in the fear of him whose cause I wish to promote, undertaken to make some extracts from the writings of those valiants of the Lord.

And first I may begin with somewhat from Robert Barclay's Anarchy of the Ranters. In his preface to that work he says, "Some are so great pretenders to inward motions and revelations of the spirit, that there are no extravagancies so wild, which they will not cloak with them; and so much are they for every one's following their own mind, as can admit of no christian fellowship and community, nor of that good order and discipline which the church of Christ never was, nor can be without. This gives an open door to all libertinism, and brings great reproach to the christian faith." Again, he says, "There was a subjection of the prophets to the spirits of the prophets. There was an authority some had in the church, and yet it was for edification, not for destruction; there was an obedience in the Lord to such as were set over, and a being taught by such, and yet a knowing of the inward anointing, by which each individual was to be led into all truth. The work and testimony the Lord hath given us is, to restore this again, and to set both these in their right place, without causing them to destroy one another. To manifest how this is accomplished and accomplishing among us, is the business of this treatise; which, I hope, will give some satisfaction to men of sober judgments, and impartial and unprejudicate spirits, and may be made useful, in the good hand of the Lord, to confirm and establish Friends against their present opposers, which is mainly intended, and earnestly prayed for."

In the work itself, pages 4th and 5th, he says, "Now the ground of all schisms, divisions, or rents, in the body is, when

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