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    -DEFENCE QF CHURCH DISCIPLINE . To the Editor of the Monthly Repository \ Sir , Having taken up an opinion , in most points opposite to that maintained by your correspondent in his * Arguments against church discipline * , " I beg leave to state som § of the reasons on which it is founded . >

    Not having the Repository at hand , I am not able to quote your correspondent verbatim , but this omission cannot be of any great consequence , as my remarks will have respect to the main drift of the arguments by which he and others oppose church discipline rather than to any improprieties of phraseology or circumstantial misrepresentations .

    I presume it cannot be denied , with any great appearance of consistency , by those who profess to derive their ideas on the subject from the New Testament , that the Chris * tian religion is asocial religion , and was evidently designed to be supported and extended in a social state , by united counsels and fraternal efforts * On this principle , it should seem , the phurches which are mentioned in tfre NewTes- * tament , and were under the * immediate care and direction of the apostles , were instituted . May not this general principle , this grand basis of church

    communion be admitted , though it be stated , and the position not controverted , that the New Testament writers did not mean to delineate and patronize an ecclesiastical discipline , which should continue invariably in all future ages and amidst every vicissitude of civil society ? Granting that the primitive discipline , as the most able writers on this head assert , was borrowed from the customs of the synagogue , and therefore there were some circumstances connected with it not necessary nor expedient to be rigidly regarded by the churches of the

    Gentiles ; yet still , it may be affirmed , the principal objects and er * ds of that discipline were intended never to be lost sight of , but to be strenuously pursuedin 2 ( 11 states of the church , in all places and in ail ages .

    These objects , I apprehend are , the edification , comfort and consistent behaviour of the m embers of the churches ; and thereby the commendation of the religion of Jesus to the world as ft moral , p \ ire and divine institution . The > discipline which is | evidently calculated to serve these purposes and that consequently cornes within the view of those getieral apostolic rules ; Let all things be done decently * In the Number ipr April , 1807 , vol . ii . y . 383 . EcJ *

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1807, page 416, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2383/page/20/