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Untitled Article
and in order / ' Let all things be done to edification ;' " Withdraw yourselves from every brother who vvalketh disorderly : " <* Let all things be done with charity ;' must be , from the nature of the case , of indispensible and perpetual obligation .
If , therefore , any member of a Christian church should noto - riously and habitually violate the precepts of his religion , and in such instances , as to give unbelievers of any description plausible occasion to suggest that Christianity is » ah immoral system , or to excite Christians , who are connected
with other societies , differing in some articles of faith and Tupdes of worship , to apprehend that the community to which the disorderly member belongs , on account of its peculiar tenets , gives a countenance or affords an excuse to vicious conduct ; then it is expedient £ nd incumbent on that church by some public , formal and decided act , ( the specie fie mode is not of essential consequence , ) to announce that such a person is considered no longer as being one of them . A transaction of this kind is required of them for the honour
of our common Christianity and the credit of their particular community * Keeping in view the grand purposes of Christian fellowship , amongst which that of exhibiting to the world the religion of Jesus as moral and pure is one of the chief , it would be very easy to draw the line of demarcation ; on the difficulty of doing which your correspondent plausibly descants . Crimes which expose men to the just punishment of human laws ; and likewise such as habitual drukenness , adulterv * and notorious lewdness , with other practices , though they may not Jbe amenable at a hurnUn tribunal , or with regardto which the laws are often suffered to sleep , may still be those violations of the precepts of the Gospel that have in them the kind of publicity , enormity and repugnance to a religious profession and fellowship which requires those in whomsoever it may be found , without any partiality beino * shewn , to be cut off from the communion of the faith
ful . There are many Species of vice which we may fear to be habitual and predominant in persons who stand in Christian fellowship , and that exclude them from the approbation ot God , and if not repented of and abandoned , subject them
to his righteous punishment in a future state , which do not require that they should be formally excluded from their connexion with the church . It is the duty indeed of those who ^ re in fellowship with persons of this character
Untitled Article
Defence of Church Discipline . 417
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1807, page 417, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2383/page/21/
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