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    to feed upon the church . Yetgrant it needful to allow them both the charges of their journey and the hire of their labour , it will belong next to the charity of richer congregations 9 where most commonly they abound with teachers , to send some

    of their number to the villages round , as the apostles from Jerusalem sent Peter and John to the city and villages of Samaria , Acts viii . 14—25 ; or as the church at Jerusalem sent Barnabas to Anti

    och , ch . xi . 22 , and other churches joining * sent Luke to travel with Paul , 2 Cor . viii . lp , though whe . ther they had their charges borne by the church or no , it be not recorded . If it be objected that this itinerary preaching will not serve

    to plant the gospel in those places , unless they who are sent abide there some competent time ; I answer , that if they stay there a year or two , which was the longest time

    usually stayed by the apostles in one place , it may suffice to teach them who will attend and learn , all the points of religion necessary to salvation : then sorting them into several congregations of a moderate number , out of the

    ablest and zealousest among them to create elders , who , exercising and requiring from themselves what they have learned , [ for no learning is retained without constant exercise and methodical

    repetition , ] may teach and govern tKe rest ; and so exhorted to continue faithful and steadfast , they may securely be committed to the providence of God and the guidance of his Holy Spirit , till God

    may offer some opportunity to visit them again , and to confirm them ; which , when they have done , they have done as much as the apostles were wont to do in propagating

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    the gospel , Acts xiv . 23- And when they had ordained them elders in every church , and had prayed with fasting s they commended them to the Lord on whom they believed .

    And in the same ch * vs . 21 , 22 . When they had preached the gospel to the city ^ and had taught manyy they returned again to Lystra and to Iconium and Antiock ^ confirming the souls of the disciples and

    exhorting them to continue in * the faith . Andch . xv . 36 . Let us go again and visit our brethren ,. And v . 41 . He went thorow Syria and Ciliciaf Confirming the churches

    To these I might add other helps , which we enjoy now , to make more easy the attainment of Christian religion by the meanest , —the entire scripture translated into English , wiih plenty of notes ; and

    somewhere or other , I trust , may be found some wholesome body of divinity , as they call it , without school-terms and metaphysical notions , which have obscured , rather than explained , our religion , and made it seem difficult without

    cause . Thus taught once for all , and thus now and then visited and confirmed , in the most destitute and poorest places of the land , under the government of their own elders , performing all ministerial

    ofhees among them , they may be trusted to meet and edify one another , whether in church or chapel , or , to save therrt the trudging of many miles thither , nearer home ,

    though in a house or barn . Fojp notwithstanding the gaudy superstition of some devoted still ignorantly to temples , we may be well assured that he who disdained not

    to be laid in a manger , disdains not to be preached in a barn ; and that by . such meetings as these , being indeed most apostolical and

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    John Milton . 325-

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    VOL . Till . 2 U

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1813, page 325, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2428/page/41/