CHAP. XV.
Mr. Cotton.“Ans. 3. To places of scripture which you object, Isa. lii. 11; 2 Cor. vi. 17; Rev. xviii. 4, we answer, two of them make nothing to your purpose: for that of Isaiah and the other of the Revelation, speak of local separation, which yourself know we have made, and yet you say, you do not apprehend that to be sufficient. As for that place of the Corinthians, it only requireth coming out from idolaters in the fellowship of their idolatry. No marriages were they to make with them, no feasts were they to hold with them in the idol’s temple: no intimate familiarity were they to maintain with them, nor any fellowship were they to keep with them in the unfruitful works of darkness; and this is all which that place requireth. But what makes all this to prove, that we may not receive such persons to church fellowship as yourself confess to be godly, and who do professedly renounce and bewail all known sin, and would renounce more if they knew more, although it may be they do not see the utmost skirts of all that pollution they have sometimes been defiled with: as the patriarchs saw not the pollution oftheir polygamy. But that you may plainly see this place is wrested beside the apostle’s scope when you argue from it, that such persons are not fit matter for church fellowship as are defiled with any remnants of anti-christian pollution, nor such churches any more to be accounted churches as do receive such amongst them: consider, I pray you, were there not at that time in the church of Corinth such as partook with the idolaters in the idol’s temple? And was not this the touching of an unclean thing? And did this sin reject these members from church fellowship before conviction? Or did it evacuate their church estate for not casting out such members?”
Answ.The scriptures, or writings of truth, are those heavenly righteous scales wherein all our controversies must be tried, and that blessed star that leads all those souls to Jesus that seek him. But, saith Mr. Cotton, two of those scriptures alleged by me, Isa. lii. 11, Rev. xviii. 4, which I brought to prove a necessity of leaving the false before a joining to the true church, they speak of local separation, which, saith he, yourself know we have made.[254]
Mr. Cotton cannot make both comings forth of Babel, both in the type and antitype, to be local.
For that local and typical separation from Babylon, Isa. lii. [11,] I could not well have believed that Mr. Cotton or any would make that coming forth of Babel in the antitype, Rev. xviii. 4, to be local and material also. What civil state, nation, or country in the world, in the antitype, must now be called Babel? Certainly, if any, then Babel itself properly so called; but there we find, as before, a true church of Jesus Christ, 1 Pet. v. [13.]
If a local Babel, then also now a local Judea and temple, &c., come out of Babel, not material, but mystical.
Secondly, if Babel be local now whence God’s people are called, then must there be a local Judea, a land ofCanaan also, into which they are called; and where shall both that Babel and Canaan be found in all the comings forth that have been made from the church of Rome in these last times? But Mr. Cotton having made a local departure from Old England in Europe to New England in America, can he satisfy his own soul, or the souls of other men, that he hath obeyed that voice, “Come out of Babel, my people, partake not of her sins,” &c? Doth he count the very land of England literally Babel, and so consequently Egypt and Sodom, Rev. xi. 8, and the land of New England Judea, Canaan? &c.
The Lord Jesus hath broken down the difference of places and persons. Two chiefest causes of God’s indignation against England. These two particulars I should be humbly ready to make proof of.
The Lord Jesus, John iv., clearly breaks down all difference of places, and, Acts x., all difference of persons; and for myself, I acknowledge the land of England, the civil laws, government, and people of England, not to be inferior to any under heaven. Only two things I shall humbly suggest unto my dear countrymen, whether more high and honourable at the helm of government, or more inferior, who labour and sail in this famous ship of England’s commonwealth, as the greatest causes, fountains, and top roots of all the indignation of the Most High against the state and country; first, that the whole nation and generations of men have been forced, though unregenerate and unrepentant, to pretend and assume the name of Christ Jesus, which only belongs, according to the institution of the Lord Jesus, to truly regenerate and repenting souls. Secondly, that all others dissenting from them, whether Jews or Gentiles, their countrymen especially, for strangers have a liberty, have not been permitted civil cohabitation in this world with them, but have been distressed and persecuted by them.[255]
The soul’s captivity to false worship is not local, but a guilt, and not only so, but a habit or disposition of spiritual sleep, whoredom, drunkenness, &c.
But to return; the sum of my controversy with Mr. Cotton is, whether or no that false worshipping of the true God be not only a spiritual guilt liable to God’s sentence and plagues, but also an habit, frequently compared in the prophets, and Rev. xvii., to a spirit and disposition of spiritual drunkenness and whoredom, a soul-sleep and a soul-sickness: so that as by the change of a chair, chamber, or bed, a sick or sleepy man, whore or drunkard, are not changed, but they remain the same still, until that disposition of sickness, sleepiness, drunkenness, whoredom be put off, and a new habit of spiritual health, watchfulness, sobriety, chastity be put on.