By RICHARD SIBBES, D.D.
DEAR Sir, Yet I must tell you that there is another grand enormity in the pot (though you perceive it not) and that is your separation from God’s saints and servants in the acts of public service and worship. This you may clearly discern by the affliction itself for God is methodical in His corrections, and doth many times so suit the cross to the sin that you may read the sin in the cross. You confess that your main affliction, and that which made the other more bitter, is, that God took away those to whom you might make your complaint; and from whom you might receive comfort in your distress. And is not this just with God, that when you wilfully separate yourself from others, He should separate others from you? Certainly, when we undervalue mercy, especially so great a one as the communion of Saints is, commonly the Lord takes it away from us, till we learn to prize it to the full value. Consider well, therefore, the heinousness of this sin, which that you may the better conceive, first, consider, it against God’s express precept, charging us not to forsake the assemblies of the saints, Heb. x. 20, 25. Again, it is against our own greatest good and spiritual solace, for by discommunicating and excommunicating ourselves from that blessed society, we deprive ourselves of the benefit of their holy conference, their godly instructions, their divine consolations, brotherly admonitions and charitable reprehensions; and what an inestimable loss is this? Neither can we partake such profit by their prayers as otherwise we might: for as the soul in the natural body conveys life and strength to every member, as they are compacted and joined together, and not as dissevered; so Christ conveys spiritual life and vigour to Christians not as they are disjoined from, but as they are united to the mystical body, the Church.
As for wicked and profane persons amongst us, though we are to labour by all good means to purge them out, yet are we not to separate because of this residence with us: for, there will be a miscellany and mixture in the visible church, as long as the world endures, as our Saviour shews by many parables (Matt. xiii.). If, therefore, we should be so overjust as to abandon all churches for the intermixture of wicked persons, we must sail to the Antipodes, or rather go out of the world, as the Apostle speaks. It is agreed by all that Noah’s Ark was a type and emblem of the Church. Now, as it had been no less than self-murder for Noah, Shem, or Japheth to have leapt out of the Ark because of the ungracious Ham’s company, so it is no better than self-murder for a man to cast himself out of the church, either for real or imaginary corruptions. To conclude, as the Angel enjoined Hagar to return and submit to her mistress Sarah, so let me admonish you to return yourself from these extravagant courses. “Be not righteous over-much: neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?” (Eccles. vii. 16). I beseech you, therefore, as you respect God’s glory and your own eternal salvation, as “There is but one body and one Spirit, and one Lord and one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all, so endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. iv.), as the Apostles sweetly invites you. So shall the peace of God ever establish you, and the God of peace ever preserve you, which is the prayer of your remembrancer of the Throne of Grace.