to talk of such agreement as the unity of mind to which the Lord brings his people by the influence of the truth; but I should be sorry indeed to find, that you had received him back in any such way as he intimates in that sentence. It would be covering his sin and countenancing it. You are all agreed that you may use some of the psalms. You are all agreed that you may use some hymns. There is no fair room, therefore, for any dissension here. But I trust you will be all agreed in marking your abhorrence of the conduct of him who would rend the body of Christ on such a question; and that, unless he be brought to repentance for his wickedness, you will agree in that language which I, from the heart, pronouncethough he thinks that none but an apostle ought-" Let him be accursed." I have been very ill for several weeks; and can only add, that I shall anxiously wait to hear of a scriptural termination to this business. The good Lord bless and keep you all in the simplicity of faith and love. Your affectionate brother, CV. TO THE SAME. March 3, 1824. It is with grief of heart, my brother, I find, by a letter received this day from our dear L- that H. F has neither been brought to repentance for his iniquity, nor been put away from among you. In the former, I see the continuance of his sin; in the latter, I see the rest of you acting the most cruel part towards him, and the most unfaithful towards the Lord, in taking part with his sin, or suffering it upon him. I am sorry that I happen not to have your letter at hand, but I remember the substance and general tenor of it; and I observed them with great pain. For though you professed to agree with me that H. F- had acted in some degree wrong, in quitting the fellowship of the body because you sing the inspired songs of David, you yet evidently sought to extenuate his evil by sharing the blame (as it were) between him and another who has opposed him; and were only anxious for a kind of deceitful settlement of the difference between them. My brother, whereinsoever you think J. L- has sinned in the business, reprove him, marking his sin distinctly. I know not yet wherein you think it consists. But is any evil in him (supposing ever so much can be established) to be used as a set-off against the gross, obvious, and continued wickedness of the other? (I wish H. F- to see all that I write.) Ever since he came among you, instead of seeking his edification and yours in the common faith, he has appeared to amuse himself with distracting and subverting your minds. He at length abandons your fellowship because you sing Psalms! and sufficiently marks his object in this step, as expecting to be a ringleader of schism, by coolly observing to me, that indeed you and others of one mind with him had not yet left the body, but that he expected you soon would. Though you appear to have been sadly infected with this leaven, I trust you will be found not of one mind with him. But, indeed, I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy. You seem to think J. L-— unwarrantably severe in expressing doubts of H. F's standing in the truth. This is one of the bad symptoms of false charity in yourself. But I wish you distinctly to understand that I fully coincide with J. L- there. When I see a man-no matter if he were my own son or brother after the flesh-making such a profane plaything of his connexion with a Christian church, and rejecting and making a mock of all reproof offered to him,-when I see him for months exerting himself in the service of the devil,-labouring to divide and rend asunder the body of Christ, can I have confidence in such a man as a brother? can I take the talk of his lips about the truth in opposition to his conduct? No. From the bottom of my heart I say-would that he were cut off who troubleth you! And I see in that course, as much the course of mercy to him -if he be a vessel of mercy-as of profit to the body and faithfulness to the Lord. And what mean you, dear F, by allowing him or any one this week to abandon your fellowship, and the next week to rejoin it, without even any profession of repentance? Think you that, in any case, this can scripturally go on in a Christian church? His present conduct is much of a piece with (but worse than) a former instance, in which he left the church in London, because we would stand up (instead of keeping our seats) while blessing and giving thanks before taking the bread and wine! That was bad enough; but, indeed, there is something more profane in the present case. The songs which were given by inspiration of God to the sweet Psalmist of Israel, and all, from the first to the last, celebrating -not David-but his Lord,-put by the royal prophet into the hands of Ethan, Asaph, Jeduthun, &c. to record, and to thank, and praise the Lord God of Israel, (see 1 Chron. xvi.)—he gravely tells us, are unfit for the purpose to believers! Surely, then, he must suppose that David, and the singers he appointed, must have sung them in unbelief. And if any of the singers then had his mind enlightened to see the import of the lxxxixth Psalm, for instance, as David's mind certainly was, (Acts ii. 30, 31.) he would, I suppose, take his hat and walk out when Ethan raised that Psalm in the sanctuary. I write in great haste and in much bitterness of spirit, seeing that the unavoidable and speedy consequence of your not purging out the evil from among you, must be that any one who sees and abhors it must leave your fellowship. My love to J. L, and tell him that I must remain in his debt a little longer; as I am but slowly recovering, and have a press of business on me at present. Ever, with true affection, yours, CVI. TO THE SAME. : March 7, 1824. ALAS! my dear John, the melancholy intelligence which your letter brought me yesterday is only what I expected to hear. Indeed, I know not what else J. L could have done. All his efforts had proved vain to engage the body in a dealing of scriptural discipline with H. F. Ye took part, and still take part, with his ungodliness. In such a case, any disciple who sees and abhors the evil, has no part left but to turn away from the body who will not purge it out from among them. Some may say that J. Lshould have waited a week or two longer. I really cannot pronounce on this but it seems to me, from the whole course of the business, that it would have been but another week or two of vain jangling, and that he has been very far from precipitate. What you say of the kind of acknowledgment which you were unanimous in receiving from H. F- only proves, how deeply and universally you are infected with the leaven of his sin. He would not, forsooth, have left the fellowship, if he had been satisfied that the objectionable Psalms would be discontinued! Words cannot more plainly avow his impenitence. What is it but to declare that he still sets it up as a term of communion, that those with whom he will condescend to walk shall not sing (for instance) the lxxxixth Psalm ? And this is received by you all as a profession of repentance! I am sure, I wonder not that my brother L-suspects he has erred, in trying to select the Psalms that ye would not object to. I am sorry to remark that you, dear John, seem infected not only with H. F's immediate principles, but with the radical principle of the popular forbearance. You seem in one of your letters plainly to intimate, that he was justified in leaving the body because he could not conscientiously, in his present views, sing the lxxxixth Psalm. This is just setting up the worldly notion of men's consciences being the standard of right and wrong. However, he has now succeeded in effecting the schism which he seems to have worked hard for from the beginning: and all who know the circumstances must take one side or the other. I wish it to be distinctly understood that I stand with J. L. I cease not, however, to pray for you and H. F, that ye may be led to see and to abhor your iniquity; and particularly that you, dear John, may be given to see the evil of that false good-nature which has proved such a snare to you in this business. CVII. TO THE SAME. April 9, 1824. MY VERY DEAR F.-The letter which I received from you on the 20th ult. afforded me great joy. It found me very busy; and I have since been postponing my reply in the daily expectation of hearing from JL. How comes it that he does not write? Besides my solicitude to hear how the Excise business has terminated, he must surely be aware, (if he thinks) that I need some communication from him about the state in which you are as to Christian fellowship. I trust that, before this, you and he are again walking together; that the breach between you, which Satan was allowed to make, is fully repaired; and that I am therefore no longer to have the most painful feeling, that, in maintaining my Christian union with one of you, it is interrupted with the other. The sacredness and closeness of that union is seen only in the light of that divine truth which produces and cements it. While kept in the discernment of this, we shall see and abhor two apparently opposite evils, but equally profane, and springing from the same root of bitterness. The one, and perhaps the more common, is that of sacrificing divine truth, or divine command, in order to maintain something under the name of church connexion. Such union is the unity of confederates against the glory of the LORD. The other evil-(less common, because it can be developed fully only in those who stand, or have stood, in outward connexion with a scriptural church)-is that of lightly rending the visible body of Christ, and sacrificing Christian union and fellowship to the maintenance of our own whims and fancies. Both evils must alike originate in a mind blind to the divine nature and sacredness of the unity of brethren in the faith; must originate, in short, in that common spring of all evil-unbelief,—that insensibility to the one revealed glory, which leaves a man under the power of his fleshly mind to follow his idols, and the vain imaginations of his own heart. It will rejoice me to hear that your dealing with poor H. F. has been blessed for calling him to repentance;to find that his sickness is not unto death. If his eyes be indeed opened to see his sin, he will no longer be found justifying himself by attacking others. In his last letter to me-chiefly filled with railing invectives against dear L--he reprehends me sharply for reviving the recollection of his former evil, and mentioning to you his having abandoned the fellowship of the brethren here for a similar vagary. Circumstanced as we are, I cannot acknowledge that I did any thing wrong in mentioning it. If one, who has been called a brother, turns away repeatedly, again entangled in the same evil for which he has before professed repentance, it is idle to say that the recurrence of his sin must not revive the recollection of the former instance of it, until scriptural repentance appears anew. Whenever this appears, it would be indeed very unwarrantable to remember or rake up against him any thing that has passed. Though I have written so far, I am not decided whether I will despatch this letter to-day; I feel it so unsatisfactory to write, without knowing what has taken place since your last. Monday (12th.) Still no letter: but, perhaps, this day's post may bring one. At any rate I cannot longer delay sending this, as I fear you must think my silence strange. There have been a few lines on business from H. F. to Mr. C―; and from the style of his address, and his total silence on the subject of his conduct, it is plain that he had not then repented of his evil deeds. I have little doubt that he looks for support from some in D; and that, in his present mind, he will aim at spreading the schism wider, which he succeeded in producing among you. It is an awful spectacle. If all those, who have walked together at L, be really brought to the mind which you express in your letter, I doubt not that the breach has been repaired before this. But I apprehend there may have been some difficulties to J. L- -'s re-uniting himself to the collective body. Certainly I conceive that each of you, when led to see your sin, was called to seek re-union with him; and not to wait till he could seek it with the body. It is not from any idle punctilio that I mark this. But, as I consider that he was divinely bound to act as he did in leaving you, I must consider that the standard of scriptural truth moved with him, and ceased to be with the rest of you. Round that standard any who were afterwards brought to repentance, should immediately rally. Among all the profitable lessons of instruction and reproof which this melancholy business is calculated to impress on disciples, that is one-the importance that each-male and femalefrom the oldest to the youngest, should have their judgments formed for themselves from the Scriptures, so as to adhere to that rule, at all cost, in the fear of the Lord, unswayed by personal influence and regards. I expect this will go to you under Mr. D's cover; and you and L- may avail yourselves of the same for some time Write without delay, and tell J to do so My love in writing to me. CVIII. TO J. L Jan. 9, 1824. MY VERY DEAR L-So it seems that, at the very time I thought your trials about oaths at an end, they have begun again, |