It must not be here omitted to remark, that as this church is justly charged with tyranny in government, so she is equally guilty of partiality in discipline. Though all that discover any measure of faithfulness in the concerns of Christ's glory, are sure to meet with most severe treatment, yet the loose, profane and erroneous, have seldom any church censures put in execution against them. This church never made any suitable inquiry into the sinful compliances, and sad defections of her members and office-bearers, during the persecuting period: and that unfaithfulness in the exercise of church discipline is still copied after. How few, guilty of the most gross scandals, are censured, such as notorious drunkenness, blasphemy, cursing, swearing, sabbath-breaking, uncleanness, especially among the rich, who are capable to give pecuniary mulcts to free them from church censure? (Thus, in conformity to the prelatical and anti-christian example, setting to sale the censures of the church, and dispensing with the laws of Christ for money.) Nay, not only are such overlooked, but many guilty of these gross sins, together with oppression, neglecters of family worship, and the grossly ignorant, are without any public acknowledgement of these sins, admitted to the highest and most solemn ordinances, viz., both sacraments. And this may be thought the less strange, when persons chargeable with most of these sins, are admitted, and continued to be office-bearers in the house of God. Persons, and even teachers maintaining most dreadful blasphemous errors connived at, patronized, or but slightly censured, and still kept in communion, without any open renunciation of these heresies. Play-houses, the seminaries of vice and impiety, erected in the principal cities of the nation, and stage players, commonly among the most abandoned of mankind, escape with impunity. Yea, this pagan entertainment of the stage is countenanced by the members and office-bearers of this church, and that to such a degree, that one of the ministers thereof has commenced author of a most profane play, called _The Tragedy of Douglas_, wherein immorality is promoted, and what is sacred exposed to ridicule. Oh! how astonishing! that a minister in the once famous church of Scotland should be guilty of such abominations, and yet not immediately sentenced to bear the highest of all church censure!
Tourism Brief
Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain an — Part 60
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