Part 5

He would have run from God in utter desperation; ‘but, blessed be his grace, that Scripture, in these flying sins, would call, as running after me, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me, for I have redeemed thee” (Isa 44:22).Still he was haunted by that scripture, ‘You know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.’ Thus was he tossed and buffeted, involved in cloudy darkness, with now and then a faint gleam of hope to save him from despair. ‘In all these,’ he says, ‘I was but as those that justle against the rocks; more broken, scattered, and rent. Oh! the unthought of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors, that are effected by a thorough application of guilt.’ ‘Methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give light, and as if the very stones in the street, and tiles upon the houses, did bend themselves against me.’ Here we find him in that doleful valley, where Christian was surrounded by enemies that ‘cared not for his sword,’ he put it up, and places his dependence upon the more penetrating weapon, ‘All Prayer.’ Depending upon this last resource, he prayed, even when in this great darkness and distress. To whom could he go? his case was beyond the power of men or angels. His refuge, from a fear of having committed the unpardonable sin, was that he had never refused to be justified by the blood of Christ, but ardently wished it; this, in the midst of the storm, caused a temporary clam. At length, he was led to look prayerfully upon those scriptures that had tormented him, and to examine their scope and tendency, and then he ‘found their visage changed, for they looked not so grimly on him as before he thought they did.’ Still, after such a tempest, the sea did not at once become a calm. Like one that had been scared with fire, every voice was fire, fire; every little touch hurt his tender conscience.

All this instructive history is pictured by a few words in the Pilgrim’s Progress. At the Interpreter’s house the pilgrim is shown ‘a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it, always casting much water upon it, to quench it; yet did the fire burn higher and hotter.’ As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him again. The threatening and the promise were like glittering swords clashing together, but the promise must prevail.

His entire relief at last was sudden, while meditating in the field upon the words, ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ Hence he drew the conclusion, that his righteousness was in Christ, at God’s right hand, ever before him, secure from all the powers of sin and Satan. Now his chains fell off; he was loosed from his affliction and irons; his temptation fled away. His present supply of grace he compared to the cracked groats and fourpence half-pennies, which rich men carry in their pockets, while their treasure is safe in their trunks at home, as his was in the store-house of heaven.

This dreary night of awful conflict lasted more than two years; but when the day-spring from on high visited him, the promises spangled in his eyes, and he broke out into a song, ‘Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness.’

Bunyan’s opinion as to the cause of this bitter suffering, was his want of watchfulness, his not coming boldly to the throne of grace, and that he had tempted God. The advantages he considered that he had gained by it were, that it confirmed his knowledge of the existence of God, so that he lost all his temptations to unbelief, blasphemy, and hardness of heart, Doubts as to the truth of the Word, and certainty of the world to come, were gone for ever.

He found no difficulty as to the keys of the kingdom of heaven. ‘Now I saw the apostles to be the elders of the city of refuge, those that they were to receive in, were received to life, but those that they were to shut out, were to be slain by the avenger of blood.’ Those were to enter who, with Peter, confessed to Jesus, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God’ (Matt 16:16). This is simply an authority to proclaim salvation or condemnation to those who receive or reject the Saviour. It is upon his shoulder the key of the house is laid (Isa 22:22). Christ only has the key, no MAN openeth or shutteth (Rev 1:18, 3:7). All that man can do, as to binding or loosening, is to warn the hardened and to invite the contrite.

By these trials, the promises, became more clear and invaluable than ever. He never saw those heights and depths in grace, and love, and mercy, as he saw them after this severe trial—‘great sins drew out great grace’; and the more terrible and fierce guilt was, the more high and mighty did the mercy of God in Christ appear. These are Bunyan’s own reflections; but may we not add to them, that while he was in God’s school of trial, every groan, every bitter pang of anguish, and every gleam of hope, were intended to fit him for his future work as a preacher and writer? Weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, there was not a jot too little, or an iota too much. Every important subject which embarrasses the convert, was most minutely investigated, especially faith, the sin against the Holy Ghost, the divinity of Christ, and such essential truths. He well knew every dirty lane, and nook, and corner of Mansoul, in which the Diabolonians found shelter, and well he knew the frightful sound of Diabolus’ drum. Well did his pastor, John Burton, say of him, ‘He hath through grace taken these three heavenly degrees, to wit, union with Christ, the anointing of the Spirit, and experience of the temptations of Satan, which do more fit a man for that mighty work of preaching the gospel, than all the university learning and degrees that can be had.’

Preserved in Christ Jesus, and called—selected from his associates in sin, he was taken into this school, and underwent the strictest religious education. It was here alone that his rare talent could be cultivated, to enable him, in two immortal allegories, to narrate the internal discipline he underwent. It was here he attained that habitual access to the throne of grace, and that insight into the inspired volume, which filled his writings with those solemn realities of the world to come; while it enabled him to reveal the mysteries of communion with the Father of spirits, as he so wondrously does in his treatise on prayer. To use the language of Milton—‘These are works that could not be composed by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases, without reference to station, birth, or education.’ The tent-maker and tinker, the fisherman and publican, and even a friar or monk, became the honoured instruments of his choice.

Throughout all Bunyan’s writings, he never murmurs at his want of education, although it is often a source of humble apology. He honoured the learned godly as Christians, but preferred the Bible before the library of the two universities. He saw, what every pious man must see and lament, that there is much idolatry in human learning, and that it was frequently applied to confuse and impede the gospel. Thus he addresses the reader of his treatise on The Law and Grace—‘If thou find this book empty of fantastical expressions, and without light, vain, whimsical, scholar-like terms, it is because I never went to school, to Aristotle or Plato, but was brought up at my father’s house, in a very mean condition, among a company of poor countrymen. But if thou do find a parcel of plain, yet sound, true, and home sayings, attribute that to the Lord Jesus his gifts and abilities, which he hath bestowed upon such a poor creature as I am and have been.’ His maxim was—‘Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark, when high and learned ones do only pierce the air. He also that speaks to the weakest may make the learned understand him; when he that striveth to be high, is not only of the most part understood but of a sort, but also many times is neither understood by them nor by himself!’ This is one of Bunyan’s maxims, well worthy the consideration of the most profoundly learned writers, and also of the most eloquent preachers and public speakers.

Bunyan was one of those pioneers who are far in advance of the age in which they live, and the narrative of his birth and education adds to the innumerable contradictions which the history of man opposes to the system of Mr. Owen and the Socialists, and to every scheme for making the offspring of the poor follow in leading-strings the course of their parents, or for rendering them blindly submissive to the dictates of the rich, the learned, or the influential. It incontestably proves the gospel doctrine of individuality, and, that native talent will rise superior to all impediments. Our forefathers struggled for the right of private judgment in matters of faith and worship—their descendants will insist upon it, as essential to salvation, personally to examine every doctrine relative to the sacred objects of religion, limited only by Holy Writ. This must be done with rigorous impartiality, throwing aside all the prejudices of education, and be followed by prompt obedience to Divine truth, at any risk of offending parents, or laws, or resisting institutions, or ceremonies which he discovers to be of human invention. All this, as we have seen in Bunyan, was attended with great mental sufferings, with painstaking labour, with a simple reliance upon the Word of God, and with earnest prayer. If man impiously dares to submit his conscience to his fellow-man, or to any body of men called a church, what perplexity must he experience ere he can make up his mind which to choose! Instead of relying upon the ONE standard which God has given him in his Word; should he build his hope upon a human system he could be certain only that man is fallible and subject to err. How striking an instance have we, in our day, of the result of education, when the mind does not implicitly follow the guidance of the revealed Word of God. Two brothers, named Newman, educated at the same school, trained in the same university, brought up under the same religious system—all human arts exhausted to mould their minds into strict uniformity, yet gradually receding from the same point in opposite directions, but in equally downward roads; one to embrace the most puerile legends of the middle ages, the other to open infidelity. Not so with those who follow the teachings of the Word of God, by which, and not by any church, they are to be individually judged at the great day: no pontiff, no priest, no minister, can intervene or mediate for them at the bar of God. There it will be said, ‘I know you, by your prayers for Divine guidance and your submission to my revealed will’; or, ‘I know you not,’ for you preferred the guidance of frail, fallible men, to me, and to my Word—a solemn consideration, which, as it proved a source of solid happiness and extensive usefulness to Bunyan in his pilgrimage, so it insured to him, as it will to all who follow his course, a solid foundation on which to stand at the great and terrible day, and thus enable them to live as well as die in the sure and certain hope of a triumphant entry into the celestial city.

THE THIRD PERIOD.

BUNYAN IS BAPTIZED, AND ENTERS INTO COMMUNION WITH A CHRISTIAN CHURCH AT BEDFORD—IS SET APART TO FILL THE DEACON’S OFFICE, AND SENT OUT AS AN ITINERANT PREACHER IN THE NEIGHBOURING VILLAGES.

Man is naturally led to seek the society of his fellow-men. His personal progress, and the great interests of civilization, depend upon the nature of his friendly intercourse and his proper associations. So is it with the Christian, but in a much higher degree. Not only does he require companions with whom he can enjoy Christian communion—of sufferings and of pleasures—in seasons of depressing trials, and in holy elevations—but with whom he may also form plans to spread the genial influence of Christianity, which has blessed and so boundlessly enriched his own soul. Christian fellowship and communion has received the broad seal of heaven. ‘The Lord hearkened,’ when they that feared him spake often to one another, ‘and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord’ (Mal 3:16).

Bunyan possessed a soul with faculties capable of the highest enjoyment of the communion of saints in church order. His ideas of mutual forbearance—that ‘in lowliness of mind should each esteem others better than themselves’—he enforces with very peculiar power, and, at the same time, with delicate sensibility. After the pilgrims had been washed by Innocence in the Interpreter’s bath, he sealed them, which ‘greatly added to their beauty,’ and then arrayed them in white raiment of fine linen; and ‘when the women were thus adorned, they seemed to be a terror one to the other, for that they could not see that glory each one on herself which they could see in each other. Now, therefore, they began to esteem each other better than themselves.’ ‘The Interpreter led them into his garden, where was great variety of flowers. Then said he, Behold, the flowers are diverse in stature, in quality and colour, and smell and virtue, and some are better than some; also, where the gardener hath set them, there they stand, and quarrel not with one another.’ ‘When Christians stand every one in their places, and do their relative work, then they are like the flowers in the garden that grow where the gardener hath planted them, and both honour the gardener and the garden in which they are planted.’ In the same treatise on Christian Behaviour, similar sentiments are expressed in language extremely striking and beautiful. ‘The doctrine of the gospel is like the dew and the small rain that distilleth upon the tender grass, wherewith it doth flourish and is kept green (Deut 32:2).Christians are like the several flowers in a garden that have upon each of them the dew of heaven, which, being shaken with the wind, they let fall their dew at each other’s roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of one another. For Christians to commune savourly of God’s matters one with another, it is as if they opened to each other’s nostrils boxes of perfume.’ Similar peaceful, heavenly principles, flow through Bunyan’s Discourse of the Building, &c., of the House of God and its inmates; and blessed would it be if in all our churches every believer was baptized into such motives of forbearance and brotherly love. These sentiments do honour to the head and heart of the prince of allegorists, and should be presented in letters of gold to every candidate for church fellowship. A young man entertaining such opinions as these, however rude his former conduct, being born again to spiritual enjoyments, would become a treasure to the Christian society with which he might be connected.

In ordinary cases, the minister or people who have been useful to a young convert, lead him in his first choice of Christian associates; but here we have no ordinary man. Bunyan, in all things pertaining to religion, followed no human authority, but submitted himself to the guidance of the inspired volume. Possessing a humble hope of salvation, he would read with deep interest that ‘the Lord added to the church such as should be saved.’ The question which has so much puzzled the learned, as to a church or the church, would be solved without difficulty by one who was as learned in the Scriptures as he was ignorant of the subtle distinctions and niceties of the schools. He found that there was one church at Jerusalem (Acts 8:1), another at Corinth (1 Cor 1:2), seven in Asia (Rev 1:4), and others distributed over the world; that ‘the visible church of Christ is a (or every) congregation of faithful men.’ He well knew that uniformity is a fool’s paradise; that though man was made in the image of God; it derogates not from the beauty of that image that no two men are alike. The stars show forth God’s handy work, yet ‘one star different from another star in glory’ (1 Cor 15:41). Uniformity is opposed to every law of nature, for no two leaves upon a majestic tree are alike. Who but an idiot or a maniac would attempt to reduce the mental powers of all men to uniformity? Every church may have its own order of public worship while the Scriptures form the standard of truth and morals. Where differences of opinion occur, as they most certainly will, as to the observance of days or abstinence from meats—whether to stand, or sit, or kneel, in prayer—whether to stand while listening to some pages of the inspired volume, and to sit while others are publicly read—whether to call Jude a saint, and refuse the title to Isaiah—are questions which should bring into active exercise all the graces of Christian charity; and, in obedience to the apostolic injunction, they must agree to differ. ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind’ (Rom 14:5). Human arts have been exhausted to prevent that mental exercise or self-persuasion which is essential to a Christian profession. The great object of Satan has ever been to foster indifference, that deadly lethargy, by leading man to any source of information rather than prayerful researches into the Bible. Bunyan’s severe discipline in Christ’s school would lead him to form a judgment for himself; he was surrounded by a host of sects, and, with such a Bible-loving man, it is an interesting inquiry what party he would join.

He lived in times of extraordinary excitement. England was in a transition state. A long chain of events brought on a crisis which involved the kingdom in tribulation. It was the struggle between the unbridled despotism of Epsicopacy, and the sturdy liberty of Puritanism. For although the immediate cause of the civil wars was gross misgovernment—arbitrary taxation without the intervention of Parliament, monopolies and patents, to the ruin of trade; in fact, every abuse of the royal power—still, without the additional spur of religious persecution, the spirit of the people would never have proved invincible and overpowering. The efforts of Archbishop Laud, aided by the queen and her popish confessor, Panzani, to subjugate Britain to the galling yoke of Rome, signally failed, involving in the ruin the life of the king and his archbishop, and all the desolating calamities of intestine wars, strangely called ‘civil.’ In this strife many of the clergy and most of the bishops took a very active part, aiding and abetting the king’s party in their war against the parliament—and they thus brought upon themselves great pains and penalties. The people became suddenly released from mental bondage; and if the man who had been born blind, when he first received the blessing of sight, ‘saw men as trees walking,’ we cannot be surprised that religious speculations were indulged in, some of which proved to be crude and wild, requiring much vigorous persuasive pruning before they produced good fruit. Bunyan was surrounded by all these parties; for although the rights of conscience were not recognized—the Papists and Episcopalians, the Baptists and Unitarians, with the Jews, being proscribed—yet the hand of persecution was comparatively light. Had Bunyan chosen to associate with the Episcopalians, he would not have passed through those severe sufferings on which are founded his lasting honours. The Presbyterians and Independents received the patronage of the state under the Commonwealth, and the great mass of the clergy conformed to the directory, many of them reciting the prayers they had formerly read; while a considerable number, whose conscience could not submit to the system then enforced by law, did, to their honour, resign their livings, and suffer the privations and odium of being Dissenters. Among these were necessarily included the bishops.

Of all sects that of the Baptists had been the most bitterly written against and persecuted. Even their first cousins, the Quakers, attacked them in language that would, in our peaceful days, be considered outrageous. ‘The Baptists used to meet in garrets, cheese-lofts, coal-holes, and such like mice walks,’—‘theses tumultuous, blood-thirsty, covenant-breaking, government-destroying Anabaptists.’ The offence that called forth these epithets was, that in addressing Charles II on his restoration, they stated that “they were no abettors of the Quakers.” Had royal authority possessed the slightest influence over Bunyan’s religious opinions, the question as to his joining the Baptists would have been settled without investigation. Among other infatuations of Charles I, had been his hatred of any sect that professed the right and duty of man to think for himself in choosing his way to heaven. In 1639 he published his ‘Declaration concerning the tumults in Scotland,’ when violence was resorted to against the introduction of the Common Prayer in which he denounced voluntary obedience because it was not of constraint, and called it ‘damnable’; he calls the principles of the Anabaptists, in not submitting their consciences to human laws, ‘furious frenzies,’ and ‘madness’; all Protestants are ‘to detest and persecute them’; ‘these Anabaptists raged most in their madness’; ‘the scandal of their frenzies’; ‘we are amazed at, and aggrieved at their horrible impudence’; ‘we do abhor and detest them all as rebellious and treasonable.’ This whole volume is amusingly assuming. The king claims his subjects as personal chattels, with whose bodies and minds he had a right to do as he pleased. Bunyan owed no spiritual submission to man, ‘whose breath is in his nostrils’; and risking all hazards, he became one of the denounced and despised sect of Baptists. To use the language of his pilgrim, he passed the lions, braving all the dangers of an open profession of faith in Christ, and entered the house called Beautiful, which ‘was built by the Lord of the hill, on purpose to entertain such pilgrims in.’ He first gains permission of the watchman, or minister, and then of the inmates, or church members. This interesting event is said to have taken place about the year 1653. Mr. Doe, in The Struggler, thus refers to it, Bunyan ‘took all advantages to ripen his understanding in religion, and so he lit on the dissenting congregation of Christians at Bedford, and was, upon confession of faith, baptized about the year 1653,’ when he was in the twenty-fifth year of his age. No minutes of the proceedings of this church, prior to the death of Mr. Gifford in 1656, are extant, or they would identify the exact period when Bunyan’s baptism and admission to the church took place. The spot where he was baptized is a creek by the river Ouse, at the end of Duck Mill Lane. It is a natural baptistery, a proper width and depth of water constantly fresh; pleasantly situated; sheltered from the public highway near the High Street. The Lord’s Supper was celebrated in a large room in which the disciples met, the worship consecrating the place.

Religious feelings and conduct have at all times a tendency to promote the comfort, and elevate the character of the poor. How often have we seen them thus blessed; the ragged family comfortably clothed, the hungry fed, and the inmates of a dirty miserable cottage or hovel become a pattern of cleanly happiness. One of Bunyan’s biographers, who was an eye-witness, bears this testimony. ‘By this time his family was increased, and as that increased God increased his stores, so that he lived now in great credit among his neighbours.’ He soon became a respectable member of civil as well as religious society; for, by the time that he joined the church, his Christian character was so fully established, that, notwithstanding the meanness of his origin and employment, he was considered worthy of uniting in a memorial to the Lord Protector. It was to recommend two gentlemen to form part of the council, after Cromwell had dissolved the Long Parliament. It is a curious document, very little known, and illustrative of the peculiar style of these eventful times.

Letter from the people of Bedfordshire to the Lord Generall Cromwell, and the Councell of the army.

May 13th, 1653.

May it please your Lordship, and the rest of the council of the army. We (we trust) servants of Jesus Christ, inhabitants in the county of Bedford, haveing fresh upon our hearts the sadde oppressions we have (a long while) groan’d under from the late parlayment, and now eyeing and owning (through grace) the good hand of God in this great turne of providence, being persuaded that it is from the Lord that you should be instrument in his hand at such a time as this, for the electing of such persons whoe may goe in and out before his people in righteousnesse, and governe these nations in judgment, we having sought the Lord for yow, and hopeing that God will still doe greate things by yow, understanding that it is in your hearte through the Lord’s assistance, to establish an authority consisting of men able, loveing truth, feareing God, and hateing covetouseness; and we having had some experience of men with us, we have judged it our duty to God, to yow, and to the rest of his people, humbly to present two men, viz., Nathaniell Taylor, and John Croke, now Justices of Peace in our County, whom we judge in the Lord qualified to manage a trust in the ensuing government. All which we humbly referre to your serious considerations, and subscribe our names this 13th day of May, 1653—

John Eston, Clement Berridge, Isaac Freeman, John Grewe, John Bunyan, William Dell, John Gifford, William Baker, junr., William Wheelar, Ja. Rush, Anth. Harrington, John Gibbs, Tho. Varrse, Richard Spensley, John Donne, Michael Cooke, Edward Covinson, Tho. Gibbs, John Ramsay, John Hogge, Edward White, Robert English, John Jeffard, John Browne, John Edridge, John Ivory, John White, George Gee, Daniell Groome, Charles Peirse, Ambrose Gregory, Luke Parratt, Thomas Cooke, William Page, Thomas Knott, Thomas Honnor. These to the Lord Generall Cromwell, and the rest of the councell of the army, present.

Bunyan’s daughter Elizabeth was born at Elstow, April 14, 1654, and a singular proof of his having changed his principles on baptism appears in the church register. His daughter Mary was baptized in 1650, but his Elizabeth in 1654 is registered as born, but no mention is made of baptism.

The poor harassed pilgrim having been admitted into communion with a Christian church, enjoyed fully, for a short season, his new privileges. He thus expresses his feelings:—‘After I had propounded to the church that my desire was to walk in the order and ordinances of Christ with them, and was also admitted by them: while I thought of that blessed ordinance of Christ, which was his last supper with his disciples before his death, that scriptures, “this do in remembrance of me,” was made a very precious word unto me; for by it the Lord came down upon my conscience with the discovery of his death for my sins: and as I then felt, did as if he plunged me in the virtue of the same.’

In this language we have an expression which furnishes a good sample of his energetic feelings. He had been immersed in water at his baptism, and doubtless believed it to be a figure of his death to sin and resurrection to holiness; and when he sat at the Lord’s table he felt that he was baptized into the virtue of his Lord’s death; he is plunged into it, and feels the holy influence covering his soul with all its powers.

His pastor, John Gifford, was a remarkably pious and sensible man, exactly fitted to assist in maturing the mind of his young member. Bunyan had, for a considerable time, sat under his ministry, and had cultivated acquaintance with the members of his church; and so prayerfully had he made up his mind as to this important choice of a church, with which he might enter into fellowship, that, although tempted by the most alluring prospects of greater usefulness, popularity, and emolument, he continued his church fellowship with these poor people through persecution and distress, imprisonment and the threats of transportation, or an ignominious death, until he crossed the river ‘which has no bridge,’ and ascended to the celestial city, a period of nearly forty years. Of the labours of his first pastor, John Gifford, but little is known, except that he founded the church of Christ at Bedford, probably the first, in modern times, which allowed to every individual freedom of judgment as to water baptism; receiving all those who decidedly appeared to have put on Christ, and had been received by him; but avoiding, with godly jealousy, any mixture of the world with the church. Mr. Gifford’s race was short, consistent, and successful. Bunyan calls him by an appellation, very probably common in his neighbourhood and among his flock, ‘holy Mr. Gifford’; a title infinitely superior to all the honours of nobility, or of royalty. He was a miracle of mercy and grace, for a very few years before he had borne the character of an impure and licentious man—an open enemy to the saints of God. His pastoral letter, left upon record in the church-book, written when drawing near the end of his pilgrimage, is most admirable; it contains an allusion to his successors, Burton or Bunyan, and must have had a tendency in forming their views of a gospel church. Even Mr. Southey praises this puritanic epistle as exemplifying ‘a wise and tolerant and truly Christian spirit’: and as it has not been published in any life of Bunyan, I venture to introduce it without abridgement:—

To the Church over which God made me an overseer when I was in the world.

I beseech you, brethren beloved, let these following words (wrote in my love to you, and care over you, when our heavenly Father was removing me to the kingdom of his dear Son), be read in your church-gatherings together. I shall not now, dearly beloved, write unto you about that which is the first, and without which all other things are as nothing in the sight of God, viz., the keeping the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience; I shall not, I say, write of these things, though the greatest, having spent my labours among you, to root you and build you up in Christ through the grace you have received; and to press you to all manner of holiness in your conversations, that you may be found of the Lord, without spot, and blameless, at His coming. But the things I shall speak to you of, are about your CHURCH AFFAIRS, which I fear have been little considered by most of you; which things, if not mended aright, and submitted unto, according to the will of God, will by degrees bring you under divisions, distractions, and at last, to confusion of that gospel order and fellowship which now, through grace, you enjoy. Therefore, my brethren, in the first place, I would not have any of you ignorant of this, that every one of you are as much bound now to walk with the church in all love; and in the ordinances of Jesus Christ our Lord, as when I was present among you: neither have any of you liberty to join yourselves to any other society, because your pastor is removed from you; for you were not joined to the ministry, but to Christ, and the church; and this is and was the will of God in Christ to all the churches of the saints, read Acts 2:42; and compare it with Acts 1:14, 15. And I charge you before the Lord, as you will answer it at the coming of our Lord Jesus, that none of you be found guilty herein.