Quest. CII. May we continue in a church, where some one ordinance of Christ is wanting, as discipline, prayer, preaching, or sacraments, though we have all the rest?
Answ. Distinguish, 1. Of ordinances. 2. Of a stated want, and a temporary want. 3. Of one that may have better, and one that cannot.
1. Teaching, prayer, and praise, are ordinances of such necessity that church assemblies have not their proper use without them.
2. The Lord’s supper is of a secondary need, and must be used when it may, but a church assembly may attain its ends sometimes without it, in a good degree.
3. Discipline is implicitly exercised when none but the baptized are communicants, and when professed christians voluntarily assemble, and the preaching of the word doth distinguish the precious from the vile; much more when notorious, scandalous sinners are by the laws kept from the sacrament (as our rubric and canons do require).
4. But for the fuller, explicit, and exacter exercise of discipline, it is very desirable for the well-being of the churches; but it is but a stronger fence or hedge, and preservative of sacred order; and both the being of a church, and the profitable use of holy assemblies, may subsist without it; as in Helvetia and other countries it is found.
I conclude then, 1. That he that, consideratis considerandis, is a free man, should choose that place where he hath the fullest opportunities of worshipping God, and edifying his soul.
2. He is not to be accounted a free man that cannot remove, without a greater hurt than the good, either to the church or country, or to his family, his neighbours, or himself.
3. Without teaching, prayer, and divine praises we are not to reckon that we have proper church assemblies and communion.
4. We must do all that is in our power to procure the right use of sacraments and discipline.
5. When we cannot procure it, it is lawful and a duty to join in those assemblies that are without it, and rather to enjoy the rest than none. Few churches have the Lord’s supper above once a month, which in the primitive church was used every Lord’s day and ofter; and yet they meet on other days.
6. It is possible that preaching, prayer, and praise, may be so excellently performed in some churches that want both discipline and the Lord’s supper, and all so coldly and ignorantly managed in another church that hath all the ordinances, that men’s souls may much more flourish and prosper under the former than the latter.
7. If forbearing or wanting some ordinances for a time, be but in order to a probable procurement of them, we may the better forbear.
8. The time is not to be judged of only by length, but by the probability of success. For sometimes God’s providence, and the disturbances of the times, or the craft of men in power, may keep men so long in the dark, that a long expectation or waiting may become our duty.
Acts xxviii. 31; xi. 26; xx. 7, 20, &c.; 1 Cor. xiv.; Acts ii. 42; 1 Tim. iv. 13, 14; 2 Tim. iv. 1, 2; 2 Tim. iii. 16; Heb. x. 25, 26; Col. iv. 16; Acts xiii. 27; xv. 21; 1 Thess. v. 27; 1 Cor. v. 34, &c.
Matt. xxvi. 31; Acts viii. 1.