Читать книгу The Anglo-French Entente in the Seventeenth Century - Charles Bastide - Страница 28

I think myself here obliged to add an Apology as to my own Account, for what I have said as to the Independant Churches. I do imagine I shall be accused at first for having made the description of the Congregational way, not according as it is in effect, but in that manner as Xenophon did the Cyropædia to be the perfect model of a Prince. They will say that any other interest than that of the inward knowledge I have of the goodness, truth, and holiness of the Congregational way, ought to have excited me to commend it as I have done. That I commend what I do not approve in the bottome of my heart, since I do not joyn my self to it. … To which, I answer that though I should joyn my self to their Assemblies, it would be no argument that I should approve of all the things they did, and all they believed, as they cannot conclude by my not joyning to their Congregations, that I have not the Congregational way in greater and higher esteem than any other. As I am a Frenchman, and by the grace of God of the Reformed Church, I joyn to the Church of my own Nation, to which I am so much the more strongly invited by the holiness of the Doctrines, and lives of our excellent Pastors, Monsieur Mussard and Monsieur Primerose, and because they administer the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the same manner as Jesus Christ did it with His Disciples; not having anything to give me offence in their conduct, unless that they are not absolutely undeceived of the practice of our Pastors in France, of excommunicating in the name and authority of Jesus Christ, and of interposing the same sacred Name, and the same sacred Authority to excommunicate as St. Paul made use of to deliver the Incestuous person over to Satan. …