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“No Christian home, no pastor’s eye, No preacher’s vocal zeal, Moved Thy dear martyr to defy The prison and the wheel. “Forth from the heathen ranks she stepped The forfeit throne to claim Of Christian souls who had not kept Their birthright and their name. “Grace formed her out of sinful dust; She knelt a soul defiled; She rose in all the faith and trust And sweetness of a child.
Yea, I add, if it be a small church, and not consisting of many learned and skilful men, excommunication ought not to be done, except the neighbour churches be asked counsel of.” And, as touching the pastor’s part, Calvin saith well, Nunquam, &c.: “I never thought it expedient the liberty of excommunicating should be permitted to every pastor.” The fear of great inconveniences, which he thought likely to follow upon such a custom, if once it were permitted, makes him confess, in that epistle, that he durst not advise Liserus to excommunicate any man without taking counsel of other pastors.
But if in a froward tergiversation, the fornicator begin to reply, that he also is scandalised and provoked to go on in his fornication obstinately, by the pastor rebuking him for so light a matter, and that the pastor’s reproof to him hath appearance of evil, as much as his fornication hath to the pastor, albeit here it may be answered, that the pastor’s reproof is not done inordinate, neither hath any appearance of evil, except in the fornicator’s perverse interpretation, yet for stopping the fornicator’s mouth, as well more forceably as more quickly, the pastor rejoineth, that if any scandal follow upon his reproof, it is not to be regarded, because the thing is necessary, and that because fornication being a great sin, he may not but reprove it.
And though the Doctor, to make it appear that a pastor’s performing of the same is a thing indifferent, allegeth, that in Scripture there is nothing commanded thereanent; yet plain it is from Scripture itself, that matrimonial benediction ought to be given by a pastor; for God hath commanded his ministers to bless his people, Num. vi., which by just analogy belongeth to the ministers of the gospel; neither is there any ground for making herein a difference betwixt them and the minister of the law, but we must conceive the commandment to tie both alike to the blessing of God’s people.
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