This most arbitrary appropriation of the words of Christ, and of the
apostles, John and Paul, by the Clergy to themselves exclusively, is the
[Greek: proton pseudos], the fatal error which has practically excluded
Church discipline from among Protestants in all free countries. That it
is retained, and an efficient power, among the Quakers, and only in that
Sect, who act collectively as a Church,--who not only have no proper
Clergy, but will not allow a division of majority and minority, nor a
temporary president,--seems to supply an unanswerable confirmation of
this my assertion, and a strong presumption for the validity of my
argument. The Wesleyan Methodists have, I know, a discipline, and the
power is in their consistory,--a general conclave of priests cardinal
since the death of Pope Wesley. But what divisions and secessions this
has given rise to; what discontents and heart-burnings it still
occasions in their labouring inferior ministers, and in the classes, is
no less notorious, and may authorize a belief that as the Sect
increases, it will be less and less effective; nay, that it has
decreased; and after all, what is it compared with the discipline of the
Quakers?--Baxter's inconsistency on this subject would be inexplicable,
did we not know his zealotry against Harrington, the Deists and the
Mystics;--so that, like an electrified pith-ball, he is for ever
attracted towards their tenets concerning the pretended perfecting of
spiritual sentences by the civil magistrate, but he touches only to fly
off again.
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