394.
Yet excommunication, the inherent discipline of the Church, which it exercised under persecution, which it is still permitted to exercise under the present establishment.
Rarely I suspect, without exposing the Clergyman to the risk of an action for damages, or some abuse.

There are few subjects that more need investigation, yet require more vigour and soundness of judgment to be rightly handled, than this of Christian discipline in a Church established by law.

It is indeed a most difficult and delicate problem, and supplied Baxter with a most plausible and to me the only perplexing of his numerous objections to our Ecclesiastical Constitution.

On the other hand, I saw clearly that he was requiring an impossibility; and that his argument carried on to its proper consequences concluded against all Church Establishment, not more against the National Church of which he complained, than the one of his own clipping and shaping which he would have substituted; consequently, every proof (and I saw many and satisfactory proofs) of the moral and political necessity of an Established Church, was at the same time a pledge that a deeper insight would detect some flaw in the reasoning of the Disciplinarians.

For if A.be right and requisite, B., which is incompatible with A., cannot be rightly required.