2. It is the duty of the pastors and governors of the church, to keep away notorious, scandalous offenders, till they show repentance; and the people's duty to assist them by private reproof, and informing the church when there is cause. Therefore, if it be through the neglect of your duty, that the church is corrupted and undisciplined, the sin is yours, whether you receive with them or not. 3. If you rather choose a corrupted, undisciplined church to communicate with, when you have your choice of a better, _cæteris paribus_, it is your fault. But on the contrary, it is not your sin, but your duty, to communicate with that church which hath a true pastor, and where the denominating part of the members are capable of church communion, though there may some infidels, or heathens, or uncapable persons violently intrude, or scandalous persons are admitted through the neglect of discipline; in case you have not your choice to hold personal communion with a better church, and in case also you be not guilty of the corruption, but by seasonable and modest professing your dissent, do clear yourself of the guilt of such intrusion and corruption. For here the reasons and ends of a lawful separation are removed; because it tendeth not to God's honour, or their reformation, or your benefit; for all these are more crossed by holding communion with no church, than with such a corrupted church. And this is to be preferred before none, as much as a better before this. _Quest._ III. But what if I cannot communicate unless I conform to an imposed gesture, as kneeling or sitting? _Answ._ 1. For sitting or standing, no doubt it is lawful in itself: for else authority were not to be obeyed, if they should command it; and else the church had sinned in forbearing kneeling in the act of receiving, so many hundred years after Christ; as is plain they did, by the canons of general councils (Nic. i. and Trull.) that universally forbade to adore kneeling, any Lord's day in the year, and any week day between Easter and Whitsuntide; and by the fathers, Tertullian, Epiphanius, &c. that make this an apostolic or universal tradition. 2. And for kneeling, I never yet heard any thing to prove it unlawful; if there be any thing, it must be either some word of God, or the nature of the ordinance, which is supposed to be contradicted.[83] But, 1. There is no word of God for any gesture, nor against any gesture: Christ's example can never be proved to be intended to oblige us more in this, than in many other circumstances that are confessed not obligatory; as that he delivered it but to ministers, and but to a family, to twelve, and after supper, and on a Thursday night, and in an upper room, &c.: and his gesture was not such a sitting as ours. 2. And for the nature of the ordinance, it is mixed: and if it be lawful to take a pardon from the king upon our knees, I know not what can make it unlawful to take a sealed pardon from Christ (by his ambassador) upon our knees.