--who are hereby forbidden to receive such heretics into their houses, or to pay them so much as common civilities. This precept of the Apostle may he further illustrated by his own practice, recorded by Irenaeus, who had the information at second-hand from Polycarp, a disciple of St. John's, that St. John, once meeting with Cerinthus at the bath, retired instantly without bathing, for fear lest the bath should fall by reason of Cerinthus being there, the enemy to truth. Psha! The 'bidding him God speed',--[Greek: légôn autô chaírein],--(2 'John', 11,) is a spirituality, not a mere civility. If St. John knew or suspected that Cerinthus had a cutaneous disease, there would have been some sense in the refusal, or rather, as I correct myself, some probability of truth in this gossip of Irenaeus. Ib. p. 128. They corrupted the faith of Christ, and in effect subverted the Gospel. That was enough to render them detestable in the eyes of all men who sincerely loved and valued sound faith. O, no, no, not 'them!' 'Error quidem, non tamen homo errans, abominandus': or, to pun a little, 'abhominandus'. Be bold in denouncing the heresy, but slow and timorous in denouncing the erring brother as a heretic. The unmistakable passions of a factionary and a schismatic, the ostentatious display, the ambition and dishonest arts of a sect-founder, must be superinduced on the false doctrine, before the heresy makes the man a heretic. Ib. p. 129. --the doctrine of the Nicolaitans. Were the Nicolaitans a sect, properly so called? The word is the Greek rendering of 'the children of Balaam;' that is, men of grossly immoral and disorderly lives. Ib. p. 130. For if he who 'shall break one of the least moral commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven', (Mat. v. 19,) it must be a very dangerous experiment, &c. A sad misinterpretation of our Lord's words, which from the context most evidently had no reference to any moral, that is, universal commandment as such, but to the national institutions of the Jewish state, as long as that state should be in existence; that is to say, until 'the Heaven' or the Government, and 'the Earth' or the People or the Governed, as one 'corpus politicum', or nation, had 'passed away'. Till that time,--which was fulfilled under Titus, and more thoroughly under Hadrian,--no Jew was relieved from his duties as a citizen and subject by his having become a Christian. The text, together with the command implied in the miracle of the tribute-money in the fish's mouth, might be fairly and powerfully adduced against the Quakers, in respect of their refusal to pay their tithes, or whatever tax they please to consider as having an un-Christian destination. But are they excluded from the kingdom of heaven, that is, the Christian Church? No;--but they must be regarded as weak and injudicious members of it. Chap. V. p. 140.