In the independent way, Baxter, describing the Westminster Assembly of Divines, says, “I disliked many things.” After mentioning what those things were—their making too light of ordination, their unnecessary and unscriptural strictness about the qualification of church members—he adds, “I disliked also the lamentable tendency of this their way to divisions and subdivisions and the nourishing of heresies and sects.” The soul of the good man was wearied, as well it might be, with these differences, so trifling yet so fiercely discussed, with this waste of power, with this spirit of wrangling and contention, with these quarrels of Christian with Christian, when the world was only to be made better, and the true Church only to be built up, by a holy life. In our time the tendency of some minds to fly off into fresh sects is greater, perhaps, than ever. In one street you see a placard up stating that here the Gospel is preached, and nowhere else. A good man says he is weary of all this sectarianism, and at once hires a room and starts a new sect. A man’s conscience is too sensitive to allow him to worship with a one-man ministry, or with any existing denomination. He shakes his head, and mourns over their worldliness, their carnality, their want of spiritual life; but does he better it by standing aloof, by shutting himself up with a few dismal-minded people, who come with their Bibles, and see in them, not what sound scholarly criticism teaches, but that which their own morbid fancy suggests? As men of the world, these things are to be looked at practically, and by the light of common sense. Here are certain religious agencies at work—by them people are being strengthened in the Christian life, trained to Christian work, in their way promoting the welfare of man, and glorifying God. I may affect a superior piety, I may refuse to associate with common Christians, I may leave them; but what is the result? That as far as I can I put hindrances in their way. Ignorant people look up to me as a saint, and the church and the minister where I have any influence are to the extent of that influence damaged. A gentleman writes to me—“Those who now represent the London Ecclesia, in recognition of the constitution and order of its organization, are, in this metropolis, myself and three others;” and then quotes—“‘Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’” It is in Peckham this new religious body meets. At such meetings they do not admit strangers, in fulfilment of the ordinance of the Lord which enjoins us to assemble “ourselves together to worship God in spirit and in truth,” and commands us—“If there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine (the doctrine of the Christ), receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed.”