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    con-rowley

    112)       178          1678

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    The Brethren doe decline the advise of the council, & therby continue

    and propegate the dissention amongst them, & wave the next way to re

    =ceive satisfaction, & their own peac, which we doe heartily lament, & wherof

    we doe heerby forewarn them, & shall give an account of our transactions in the mat

    =ter to our churches & what opposition we have mett with therin

    And we farther solemnly declare unto them, that if they shall still resist in

    opposition to the means that have bin offered to them, & used with them for ye

    healing their breaches, we have just cause to fear that they will debarr ymselves

    from comunion with their neighbour churches, who may alsoe (soe farr as we

    know) hold communion with that offending, but confessing brother, whom they

    seem to be irreconcileably set against.

      Rowley ffeb 26. 1678                     Daniel Denison

                                                                 moderators

                                                John Ward

                         William Perkins            Tho: Cobbett

                         Moses Pengry               Jer: Hubbard

                         Samuel Dolton              Seaborn Cotton

                         Nicholas Noyes             John Richardson

                         Tho: Perkins

                         Caleb Moodey

      An Answer to the 2d result of the late Reverend Elders & respected

    messengers of the 5 churches which they left with us (haveing first published

    it before the Church & Town) at their dissolving at which Time the major Gen.

    declared that their members absent wher of the same mind with themselves

     

       The last result as it is dated from the 10th of Decemb 1678, soe it is

    for substance the same with the foremar, onely ther are some more faults

    found with the church, & new ones that they comitted sinc the councills first

    coming, besides several overlooked, and alsoe withdrawing comunion threat

    =ned, & reception of our Excommunicate

      Its sayd out of tenderness to the churches credit and peace you waved yt

    particular strickness in takeing notice of several irregularityes of the

    Church in their proceeding with Mr Nelson.

     We would gladly have had your help to shew us all our irregularityes, several

    of which (as you publickly declare) you waved out of tenderness to the churches

    credit, but we conceive it had bin better farr to have told us what they are

    then to tell the countrey ther were several of them, & that before you give

    us any hint what they are, or any oppertunity to answer for our selves:

    It is not as we apprehend either for our comfort or credit, that several

    breaches of Rule (for noe less several irregularityes import) shuld be imputed

    to is & yet not told us what they are, that soe we might clear ourselves

    if truely we could, or els acknowledg our irregularityes, thise this seems to us

    to be a tenderness with a contradiction:

    And we beseech you to consider, what tenderness to the churches credit was

    ther in reading Mr Nelsons paper of fals apsersions upon the church, before

    Towne & countrey: Receive not an accusation &c.[101] much less publish it

    That ther was a waveing that particular strickness in takeing notice of

    several Evills in Mr Nelson, the church cannot but be sencible, and have (as we

    conceive) fully demonstrated it to be soe in our grounds why we can not sit ye

    councills result

    Wheras they declared that we sent a paper of complaints against the council

                                                                 we

     

    [101] I Tim. 5:19.