made for themselves broken cisterns, "which cannot hold water." There can be but one true Baptism; and yet they think they can baptize. They desert the fountain of life, yet hold out the gift of a living and health-giving water. Men are not cleansed by them, but rather are made filthy: their sins are not wiped away, but verily are heaped up. They are born, not the sons of God, but sons of Satan: they are gendered of perfidy, they have lost the gift of faith, they cannot arrive unto the reward of peace, for they have destroyed the peace of the Lord by discord and fury.
8.
Conventicles have no claim to Christ's promised favours.
Let no man deceive himself by a mistaken interpretation of the Lord's words, "wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, I am with them." Those who corrupt and falsely interpret the Scriptures, state the latter part of the passage, and omit the former: they attend to one part, and the other they artfully suppress. As themselves are separated from the Church, so do they sunder the purport of a passage which should be undivided. For the Lord, in urging his disciples to maintain unanimity and peace, saith, "I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth, touching anything which ye shall ask, it shall be given you by my Father which is in heaven. For wheresoever two or three shall be gathered together in my name, I am with them." Showing that a value is put, not on the number of those who pray, but on their unanimity; "If" He saith, "two of you on earth shall agree together." Unanimity is put first: a peaceful agreement is the previous premise; He faithfully and firmly teaches, that we must agree together. Yet how can any individual be said to agree with another, when he does not agree with the great body and general brotherhood of the Church? How can two or three be gathered together in Christ's name, when they are beyond question separated from Christ, and from His Gospel? We do not leave them, but they leave us: and inasmuch as heresies and
