in deference to human authority,
would be disloyal to the Lord and contrary to the principles of
Protestants.

The view commonly entertained is, that the net is the Church, or, as
some express it, the Bible and the ordinances of religion; while the
fishermen who spread and draw it are the apostles in the first instance,
and afterwards the ordinary ministers of the word. If the net is the
Church, and its drawers the Church's ministers, the whole question of
discipline is immediately raised. This parable, accordingly, like that
of the tares, has been impressed into their own service by the
opponents of discipline both in ancient and modern times. We
emphatically repeat here, what we formerly stated in connection with the
cognate parable, that no consistent argument can be maintained in regard
to discipline from this scripture, except an absolute and entire
repudiation of all effort, by a human ministry and in this present
world, to keep any person or class of persons without the pale of the
visible Church on account of their opinions or their conduct. Very few,
however, venture to take this ground. The ordinary method is to contend
for some measure of Church order--for the right and duty of excluding
some of the worst--and then to lean on this parable for an argument in
favour of a lax and against a stringent administration. We submit that
to take your stand on this parable, and thence contend for the exclusion
to some extent of the evil from the pale of the Church, is to trample
all logical and critical laws under foot. This scripture manifestly
either forbids all effort to discriminate in this world, or says nothing
at all on the subject.

I shall now state, as distinctly and fairly as I can, some of the
difficulties and inconsistencies which adhere to the common
interpretation of the net and its drawers, and convince me that it is
not the true interpretation.

1. It makes those who draw the net through the water, and those who
separate between good and evil on the shore, not the same, but different
persons, and persons of different classes,--the one representing men
ministering to the Church in time, the other angels executing judgment
in eternity; whereas, both from the terms of the narrative and the
ordinary practice of fishermen, we know that the same persons who draw
the net to shore afterwards divide between the worthless and vile of
its contents. The net "was cast into the sea, and gathered of every
kind: wh