are those qualifications, which the rulers of a church,
for their own satisfaction, should look for, and find in such persons,
as they admit into full communion with the Church of Christ?

_Ans_. It is certain that all that profess the name of Christ and his
ways, ought not, and may not be admitted into the Lord's holy temple,
because many, if not the most of them, are very ignorant of Christ and
his ways, and notoriously scandalous in their lives, as sad and woful
experience shows. If church rulers should admit known hypocrites, they
betray their trust, and defile Christ's holy temple, by taking in such
persons as they know, or ought to know, he would not have there: and
that they ought to try and prove persons, that they may know their
fitness, before they admit them in, is clear in Acts ix. 26, 27, and
because Christ hath committed the keys of his house to take in and
exclude according to his will and appointment.

As to satisfying qualifications in persons desiring admission into the
church, when they appear to be real sound-hearted believers, according
to the judgment of charity, by the rules of the word, the church ought
to receive them in the Lord.

I. If they can satisfy the church, by giving Scripture evidence of their
regeneration, conversion, repentance, and faith in Christ; of their
knowledge of Christ, his laws and ordinances; of their lost and
perishing state by reason of sin, and of their sincere desires and
resolutions to become the Lord's, and to walk with him unto all
well-pleasing in all his ways.

II. If they are sound in the faith of the gospel; I mean in the chief
and principal doctrines thereof, although they may be ignorant of, or
mistaken in matters of less importance. If they have some distinct
knowledge and faith concerning these, and other such truths and matters
contained in the word of God; as of the state and condition in which man
was at first created; how he lost that holy and blessed estate, and the
misery into which he brought himself and all his posterity thereby.
Concerning themselves, that they are by nature children of wrath, dead
in trespasses and sins, and condemned to eternal death; that they are
enemies to, and at enmity with, God; that they have neither will nor
power by nature to will and to do that which they ought, and which is
well-pleasing to God; that they have forsaken God, and are under the
curse of the law; and that they are the children, subjects, and servants
o