Church discipline

Those that have felt the bondage, wrath, terrors, and death, that the law works, will prize their liberty, and take heed how they approach that blackness and darkness again; but those that never felt its power can play with it as with a bird, for they are alive without it. It is vain that ministers send men to Sinai in order to promote holiness: "the works of the flesh are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions. heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness." And will sending men to the law destroy these? Nay, says Paul, these are the motions of sin, which are by the law that works in our members to bring forth fruit unto death, Rom. 7:5. Nor was the law manifested to destroy these works of the devil, but to make them appear exceeding sinful; nor does the law weaken sin but aggravate it; for "the strength of sin is the law."
It is grace that makes the believer what he is, nor will the law ever make him better. Those that came privily in to spy out the apostles' liberty that they might bring them into bondage, (Gal. 2:4) agree exactly with you in sentiment; for if the law be binding to the believer, and he be under it as a rule of life, it is the same as what they enforced; namely, "it was needful to circumcise them, and command them to keep the law of Moses." They said this was needful; you say the believer is under this necessity: they called it keeping the law of Moses; and you call the law of Moses the believer's rule of life.
There is no more difference between your assertions and theirs than there is between my two eyes. If you object that it is circumcision only that is called the yoke that was unbearable; it is answered they were circumcised at eight days old, therefore the fathers could give very little account of the unbearable pain of it. The yoke consisted in this; "he that is circumcised is a debtor to do the whole law:" "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God" is what is meant. Submitting to circumcision is rejecting Christ, who was a Minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers. And submitting to the yoke of keeping the law of Moses is rejecting Christ's yoke, which consists of faith and love in the Spirit. The yoke therefore is this, it is needful to circumcise the believers, and to command them to keep the law of Moses. (Acts 15:5) And you say the law is binding, and that the believer is under the law as his rule of life; you might just as well have stuck to the old text, for it amounts exactly to the same, nor doth your different way of expression alter the matter. Their need of keeping the law of Moses is your binding law as a rule of life; it is the spirit of legal bondage that obliges and binds you; and it was the same that influenced those who made it needful; different names make no alteration in the things.
Those men tempted God by putting that yoke on the saints, and subverted their souls by saying ye must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, to whom God gave no such commandment, Acts 15:10-24; and they do no less than tempt God and subvert the souls of believers, who tell them the law is binding, and that they are under it as a rule of life, for God has given them no such commandment. Nor can men expect that the broad seal of heaven should attend a ministry that tempts God and subverts the souls of His saints, when it is expressly said that it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to the apostles, to lay on them no such burden. However, this is the way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death, Prov. 14:12; it is turning people from grace to works; from the liberty of the Spirit to the bondage of the law; from the law of the Spirit of life to the law of death. Liberty and bondage, grace and works, Christ's yoke and the yoke of Moses, the true light and the old veil, death and life, can never stand together, one must give way; grace shall reign, and Moses must be subject.
If a believer be a new creature, has a new heart, a new spirit, walks in the new and living way, and must serve God in the newness of the Spirit, and walk in newness of life, old things must be done away: and if old things are done away, the yoke of bondage is included among them, which Paul calls the law of death, or else the apostle's assertion, cannot stand good; "therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new;" and he that sits upon the throne says, behold I create all things new. God has granted us "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He hath consecrated (or new made) for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh." Take heed, sir, that you despise not this new and living way; it is the old way that you contend for at present, which is stopped up; it is hedged about with thorns, namely, the curses of the law; and so poor sinners will find it, when like Balaam, they fall before that terrible sword of God that turns every way to keep the way of the tree of life, Gen. 3:24; none will ever get to God that old way; the sword that keeps the way of life destroys all thieves and robbers that climb up any other way, or dare to look through, or gaze, where God has fixed his bounds, Exod. 19:21-23.