An apology for the nonconformists ministry containing I. the reasons of their preaching, II.…

But we must tell the world and you, that we are unable, utterly unable to justify the Corporation-Oath and Declaration, and to bring the people to like those Bishops whom they think are the chief cause of depriving of them of their long tried painful faithful Pastors, and setting over them such as in too many places are set. When our people are in Goals for meeting as they have done these twenty, yea thirty or forty years, only to repeat their Teachers Sermon, and pray and sing a Psalm together between the public Exercises on the Lords-day (where they have reverently attended.) It is a hard task that you put on them to like you, but a harder that you put on us, that we must Preach them to it, even when we must not Preach at all. That we must go to the Gaols to them, or after they come out, to their houses to teach them to like the Bishops and their Impositions! They will tell us, We love them with a love of Benevolence, as we must our enemies; we wish them no harm, but the greatest good; but we cannot love them as such complacentially, nor think approvingly of their ways. Whether you do well or ill in promoting their sufferings, I am not now judging; I only tell you that it is the greatest hinderance to our reconciling ⟨p. 64⟩them to you, and your ways, that you could easily have devised. I never saw that wooing speed well, that said, Love me, or I will send thee to Gaol. When I was a child I never thought any correction more unreasonable than whipping children to make them give over crying, when whipping was an unresistible means to make them cry, if they had not cried before.

But we must tell the world and you, that we are unable, utterly unable to justifie the Corporation-Oath and Declaration, and to bring the people to like those Bishops whom they think are the chief cause of depriving of them of their long tried painful faithful Pastors, and setting over them such as in too many places are set. When our people are in Goals for meeting as they have done these twenty, yea thirty or forty years, only to repeat their Teachers Sermon, and pray and sing a Psalm together between the publick Exercises on the Lords-day (where they have reverently attended.) It is a hard task that you put on them to like you, but a harder that you put on us, that we must Preach them to it, even when we must not Preach at all. That we must go to the Gaols to them, or after they come out, to their houses to teach them to like the Bishops and their Impositions! They will tell us, VVe love them with a love of Benevolence, as we must our enemies; we wish them no harm, but the greatest good; but we cannot love them as such complacentially, nor think approvingly of their ways. Whether you do well or ill in promoting their sufferings, I am not now judging; I only tell you that it is the greatest hinderance to our reconciling