Catholic communion defended against both extremes, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…Catholick communion defended against both extreams, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…

We have not the happiness of Innocency: Repentance is next to it: When we confess our sins, we vindicate Christ and Religion, which are against them: When we justify them, we falsely honour our selves, and lay all on Christ, as if he would justify that which he abhorreth and died for. God will yet more shame us, if we will shame his Cause, instead of taking shame to our selves. Impenitence is more dangerous than any sin which we should repent of. Carnal Policy will be angry with me for mentioning the old faults which Adversaries sufficiently reproach us with. ⟨p. 39⟩(And I must say, that God in his time, will justify the generality of the sober godly people of England, from the false Accusation of those Malignants and Papists, who charge them with all the Guilt of the Sins of a few Sectaries got into an Army, even the subversion of Church-Order, and Civil Power, when it could not be done, but by a Conquest and Oppression of these Religious People first, both Parliaments, Ministers and their Flocks; in comparison of whom, the Army separatists were inconsiderable for number. They that would destroy thousands of faithful Subjects, as guilty of that which they opposed, till they were Conquered, and suffered for opposing, do but show their own Iniquity) But yet God never taught men that way of Policy: Repentance, and not Impenitence, or Self-justification, is the way to take off mens reproach. God permits them to do it, because we do it not. To confess our own Sins, is no Extenuation of the wickedness of any Malignant Persecutors, or debauched men. What they truly upbraid us with in malice, let us openly lament in serious penitence; and not stand to a sinful dividing Principle and Cause, lest the Saints be blamed, that have fathered it on God. This Learned Author hath done otherwise himself, and so hath the Party now opposed. He and I knew the Man who was Pastor to the Commanders of the Army, when they pulled down and set up, and again pulled down, till they had turned their Armed Bulwark into Atoms; and when he saw what they had done; said, [I wonder the people do not cast stones at us as we go along the streets]. Was not this a blaming of his Flock? He knew how oft the Addresses of the Separatists to the several suddenly erected Sovereignties, did change their minds, and cry peccavimus by their new Addresses for the old:

We have not the happiness of Innocency: Repentance is next to it: When we confess our sins, we vindicate Christ and Religion, which are against them: When we justifie them, we falsly honour our selves, and lay all on Christ, as if he would justifie that which he abhorreth and died for. God will yet more shame us, if we will shame his Cause, instead of taking shame to our selves. Impenitence is more dangerous than any sin which we should repent of. Carnal Policy will be angry with me for mentioning the old faults which Adversaries sufficiently reproach us with.