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 ...…

§ 27. IF your Church-state be essentiated by a Covenant, to be subject to nothing else in Worship (even the Accidents which God bids men determine by his general Rules of Edification, Order, Decency, Love, Peace, Church-Custom, &c.) then I commend the generality of Nonconforming Ministers, that they set up no such Church-state: And they do well to renounce all that you do ill to invent and impose, while you talk against Imposition, and adding to God's Word such Humane Forms.

But yet it's an Error to hold, That if any unjustly condemn other Churches, ¹it is a renunciation of that condemned Church-state, to have Communion with them that condemn. Who would have thought the Two separating Extremes had so agreed in their Principles? This is just the very Core of the evil of the Book of the contrary party which I here answer. Alas! how few Churches on Earth have not peevishly condemned one another; it may be for Easter-day, for the choice of a Bishop, as the Donatists (striving whose Bishop was the right): The case of the Novatians, Audians, Luciferians, and even of most in East and West, are sad Instances: And will such censoriousness unchurch them, and forbid us Communion with them? This is plain revenge, and to curse them that curse us, and abuse them that abuse us. I l•ke Calvin's Spirit better than this, who said, Tho Luther should call me a ⟨p. 45⟩Devil, I would call him, the Excellent Servant of God. Too many Lutherans now renounce Communion with the Calvinists, who yet renounce not Communion with them.

But yet it's an Error to hold, That if any unjustly condemn other Churches, ¹it is a renunciation of that condemned Church-state, to have Communion with them that condemn. Who would have thought the Two separating Extreams had so agreed in their Principles? This is just the very Core of the evil of the Book of the contrary party which I here answer. Alas! how few Churches on Earth have not peevishly condemned one another; it may be for Easter-day, for the choice of a Bishop, as the Donatists (striving whose Bishop was the right): The case of the Novatians, Audians, Luciferians, and even of most in East and West, are sad Instances: And will such censoriousness unchurch them, and forbid us Communion with them? This is plain revenge, and to curse them that curse us, and abuse them that abuse us. I lke Calvin's Spirit better than this, who said, Tho Luther should call me a