Catholic unity, or, The only way to bring us all to be of one…Catholick vnity, or, The only way to bring us all to be of one…

1. This Unity in mere Profession is properly no Christian Unity, because you are not properly Christians. If this be all, it is but in the bark and shell that we are agreed: It is but a seeming agreement, from the teeth outward: but not an hearty agreement to be Christians. What! shall we all agree to say we are Christians? when with most it is not so: For all this Agreement, you will still have one Father, and we another. You will not be United with us in Christ the Head: you will not have the same Holy Spirit, who is the Life of the New creature: You will be contrary to us in Nature or Disposition. You will not have the same Intention and ⟨p. 204⟩Ultimate End with us, but you will a•m at one thing, and we at another: You will not go the same way, nor walk by the same Rule and Law as we: It will be but a tying together the Living and the Dead. Bellarmine himself confesseth that the ungodly are but dead members. It is not life that Uniteth a dead member to the living. You will b• stil• either openly or secretly betraying the Body to which you profess your selves United, and taking part with its deadly enemies, the flesh, the world and the Devil! Your very Hearts and ours will still be contrary: You will love the sin that we hate and set our selves against; and you will dis-relish that Holy Heavenly life, which must be our business and delight. Your Affections will go one way, and ours another. You will Live by sense, when we must live by faith; and you will be laying up a treasure ⟨p. 205⟩on earth, when we are laying up a treasure in heaven: You will be asking counsel of flesh and blood, when we must advise with God and his holy Word. You will look first to your bodies, when we must look first and principally to our souls. It will be your business to feed those sins, which it is our daily work to kill. You will make and apprehend it to be your Interest to go contrary to us: And what Agreement can there be, where there are contrary Interests? Under all your outward Profession, you will still retain a secret enmity and hatred to the life of holiness: and will not have that hearty Love to the Saints, as beseems all those that are members of Christ, and of the holy Catholic Church. So that when you have Communion with the Saints, it will be but an external and superficial communion in some common things;