The cure of church-divisions, or, Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being…

But alas this quarrelsome distemper in Ministers, hath had such pernicious effects upon the Church, and is still going on to more confusion, that it deserveth and calleth for our common lamentation. And if we must lament it with despair, as an uncurable disease, I fear we must with equal despair lament the Churches ruins, and the consumption of Religion. For how can we expect that the people should hear, if the Pastors be obdurate and remediless? And who shall cure them, if their Physicians themselves be they that do infect them?

But alas this quarrelsome distemper in Ministers, hath had such pernicious effects upon the Church, and is still going on to more confusion, that it deserveth and calleth for our common lamentation. And if we must lament it with despair, as an uncurable disease, I fear we must with equal despair lament the Churches ruines, and the consumption of Religion. For how can we expect that the people should hear, if the Pastors be obdurate and remediless? And who shall cure them, if their Physicians themselves be they that do infect them?

I speak not against the necessary defence of Truth, so be it that it be truth indeed which we defend, and that the defence be indeed necessary; and that the manner be suited to the end, and to the nature and rule of Christianity. But the itch which caused the Churches scab, is of a different description. For fi•st, it proceedeth from a salt acrimonious humour in the blood: Not that there is no blood in our veins which hath better principles and qualities: But alas it is tainted with this corroding salt, which hath bred our leprosy: As if Christ had made us the salt of the earth, not to preserve the world from putrefaction, but to bite and fret all that we have any thing to do with (yea and those that we have nothing to do with) and by the salt Ca•a••hs of our back-bitings and peevish censures and reproaches, to bring the Church of Christ into a consumption. There is in many of us a love and zeal for Truth in the general (and no wonder if we are but men.) But when we meet it we know it not; but evile it, and scratch it by the face: As the Jews did long