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

Hath not the drunken world had yet experience enough to teach them, that the Church of God is not to be built up or repaired, by their tumultuous quarrellings and frays.

Hath not the drunken world had yet experience enough to teach them, that the Church of God is not to be built up or repaired, by their tumultuous quarrellings and frayes.

How long Lord, must thy Church and Cause, be in the hands of unexperienced furious fools, who know not what Holiness ⟨image 12⟩or Healing is, but think that victory over mens Bodies, must be the cure of their Souls, and that hurting them is the way to win their Love! or that a Church is constituted of Bodies alone while Souls are absent, or no parts! who will make themselves the Rulers of thy Flock in despite of thee and of thy Cause and Servants, without thy call or approbation, and think that the work of a Soldier, is the work of a Father and a Physician! whose cures are all by amputation; and whose piety consisteth in flying from each other, and esteeming and using their Brethren as their foes; who scatter thy flocks on all the mountains, when Christ hath prayed that they may all be one!

Perhaps, Reader, thou art one of them that thinketh, that the settlement and happiness of the Church, must be won like a game at foot-ball; and therefore scruplest not to toss it in the dirt, and tumultuously to strive with and strike up the heels of all that are against thee, (so that peaceable passengers cannot safely come near your game or pass the streets.) But when you have got the Ball, have you done the work? Are you still so ignorant as not to know, how uncertain still you are to keep it, and that one spurn can take it from you? And ⟨image 13⟩