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

3. And some will say that I am doing that which will prove a hurt to my self and others. For if I should draw the People to Communion with the Conformists, there would little compassion be showed to the Ministers that cannot conform. But selfish ⟨image 17⟩wisdom must be shut out of the Council, when we are consulting about the healing of the Churches, and the good of Souls. And indeed there is little danger of this consequence, as long as the people are far more averse to Communion or Concord with the Parish-Churches, than the Nonconforming Ministers are. But suppose it prove true, should we not do good to Souls, and save men from sin, and heal divisions, at the dearest rate? What though it cost us more than is here mentioned; The reviving of decayed Love, and the closure of any of the Churches wounds, is a recompense worth our liberties and lives.

3. And some will say that I am doing that which will prove a hurt to my self and others. For if I should draw the People to Communion with the Conformists, there would little compassion be shewed to the Ministers that cannot conform. But selfish ⟨image 17⟩wisdome must be shut out of the Council, when we are consulting about the healing of the Churches, and the good of Souls. And indeed there is little danger of this consequence, as long as the people are far more averse to Communion or Concord with the Parish-Churches, than the Nonconforming Ministers are. But suppose it prove true, should we not do good to Souls, and save men from sin, and heal divisions, at the dearest rate? What though it cost us more than is here mentioned; The reviving of decayed Love, and the closure of any of the Churches wounds, is a recompence worth our liberties and lives.

4. And those that are most guilty of the Love-killing principles here detected, and are most eminent in self-conceited ignorance, will do by me and by this book, according to their Principles, and as they use to do by others. Before they have soberly read it over, they will carry about the Sectarian reports of it from hand to hand; And when one hath said it, the rest will affirm it, that [I have clawed with one party, and have girded at the other, and have sought to make them odious by bringing them under the reproach of Separation, and of censuring and avoiding the ungodly; and that being lukewarm my self, and a complier with sin, I