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

DIRECT. XXV.

Be not over-tender of your reputation with any sort of men on earth; nor too impatient of their censures, displeasure, or contempt.

The fangs of the censorious are a common scandal; and as strong a snare or temptation to some men, as worldly preferments are to others: When we come among men whom we take for the most Religious, and hear them keenly censure all for hypocrites, or formalists, profane or schismatics, who are contrary to them in opinion or practise; at the first we are in danger of being carried away as Barnabas in dissimulation, and to say as they say, or at least comply ⟨p. 140⟩with them by our silence and practise, lest we should be censured by them as others are. Especially Ministers are greatly in danger of this snare. For the profane hate them for their doctrine and their holy lives; And it is the godly that are the fruit of their labours, and the satisfaction which they have for all their sufferings, and the comfort of their lives: And if these forsake them and despise them, with whom shall they find any comfort in the world? Therefore they are very much in danger of complying too far with their errors and weaknesses, to keep their interest in them: And they think it is that they may do them good. And perhaps this was the case of Peter and Barnabas, with the weak Judaizing Christians. For Paul telleth us Rom. the 14. that it was the use of the weak (who thought those things to be duties and sins which were not so) to judge the strong, who knew their liberty: And it was the custom of the strong to despise the weak: Just as at this day, the mistaken superstitious Christian, saith, They are profane that are not against all that he is against: And those that see his error say, what giddy whimsical fanatics are these? So was it then; and so it is like to be, till God give the world a better mind. Many a faithful Minister I have known, who have freely confessed to me, that the censures of peevish self-conceited Christians, inclined to separation, was a far stronger temptation to them to forsake or overrun their own understandings, than all the offers of honours, or riches could be on the other side. It is a hard thing, when we have spent our labour and lives to bring men to Christ, and have got