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

Answ. For ought you know your Physician, or your Cook, may give you poison, and your Nurse may poison your child: But though that should make you careful whom you trust, yet somebody must be trusted for all that. You go not upon certainty in any case where man is to be trusted, but upon probability. Men are not to be distrusted in their own profession, if they be lawfully called to it, by cautelous and able triers, till they have forfeited their trust: And as he would not mend the matter who should make a Law, that no Physician shall give any medicine but one and the same to all in such diseases, and that fetched from the Kings Apothecary; And no Cook shall sell any meat but what is dressed by the Kings Cooks; for fear lest they should poison men; so he that would say, No Pastor shall preach or pray but in prescribed words, lest he should speak heresy or blasphemy, would but destroy the Pastoral office, for fear lest it should be abused.

Answ. For ought you know your Physician, or your Cook, may give you poison, and your Nurse may poison your child: But though that should make you careful whom you trust, yet somebody must be trusted for all that. You go not upon certainty in any case where man is to be trusted, but upon probability. Men are not to be distrusted in their own profession, if they be lawfully called to it, by cautelous and able triers, till they have forfeited their trust: And as he would not mend the matter who should make a Law, that no Physician shall give any medicine but one and the same to all in such diseases, and that fetcht from the Kings Apothecary; And no Cook shall sell any meat but what is drest by the Kings Cooks; for fear lest they should poison men; so he that would say, No Pastor shall preach or pray but in prescribed words, lest he should speak heresie or blasphemy, would but destroy the Pastoral office, for fear lest it should be abused.

But here you have no great temptation to this error; Because though a man may poison your bodies against your wills, yet no one can poison your souls but by your own consent. If he speak words of heresy or blasphemy, if you disown them in your minds, and consent not to them, they are none of yours, nor can do you hurt: They may be your temptation and your grief, but they are not your sin.