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

Answ. Some of your judgement denied many of them much of that liberty which consisteth in worshipping of God in their own way, when you were in power. But suppose they had not, it is but another way of uncharitableness: The vice expressed seemeth to be the same. For you condemn them as unfit for Christian-Communion, and therefore you exclude them from yours: And you take their Church-communion among themselves, to be but a profanation of holy things: which maketh them the more impious, and therefore the more odious: And you tolerate it in them as you tolerate mens folly and madness, or leprosy or plague, because you cannot cure it. And I pray you judge whether there be any more Christian Love in this kind of dealing, than there is in that which you call persecution? Or at least, whether it proceed not from the same uncharitableness? I suppose you to be spiritual and not ⟨p. 261⟩carnal persons, at least in profession and therefore that you are not so tender of the flesh, as to take its suffering to be any great matter to you, in comparison of any of the sufferings of the soul. When you refuse Communion with men, as judging them unfit for fellowship with the visible Churches of Christ, you judge them the visible members of the devil, and condemn them to the loss of the greatest privileges on earth, and to be left out with the dogs, with Publicans and Heathens: Though you think that you have no more to do your selves in the execution of this sentence, but to separate from them, yet you declare that you think that all others should do the same: So that your tolerating their Communion among themselves, is no great signification of your charity.

Answ. Some of your judgement denied many of them much of that liberty which consisteth in worshipping of God in their own way, when you were in power. But suppose they had not, it is but another way of uncharitableness: The vice expressed seemeth to be the same. For you condemn them as unfit for Christian-Communion, and therefore you exclude them from yours: And you take their Church-communion among themselves, to be but a prophanation of holy things: which maketh them the more impious, and therefore the more odious: And you tolerate it in them as you tolerate mens folly and madness, or leprosie or plague, because you cannot cure it. And I pray you judge whether there be any more Christian Love in this kind of dealing, than there is in that which you call persecution? Or at least, whe•her it proceed not from the same uncharitableness? I suppose you to be spiritual and not