A defence of the principles of love, which are necessary to the unity and…

O• these, I suppose you will not charge the Churches you separate from, as guilty of the first, second, fourth, or sixth, ▪which is out of the reach of humane judgment▪ For I suppose you to be sober. As for the third, through Gods great mercy, the Doctrine of England is so •ound, that the Independents and Presbyterians have still offered to subscribe to it in the 39 Articles: according to which (if there were any doubtfulness in) the phrases of their Prayers, ▪they▪ are to be interpreted. For the fifth, if you accuse them of it, you must prove it; which is not yet done (supposing that you take not Government for Worship•; nor can you do it. So that it must lie only on the seventh. And for that (if you will take the word ▪false-worship] in that sense) do not you also worship ⟨p. 4⟩God falsely when you worship him sinfully? And are not your disorders and unmeet expressions sins, as well as theirs? Alas, how oft have I joined in Prayer with honest men that have spoken confusedly, unhandsomely, and many ways more unaptly and disorderly than the Common Prayer is? How oft have I heard good old Mr. Simeon Ash say, that he hath heard many Ministers pray so unfitly, that he could heartily have wished that they had rather used the Common Prayer? When did any one of us pray without sin? How ordinarily do Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, Separatists, &c. put their Opinions into their Prayers, and so make them false Prayers, and so false Worship? Nay, could you lay by partiality, and kn•w your self (a very hard thing) you would presently see that you who wrote these Exceptions, are liker to Worship God falsely than they that do it by the Liturgy, that is, in the third sense: Because the Doctrine of the Prayers in the Liturgy is sound▪ but if you account this Script of yours to be Worship (and why not writing as well as preaching) or if you put the same things into your Worship, which you put into your writings, (as is very usual with others) then it is false Worship indeed, as consisting of too many falsehoods. If you pray to God to incline men against all that Communion which you write against, or lament such Communion as a sin, this is falser worship than any is in the Liturgic Prayers.