3. But what if in all this I be mistaken, and if Communion in the Liturgy prove unlawful? should you be so impatient as not to bear with one that in such an opinion differeth from you? As I write for my opinion, so do you for yours? And why should ⟨p. 14⟩not you bear with my dissent, as well as I do with yours? My judgement commanded me, First to exhort all sober Christians, to draw nearer, and to lay by those principles, which drive them from each other as not to be Communicated with: And Secondly, where that cannot be obtained, to bear with one another in our several Assemblies or Churches, and to manage them with Love and peace. This was my ex••rtation, And the time once was (even when the five Dissenting brethren pleaded their cause with the Assembly at Westminster,) that this motion would have been accepted, or at least not judged so great an injury as now it is. O brethren, do not expose your selves and cause, so much to the censure of impartial men, and of posterity, as to let them know that you are grown so high, or that in the very day of our humiliation these terms seem so injurious to you, as these exceptions intimate. Mr. Nigh and Mr. Tho. Good win were so friendly with Dr. Preston, as to publish his works when he was dead. And I verily think if you had been acquainted with such Conformists heretofore, as he was, and Dr. Stoughton, and Dr. Taylor, and Mr. Downam, and those forenamed, and abundance more, you could not choose but have thought them both tolerable and lovely, if you had not thought it lawful to Communicate with them: Much more you should have endured such as the Non-conformists of that age, who used Parish Communion, and pleaded for it against the Separatists, in far sharper language than ever I used to you (as their books against Johnson and Can and Brown and Ainsworth do yet visibly declare.) If you think their Reasons and mine for the Lawfulness ⟨p. 15⟩of Parish Communion to be insufficient, so do I think of yours against it.
3. But what if in all this I be mistaken, and if Communion in the Liturgie prove unlawful? should you be so impatient as not to bear with one that in such an opinion differeth from you? As I write for my opinion, so do you for yours? And why should ⟨p. 14⟩not you bear with my dissent, as well as I do with yours? My judgement commanded me, First to exhort all sober Christians, to draw neerer, and to lay by those principles, which drive them from each other as not to be Communicated with: And Secondly, where that cannot be obtained, to bear with one another in our several Assemblies or Churches, and to manage them with Love and peace. This was my ex••rtation, And the time once was (even when the five Dissenting brethren pleaded their cause with the Assembly at Westminster,) that this motion would have been accepted, or at least not judged so great an injury as now it is. O brethren, do not expose your selves and cause, so much to the censure of impartial men, and of posterity, as to let them know that you are grown so high, or that in the very day of our humiliation these terms seem so injurious to you, as these exceptions intimate. Mr. Nye and Mr. Tho. Good win were so friendly with Dr. Pr•ston, as to publish his works when he was dead. And I verily think if you had been acquainted with such Conformists heretofore, as he was, and Dr. Stoughton, and Dr. Taylor, and Mr. Downam, and those forenamed, and abundance more, you could not choose but have thought them both tolerable and lovely, if you had not thought it lawful to Communicate with them: Much more you should have endured such as the Non-conformists of that age, who used Parish Communion, and pleaded for it against the Separatists, in far sharper language than ever I used to you (as their books against Johnson and Cann and Brown and Ainsworth do yet visibly declare.) If you think their Reasons and mine for the Lawfulness ⟨p. 15⟩of Parish Communion to be insufficient, so do I think of yours against it.
