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

4. Brother, a very low degree of ingenuity would have taught you to have judged such a Plea for Love, by one that in this book speaketh more against Persecuting you, than ever you read, I believe, in a Licensed book since the printing Act, to have come from no malicious persecuting intent.

Yet, as if you were so eagerly set on the Defence of the dividing scandalous miscarriages of this age, as to take it for persecution so much as to lament them, or pray against them, you gather the same conclusion from my very prayers to God, for pity to his Church that is distracted and endangered by such usage.

Yet, as if you were so eagerly set on the Defence of the dividing scandalous miscarriages of this age, as to take it for persecution so much as to lament them, or pray against them, you gather the same conclusion from my very prayers to God, for pitty to his Church that is distracted and endangered by such usage.

And here, seeing your sufferings are so¹ much talked of, and I am numbered by you among your persecutors, endure me to tell you, that suffering hath its temptations as ⟨p. 74⟩well as prosperity; And that the temptations to passion, and to run too far from those we suffer by, and to lose our charity to them and their adherents, are so much stronger to me (I leave others to judge themselves) than the temptations to fear and timorous compliances, that I was much more jealous of my heart in this, when I suffered most than at other times: For I knew that it is one of Satan's designs to rob me of my Charity and Integrity, in which he would more triumph than in depriving me of my maintenance, reputation and liberty. And I must confess to you, brother, that (though I once hoped that we should have been great gainers by our sufferings) the fruit of them now appeareth to me to be such in many as maketh