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

2. You question whether [any man that dares write so, is serious.] This needs no answer.

3. You [believe such counsel was never given to Christians before.] Answ. 1. Alas, that any Minister or Christian should be so unexperienced! Would you not only reproach the non-Conformists, but all Protestants, and all Christians? as if none either of their Ministers or Neighbours ever counselled men to watch and escape the sins which the Religious part are guilty of, in the time and Country where they are? The Jews were before Christs time the holy peculiar people of God: And did you never read, 1 Cor. 10. 1. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. It's too long to transcribe. Did you never read Heb. 3 and 4? Nor read of the sins, of the Polygamy, the putting away of wives, and other faults of the better sort, and the generality of the Jews? Did you never read how common the high place-worship was even under godly Kings? Nor yet how the Law was neglected till the book was almost unknown? Did you never read of the sins of Noah, Lot and his Family, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, and his sons; the company of Corah, David, Solomon, Peter, &c? Did you never read of Christs rebuke of his Disciples for their hardness of heart, their ignorance, their striving who should be greatest? And how he took that occasion to warn them by the comparison of a child, and by his washing and wiping ⟨p. 120⟩of their feet? Nor yet of his rebuking their common expectation of a temporal Kingdom? Are not the errors of the several Religious Sects reproved by the Ancient Writers, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius, Augustine, &c. Did you never read any writing counselling men to avoid the errors and sins of the Donatists, nor the Novatians, the Monothelites, the Nestorians, Eutychians, &c? The error of the Religious sort among the Lutherans, is Consubstantiation, Church-Images, Ceremonies, &c. The error of the Religious Calvinists is too much neglect of the Lords day: What those of the Arminians and the Anabaptists, and many other sorts are, I leave to you. Did you never read any man that warned others to avoid these sins and errors? Did you never find in the Antinomians writings, that the stricter sort of good people went too far in pressing humiliation, tears and degrees of sorrow, so as to be too dark and sparing in pressing the doctrine of Grace and Love: (And it was partly true;)