How to do good to many, or, The public good is the Christians life…How to do good to many, or, The publick good is the Christians life…

Indeed in a time of Plagues Epidemical infection, tolerated Churches may be the best preservatives of Religion, as it was in ⟨p. 25⟩the first 300 years, and in the Arians Reign, and under Popery: But where sound and serious Religion is owned by the Magistrate, tolerated Churches are but as Hospitals for the sick, and must not be the receptacle of all the healthful. And doubtless, if the Papists can but get the Protestant interest once into prohibited or tolerated Conventicles (as they will call them) they have more than half overcome it, and will not doubt to use it next as they do in France, and by one turn more to cast it out. The countenance of Authority will go far with the Vulgar, against all the scruples that men of Conscience stick at, and they will mostly go to the allowed Churches, whoever is there. Let us therefore lose no possession that we can justly get, nor be guilty of disgracing the honest Conformists, but do all we can to keep up their Reputation, for the good of Souls: They see not matters of difference through the same Glass that we do. They think us unwarrantably scrupulous. We think the matter of their Sin to be very great: But we know that before God the degree of guilt, is much according to the degree of mens negligence or unwillingness to know the Truth, or to obey it: And prejudice, education, and converse maketh great difference on mens apprehensions: Charity must not reconcile us to sin, but there is no end of uncharitable censuring each other.

Indeed in a time of Plagues Epidemical infection, tolerated Churches may be the best preservatives of Religion, as it was in ⟨p. 25⟩the first 300 years, and in the Arrians Reign, and under Popery: But where sound and serious Religion is owned by the Magistrate, tolerated Churches are but as Hospitals for the sick, and must not be the receptacle of all the healthful. And doubtless, if the Papists can but get the Protestant interest once into prohibited or tolerated Conventicles (as they will call them) they have more than half overcome it, and will not doubt to use it next as they do in France, and by one turn more to cast it out. The countenance of Authority will go far with the Vulgar, against all the scruples that men of Conscience stick at, and they will mostly go to the allowed Churches, whoever is there. Let us therefore lose no possession that we can justly get, nor be guilty of disgracing the honest Conformists, but do all we can to keep up their Reputation, for the good of Souls: They see not matters of difference through the same Glass that we do. They think us unwarrantably scrupulous. We think the matter of their Sin to be very great: But we know that before God the degree of guilt, is much according to the degree of mens negligence or unwillingness to know the Truth, or to obey it: And prejudice, education, and converse maketh great difference on mens apprehensions: Charity must not reconcile us to sin, but there is no end of uncharitable censuring each other.