and I love their zeal that doth all this evil, as it is for God and the honour of Jesus Christ, though I love it not as blind, nor their Error or their Evil. But how hard is it to know what Spirit we are of! But it is the doleful ⟨image 4⟩mischief which their blind zeal doth, that maketh me speak; That three or four of them have made it their practice to backbite my self, and tell People, He holdeth dangerous opinions; He is erroneous in the point of Justification. And his Books are unsound and have dangerous Doctrines; He leaveth the old way of Justification, he favoureth Socinianism, and such-like: this is a small matter comparatively. Back-biting and false reports, are the ordinary fruits of bitter contentious Zeal, and the Spirit of a Sect as such doth usually so work (yea to confusion and every evil work,) when it hath banished the Zeal of Love and of Good Works. Jam. 3.14, 15, 16. Tit. 2.14. And I never counted it any great loss to their followers, that they dissuade them from the reading of my writings (as the Papists do their Proselytes) as long as God hath blest our Land with so many better.
But there are other effects that command me once again to speak to them.
1. One is, that I have good proof of the lamentable Scandal of some very hopeful Persons of quality, who by hearing such language from these men, have bin ready to turn away from Religion, and say, If they thus set against and condemn one another, away with them all.
⟨image 5⟩2. Because divers great Volumes and other sad Evidence tells me that by their invented sense of Imputation, they have tempted many Learned men to deny Imputation of Christ's Righteousness absolutely, and bitterly revile it as a most Libertine Irreligious Doctrine.
3. But above all, that they do so exceedingly confirm the Papists. I must profess that besides carnal Interest and the snare of ill Education, I do not think that there is any thing in the World that maketh or hardeneth and confirmeth Papists more, and hindereth their reception of the Truth, than these same well-meaning people that are most zealous against them, by two means: 1. One by Divisions and unruliness in Church-respects, by which they persuade men, especially Rulers, that without such a Centre as the Papacy, there will be no Union, and without such Violence as theirs, there will be no Rule and Order. Thus one extreme doth breed and feed another. 2.
and I love their zeal that doth all this evil, as it is for God and the honour of Jesus Christ, though I love it not as blind, nor their Errour or their Evil. But how hard is it to know what Spirit we are of! But it is the doleful ⟨image 4⟩mischief which their blind zeal doth, that maketh me speak; That three or four of them have made it their practice to backbite my self, and tell People, He holdeth dangerous opinions; He is erroneous in the point of Justification. And his Books are unsound and have dangerous Doctrines; He leaveth the old way of Justification, he favoureth Socinianism, and such-like: this is a small matter comparatively. Back-biting and false reports, are the ordinary fruits of bitter contentious Zeal, and the Spirit of a Sect as such doth usually so work (yea to confusion and every evil work,) when it hath banished the Zeal of Love and of Good Works. Jam. 3.14, 15, 16. Tit. 2.14. And I never counted it any great loss to their followers, that they disswade them from the reading of my writings (as the Papists do their Proselytes) as long as God hath blest our Land with so many better.
But there are other effects that command me once again to speak to them.
1. One is, that I have good proof of the lamentable Scandal of some very hopeful Persons of quality, who by hearing such language from these men, have bin ready to turn away from Religion, and say, If they thus set against and condemn one another, away with them all.
⟨image 5⟩2. Because divers great Volumes and other sad Evidence tells me that by their invented sence of Imputation, they have tempted many Learned men to deny Imputation of Christ's Righteousness absolutely, and bitterly revile it as a most Libertine Irreligious Doctrine.
3. But above all, that they do so exceedingly confirm the Papists. I must profess that besides carnal Interest and the snare of ill Education, I do not think that there is any thing in the World that maketh or hardneth and confirmeth Papists more, and hindreth their reception of the Truth, than these same well-meaning people that are most zealous against them, by two means: 1. One by Divisions and unruliness in Church-respects, by which they perswade men, especially Rulers, that without such a Center as the Papacy, there will be no Union, and without such Violence as theirs, there will be no Rule and Order. Thus one extreme doth breed and feed another. 2.
