Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministry rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated,…Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministery rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated,…

Brethren, there is no great matters to be done in the Church of Christ in the midst of so many corruptions and temptations, without confirmed Resolution: Resolve t• be wholly the servants of Christ, and to seek mens Salvation, and to take no thought for your carnal interest and honour; And then the God whom you serve will take care of it. Think not that other mens selfishness or frowardness is an excuse to yours: Who knoweth man; and knoweth not that pride and selfishness is as common as sin, that is, Is the ⟨p. 132⟩last-dying heart of all our corruption? Will you expect none of it in others, when you know (if you know your selves) that you have much of it in your selves?

[…] dealing is not the Sign of enmity but love. […] must tell you, that we cannot but think that you need Repentance, great Repentance, for sinning more (and that by public, deliberate, chosen, covenanted, Ministerial sin, protesting against Repentance) in the day when Judgements called us all to renew our Repentance for our former sins. But yet we suspect our own understandings: We know what different apprehensions of things good men may have: We know that we are great sinners our selves: We take not all this to warrant our censorious separations from you. But we beseech you be not too angry with us, for differencing between good and evil, between him that sweareth, and him that feareth an Oath. As long as we do it to the cost and suffering of our own flesh, which disputeth in us more cunningly and strongly for Conformity, then all the Durels, the Fullwood's, the Stileman's, &c. in England. We have naturally no more love to poverty, to scorn, to a prison, than you have: And why may not those that do nothing else almost say, that its like we study to know the truth, as hard as any of you all? And the love of beggary, scorn and imprisonment, ⟨p. 133⟩is not likely much to bias us. And if you think that our honour with our party doth it, you must needs think that we (who so sharply reprove them,) do think very highly of that poor despised party, when we prefer their opinions, not only before your Magnates & Plures, but also before our Livelihoods, Liberties and Lives. Woe to the Hypocrite that hath no better a reward!