The Saints' Everlasting Rest

And how impossible is it for Ministers to maintain peace among their people, if they maintain not peace among themselves? O what a staggering is it to the faith of the weak, when they see their Teachers and Leaders at such odds? It makes them ready to throw away all Religion, when they see scarce two or three of the most learned and godly Divines of one mind, but like the bitterest enemies, disgracing and vilifying one another, and all because the Articles of our faith must be so unlimited, voluminous, and almost infinite, so that no man well knows when he may call himself an Orthodox Christian. When our Creed is swelled to the bigness of a National Confession, one would think that he that subscribeth to that Confession should be Orthodox, and yet if he jump not just with the Times in expounding every Article of that Confession, and run not with the stream in every other Point that is in question amongst them, though he had subscribed to the whole Harmony of Confessions, he is never the nearer the estimation of Orthodox; Were we all bound together by a Confession or Subscription of the true Fundamentals, and those other Points that are next to Fundamentals only, and there took up our Christianity and Unity, yielding each other a freedom of differing in smaller or more difficult Points, or in expressing our selves in different terms, and so did live peaceably and lovingly together, notwithstanding such differences, as men that all knew the mysteriousness of Divinity, and the imperfection of their own understandings, and that here we know but in part, and therefore shall most certainly err and d•ffer in part: what a world of mischiefs might this course prevent? I oft think on the examples of Luther and Melanchthon: It was not a few things that they differed in, nor such as would now be accounted small; besides, the imperious harshness of Luther's disposition (as Carolostadius could witness,) and yet how sweetly and peaceably, and lovingly did they live together ⟨p. 526⟩without any breach or disagreement considerable: As Mel. Adamus saith of them, Et si tempora fuerunt ad distractiones proclivia, hominumque levitas dissidiorum cupida, tamen cum alter alterius vitia nosset, nunquam inter eos simultas extitit, ex qua animorum alienatio subsecuta sit;

And how impossible is it for Ministers to maintain peace among their people, if they maintain not peace among themselves? O what a staggering is it to the faith of the weak, when they see their Teachers and Leaders at such odds? It makes them ready to throw away all Religion, when they see scarce two or three of the most learned and godly Divines of one minde, but like the bitterest enemies, disgracing and vilifying one another, and all because the Articles of our faith must be so unlimited, voluminous, and almost infinite, so that no man well knows when he may call himself an Orthodox Christian. When our Creed is swelled to the bigness of a National Confession, one would think that he that subscribeth to that Confession should be Orthodox, and yet if he jump not just with the Times in expounding every Article of that Confession, and run not with the stream in every other Point that is in question amongst them, though he had subscribed to the whole Harmony of Confessions, he is never the neerer the estimation of Orthodox; Were we all bound together by a Confession or Subscription of the true Fundamentals, and those other Points that are next to Fundamentals onely, and there took up our Christianity and Unity, yielding each other a freedom of differing in smaller or more difficult Points, or in expressing our selves in different tearms, and so did live peaceably and lovingly together, notwithstanding such differences, as men that all knew the mysteriousness of Divinity, and the imperfection of their own understandings, and that here we know but in part, and therefore shall most certainly err and dffer in part: what a world of mischiefs might this course prevent? I oft think on the examples of Luther and Melancthon: It was not a few things that they differed in, nor such as would now be accounted small; besides, the imperious harshness of Luthers disposition (as Carolostadius could witness,) and yet how sweetly and paceably, and lovingly did they live together