A second admonition to Mr. Edward Bagshaw written to call him to repentance for…

3. And yet I will say, that I see now that a mans enemies may be more useful to him than his friends: For I can hear that of my Pride from you, which never friend by ⟨p. 76⟩Word or Letter to my remembrance told me in my life. The more too blame they, if you be not mistaken.

2. But next let us see your evidence or proof:¹ Your first is, [What need I have told the world, &c.] would you have an answer to your question or not? If not, why do you ask it? If you would, why did you not take an answer when I gave it you; nor so much as mention it, as if you read it not, when you call for another? Is it because that you remembered, that many that read your Papers, will never read mine, and so will not know what I have said, nor how deceivingly you use them? It may be so: But will that do your work, and hold at last? If I repeat my answer, I shall offend my Readers, for writing the same thing twice, because you take no notice of the first. But this much I will return you now: 1. My avoiding public communion for fear of bringing more suffering on those that scrupled it, (and that so many years together,) was a scandal and temptation to others, and tended to make them think, that I held it to be unlawful; as Peters Separation was a scandal to Barnabas and others: And do you think every man that avoideth scandalizing, is therefore proud: Are not humble men bound to avoid scandal as well as others? If a man by many years forbearing all public Prayer or Sacrament, should tempt others to think that he is against them, or accounts them needless, how ⟨p. 77⟩should he cure that scandal, but by doing that openly, and open pleading for it, which he is supposed to be against? Doth Paul make scandal to be the destroying of another's soul, and a thing to be avoided on such hard terms as he mentioneth, and do you think that the open avoiding it, is to be charged with Pride? How directly do you set your self against the way of the Spirit of God?