The true and only way of concord of all the Christian churches the desirableness…

And who knoweth not that disagreement proveth ignorance and error, in one party at least? When they hold and plead for contrary opinions, both cannot be in the right. And when this is but in dark and difficult matters, of no great influence on our hearts and lives and future hopes, it is tolerable; and no more to be wondered at, than that we are yet but imperfect men in flesh, and in this low and darksome world: But when it amounteth to that which maketh Christians judge it necessary to anathematize one another, and to cast out each other from their communion as intolerable, and perhaps to seek one another's destruction, do they not loudly proclaim their shameful ignorance to the world?

And who knoweth not that disagreement proveth ignorance and errour, in one party at least? When they hold and plead for contrary opinions, both cannot be in the right. And when this is but in dark and difficult matters, of no great influence on our hearts and lives and future hopes, it is tolerable; and no more to be wondered at, than that we are yet but imperfect men in flesh, and in this low and darksome world: But when it amounteth to that which maketh Christians judge it necessary to anathematize one another, and to cast out each other from their communion as intolerable, and perhaps to seek one anothers destruction, do they not loudly proclaim their shameful ignorance to the world?

§. 3. I know that discipline must be exercised and the precious separated from the vile, and this especially for the honour of Christianity. For if the Church be as a Swinesty, and the clean and unclean, the sober and the drunken, the chaste and the fornicators equally members of it, such a society and their religion will be contemned. For sin is a reproach to any people.

But casting a felon or murderer in Jail doth much differ from a civil war.¹