The Scripture directory for church-officers and people, or, A practical commentary upon the whole…

Lastly, There is an occasional cause, but not efficient, and that hath been the tyranny, and scandalous lives of Church-officers. This hath many times made sad rents. Church-officers by their loose lives, and rigid cruelty, have made schisms, and then they cry out of them, and punish them. One cause of Tertullians Montanizing was, the loose lives of the Roman Clergy. We see by Christs Parable, Luke 12.45. it's no new thing for such Officers to rule in Christs house, as shall drink and be drunk, and beat their fellow-servants, putting off the thoughts of their Masters coming. Therefore the bloody cruelty, or licentious profane lives of those that have ruled in the Church, have made a just cause of troubles and divisions; neither are those that make the division then to be blamed, if it be in that which is good, and after a good manner: but the actings and lives of such Church-officers. I should speak of the final causes, but they will come in afterwards.

Lastly, There is an occasional cause, but not efficient, and that hath been the tyranny, and scandalous lives of Church-officers. This hath many times made sad rents. Church-officers by their loose lives, and rigid cruelty, have made schismes, and then they cry out of them, and punish them. One cause of Tertullians Montanizing was, the loose lives of the Roman Clergy. We see by Christs Parable, Luke 12.45. it's no new thing for such Officers to rule in Christs house, as shall drink and be drunk, and beat their fellow-servants, putting off the thoughts of their Masters coming. Therefore the bloody cruelty, or licentious prophane lives of those that have ruled in the Church, have made a just cause of troubles and divisions; neither are those that make the division then to be blamed, if it be in that which is good, and after a good manner: but the actings and lives of such Church-officers. I should speak of the final causes, but they will come in afterwards.

Use 1. Of Instruction, That Unity and Catholic consent is not a sure mark of a Church, or divisions a note of a false ox. The Papists, they think they strike us to the ground by this. You Protestants are fallen into manifold Sects; they will reckon up fourscore factions. Now this indeed is a very plausible objection; but it might have been cast upon the Church of Corinth, and upon the primitive Churches. As for the Protestants, they that take themselves to be so indeed (for Socinians and others, we own them not) they differ not in fundamentals. In matter of Church-government, or Rites of Religion, there may be some discrepancy, but in fundamental Articles they consent. And as for Papists themselves, their Writers have factions and bitter strifes one with another, as might be showed at large. They have no such consent, as the vulgar people are made to believe. Do not therefore be scandalized to see diversity of factions and opinions? What grief is it to hear people say, one is of this way, and another is of that way? who can tell what is true? and so they grow very Atheists. If thy faith were sound, this would not stagger thee; God hath wise ends in suffering of these breaches.