Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and…

The Scripture says, The Saints are made partakers of the divine nature; therefore do not say, We are but men. You must not walk as men, but as those who are endued with the Divine nature. It is a great charge that the holy Ghost lays upon the Corinthians, that they walked but as men; yet many come short of the lives of men: they rather walk as dogs, as tigers, as wolves. Gal. 5. 20. The fruits of the flesh are hatred, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings. All these are the causes or workings of divisions: Surely our divisions are the fruits of the flesh. We see it in nature, the more spiritual any thing is, the more it unites; and the more gross the substance of any thing is, the less it unites; the beams of the Sun are of a kind of spiritual nature, therefore thousands of them will unite in puncto, but it is not so in other things; spiritual hearts in this are like the Sun beams, though thousands of them live together, they will unite in one so long as they continue spiritual. The three thousand Converts, Act. 2. joined with one accord, with one single heart: We find it now by experience, so long as there be but a few in a Church, they agree well, but usually when they come to be numerous, dissentions rise amongst them; this is an argument that the ⟨p. 105⟩hearts of men are not spiritual, still much flesh remains. Brackish water ascending to the Heavens, is sweetened, it comes down sweet from thence; thus those things which have trouble, which have an aptness to breed divisions, yet spiritual heavenly hearts having to do with them, they turn the nature of them, they work spiritual advantage out of them.

The Scripture sayes, The Saints are made partakers of the divine nature; therefore do not say, We are but men. You must not walk as men, but as those who are endued with the Divine nature. It is a great charge that the holy Ghost layes upon the Corinthians, that they walked but as men; yet many come short of the lives of men: they rather walk as doggs, as tygers, as wolves. Gal. 5. 20. The fruits of the flesh are hatred, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings. All these are the causes or workings of divisions: Surely our divisions are the fruits of the flesh. We see it in nature, the more spiritual any thing is, the more it unites; and the more gross the substance of any thing is, the lesse it unites; the beames of the Sun are of a kind of spirituall nature, therefore thousands of them will unite in puncto, but it is not so in other things; spiritual hearts in this are like the Sun beams, though thousands of them live together, they will unite in one so long as they continue spiritual. The three thousand Converts,