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

Gouty swoln legs keep at distance one from another; bladders that are blown up with wind, spurt one from another, they will not close, but if you prick them, and so let out the wind, you may pack a thousand in a little room. We find this by experience, when God gives us most success in our Armies, then are we most divided, then every man begins to look high, and to be sharking for himself; and when the Lord discountenances our Armies, and brings us low, then we think and speak ways of Accommodation, then we bewail our divisions with some brokenness of spirit: As it is with Soldiers when they are fighting against the common adversary, then they can agree well enough; but when they come to divide the spoil, or be put into their Garrisons, then they fall out: When we lye under the danger of the same common calamity, then we can agree; but when we come to share for our selves, then our spirits swell one against another.

G•uty swoln legs keep at distance one from another; bladders that are blown up with wind, spurt one from another, they will not close, but if you prick them, and so let out the wind, you may pack a thousand in a little room. Wee finde this by experience, when God gives us most successe in our Armies, then are we most divided, then every man begins to look high, and to be sharking for himself; and when the Lord discountenances our Armies, and brings us low, then we think and speak ways of Accommodation, then we bewaile our divisions with some brokenness of spirit: As it is with Souldiers when they are fighting against the common adversary, then they can agree well enough; but when they come to divide the spoile, or be put into their Garrisons, then they fall out: When we lye under the danger of the same common calamity, then we can agree; but when we come to share for our selves, then our spirits swell one against another.

We read in Scripture of the Manna that God gave his people; such was the nature of it that the heat of the Sun melted it. You will say, How could it then endure the heat of the oven? for they baked it in the oven; yet so it was, of a strange kind of nature, that it could bear the heat of the oven, and not the heat of the sun. Even of such a temper are our hearts; the heat of the sun of prosperity dissolves us, causes us to run one from another, but the heat of the fire of affliction bakes us, brings us, and settles us together; it makes us to be one, it takes away our rawness, it consumes many of our ill humours, and so composes our spirits into one.