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

Thirdly, our divisions are against our own prayers, How often have many who now are estranged from one another, heretofore so prayed together, as their hearts have seemed to melt one into another, so as one would think it impossible that ever in this world there should have been that distance between them that now there is. How often have we prayed, Oh that once we might be blessed with such a mercy, as to worship God according to his own mind! that we might be delivered from conscience oppression, from spiritual bondage! Oh that we might be delivered from the inventions of men in the service of God: that the Saints might join and serve the Lord with one shoulder. There were never such hopes that the Saints should enjoy their prayers so as of late there hath been, and yet never were they so divided as now they are: they now seek to bring one another in bondage. If five or six years since when many of us were praying together, making our moans to God for that oppression we were under, God should have then presented as ⟨p. 201⟩in a Map, such times as these are to our view; could we have believed that it were possible that there should be such a distance in our spirits as now there is?

Thirdly, our divisions are against our own prayers, How often have many who now are estrang'd from one another, heretofore so prayed together, as their hearts have seemed to melt one into another, so as one would think it impossible that ever in this world there should have been that distance between them that now there is. How often have we prayed, Oh that once we might be blessed with such a mercy, as to worship God according to his own mind! that we might be delivered from conscience oppression, from spirituall bondage! Oh that we might be delivered from the inventions of men in the service of God: that the Saints might joyn and serve the Lord with one shoulder. There were never such hopes that the Saints should enjoy their prayers so as of late there hath been, and yet never were they so divided as now they are: they now seek to bring one another in bondage. If five or six years since when many of us were praying together, making our moans to God for that oppression we were under, God should have then presented as ⟨p. 201⟩in a Map, such times as these are to our view; could we have beleeved that it were possible that there should be such a distance in our spirits as now there is?