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

Fourthly, it is a time of Service; God never put such opportunities §4of service into our hands, as now he hath. How many holy men who were furnished with large abilities and enlarged hearts to have done service for God and his people in former times, lived privately, only enjoyed sweet communion between God and their own souls, but oh how did they prize opportunities of service! how did they thirst after, and greedily embrace advantages for public work! they were willing to submit to any thing to the uttermost their consciences would suffer them, that they might be employed in work for God and his Saints; Though their encouragement from men was small, yet their work was wages to them; but in those times, almost all places of public employment were in the hands or at the dispose of evil men; could they have foreseen that within a few years, there should be a door open for all godly men, to full opportunities for the employment of their gifts and graces to the uttermost. How would they have rejoiced and longed to have seen those times, and blessed those who should live in them! I am confident it cannot be shown that ever there was a time since the world began, that so many godly people in a Kingdom have had such a large opportunity of public service, as for these last five years hath been in England; and shall this opportunity be lost with our wranglings and contendings? Oh how unworthy are we to live in such ⟨p. 214⟩times as these are! When a Master sets his servants to work, and that in such a piece of work as is of great concernment, the opportunity of which if lost, will be a great loss to him: if these servants shall trifle away this opportunity with wrangling one with another about their work, one opposing another in it, will this be a good account to their Master? So much time was spent in work, but so much in quarrelling, whereby there is little of the work done. We read of Nehemiah, cap. 6. 3. when Sanballat and Tobiah, those quarrelsome companions sent to him to meet them, intending to quarrel with him, he answered them, I am doing a work, so that I cannot come, why should the work cease? If we see men set upon strife and contention, we should not meddle with them, to spend our time in answering what comes from them; our case were miserable, if we were at the mercy of every quarreller, bound to answer whatsoever he pleases to put forth.