A39678:428
The reasonableness of personal reformation, and the necessity of conversion
The reasonableness of personal reformation, and the necessity of conversion; the true methods of making all men happy in this world, and in the world to come Seasonably discoursed, and earnestly pressed upon this licentious age. By J.F. a sincere lover of his native country, and the souls of men.The reasonableness of personal reformation, and the necessity of conversion; the true methods of making all men happy in this world, and in the world to come Seasonably discoursed, and earnestly pressed upon this licentious age. By J.F. a sincere lover of his native countrey, and the souls of men.
London: printed for Thomas Cockerill, 1691
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Expectation II.
Secondly, If your Zeal be sincere, it will contain it self within the Bounds and Limits of the Offence, and not lay hold upon the Innocent, as well as upon the Guilty, and make you hate and persecute them that were never Turbulent and Seditious, equally with the greatest Criminals. If you will hug this Principle, as things stand now, Reason will tell you, 'tis as just at all other times, as it is at this.
Would you not think it an unreasonable and most injurious thing to be plucked out of your Shops, or Houses, and hurried away to the Goal, because two or three dissolute Fellows in the City or Town where you live, have been Riotous or Seditious, tho you possibly know not the Men, nor can be so much as justly suspected of any Confederacy with them? True Zeal for the Laws and Government is content to wait, and suspend its Revenges, till a fair Conviction have passed upon the Guilty. And when it falls upon them, 'tis careful that it touch none besides them; but suffers a Man to retain in the very height of it, due Love and Honour for all that are Innocent.
If Christians be first denominated by general Titles and Terms of distinction, which they cannot help, and then the Crimes of any particular Person, that the World pleases to denominate as one of the same Party, must be charged and imputed to the whole; what must the consequence of this be, but that the whole Community become obnoxious to Punishment, and the very Government it self thereupon be dissolved?