The Cure of Church Divisions, Directions
DIRECTIONS FOR VVeak Christians, How they may escape the troubling, dividing and endangering of the Church by their Errours in Doctrine, Worship, and Church-Communion.
IF we had never been warned by the History of the Sacred Scripture, or of the former Ages of the Church, yet our experience in this present Age is enough to tell both us and our Posterity, how great perturbations, and calamites may come to the Church of Christ, by the miscarriages of the more zealous Professors of Religion! and how great a hinderance such may prove to the prosperity of the Gospel; to the Love and Unity of Christians; to the Reformation, and holy order of the Congregations, and to all those good ends which are desired by themselves. How great a dishonour they may prove to the Christian name, and what occasions of hardening the wicked in their contempt of Godliness, to their everlasting ruine, and the sufferings of Believers.
Therefore seeing the peace and welfare of the Church, is much more valuable, than the peace and welfare of an individual soul, as I have Directed you how to escape your own disturbance and undoing, so I think it as necessary to direct you, how to escape being the Plagues and disturbers of the Church, and the instruments of Satan in resisting the Gospel, and destroying others. And you should be the more willing to hear me in this also, because by hurting others you hurt your selves, and by wronging the Church of God, you cross your own desires and ends (if you are Christians indeed;) and by doing good to others, and furthering the cause of Godliness and Christianity, you do good to your selves and further your own Cosolation and Salvation.