converse of professors in the world, shine more brightly, and give more evidences of themselves than at present among many they seem to do, it would undoubtedly turn unto the unspeakable advantage of religion.

And lastly, for that judging or condemning of others, wherewith they are so provoked, there is but one way whereby it may be done, so as to give no just offence; and this is in our lives. The practice of holiness judgeth all unholy persons in their own breasts. And if they are provoked thereby, there is nothing in it but a new aggravation of their own sin and impiety.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS

ABOUT

UNION AMONG PROTESTANTS,

&c.

1. THE Protestant religion, introduced into this nation, by the apostolical way and means of the holiness and laborious preaching of its professors, confirmed with the martyrdom of multitudes of all sorts, being now thoroughly fixed in the minds of the body of the people, and confirmed unto them by laws and oaths, is become the principal interest of the nation, which cannot be shaken or overthrown, without the ruin of the government, and destruction of the people. Nothing therefore less being included in the attempts of the Papists, with all their interest in Europe, for the reintroducing of their religion amongst us, the nation hath been constantly filled for a hundred years with fears, jealousies, and apprehensions of dangers, to the great disturbance of the government, and disquietment of the subjects; nor can it be otherwise whilst they know that there is a pregnant design for their total subversion, together with the ruin of the Protestant religion in other places, which would have ensued thereon. But,

2. This religion so received and approved by the people, as the only true way to salvation (accompanied with an abhorrency of the superstition, idolatry, and heresies of the church of Rome, partly on the general account of their own nature, and partly on particular reasons and provocations from the attempts of those that belong unto that church, for the ruin of them and their religion), and jointly professed in the same confession of faith, hath been preserved by the means of a faithful laborious ministry, under the care, protection, and outward government of the supreme power, as the greatest bulwark of the Protestant religion in Europe.