Part 108

_Direct._ V. Own not any cause which is an enemy to love; and pretend neither truth, nor holiness, nor unity, nor order, nor any thing against it.[159] The spirit of love is that one vital spirit which doth animate all the saints. The increase of love is the powerful balsam that healeth all the church's wounds; though loveless, lifeless physicians think that all these wounds must be healed by the sword. And indeed the weapon-salve is now become the proper cure. It is the sword that must be medicated, that the wounds made by it may be healed. The decays of love are the church's dissolution; which first causeth scissures and separations, and in process crumbleth us all to dust: and therefore the pastors of the church are the fittest instruments for the cure, who are the messengers of love, and whose government is paternal, and hurteth not the body; but is only a government of love, and exercised by all the means of love. All christians in the world confess that love is the very life and perfection of all grace, and the end of all our other duties, and that which maketh us like to God; and that if love dwelleth in us, God dwelleth in us; and that it will be the everlasting grace, and the work of heaven, and the happiness of souls; and that it is the excellent way, and the character of saints, and the new commandment. And all this being so, it is most certain that no way is the way of God, which is not the way of love; and therefore what specious pretences soever they may have, and one may cry up truth, and another holiness, and another order, and another unity itself, to justify their envyings, hatred, cruelties, it is most certain that all such pretences are satanical deceits.[160] And if they bite and devour one another, they are not like the sheep of Christ, but shall be devoured one of another, Gal. v. 15. "Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law," Rom. xiii. 10. When papists that show their love to men's souls by racking their bodies, and frying them in the fire, can make them apprehensive of the excellency of that kind of love, they may use it to the healing of the church. In the mean time as their religion is, such is their concord, while all those are called members of their union, and professors of their religion, who must be burnt to ashes if they say the contrary. They that give God an image and carcass of religion, are thus content with the image and carcass of a church for the exercise of it. And if there were nothing else but this to detect the sinfulness of the sect of quakers, and many more, it is enough to satisfy any sober man, that it cannot be the way of God. God is not the author of that spirit and way which tends to wrath, emulation, hatred, railing, and the extinction of christian love, to all save their own sect and party. Remember, as you love your souls, that you shun all ways that are destructive to universal christian love.