_Direct._ XI. Do not censure every man to be wilful or obstinate, who is not of your opinion, when he hath heard your reasons, how clear soever they may seem to you. Alas! how many things are there besides wilful obstinacy, to hinder one man from being as wise as another! If a few times repeating over the reasons of an opinion, is enough to implant it in all the hearers, why do your children go so long to school, and after that to the universities? And why are you so long preaching to all your parishioners? Sure you preach not novelties to them as long as you live! And yet thirty or forty years' painful preaching, even of the same fundamentals of religion, shall leave many ignorant of them in the best of parishes in the land. There must be a right and ripe disposition in the hearers, or else the clearest reasoning may be uneffectual. A disused or unfurnished mind, that hath not received all the truths which are presupposed to those which you deliver, or hath not digested them into a clear understanding, may long hear the truest reasons, and never apprehend their weight. There is need of more ado than a bare unfolding of the truth, to make a man receive it in its proper evidence. Perhaps he hath been long prepossessed with contrary opinions, which are not easily rooted out. Or if he be but confident of the truth of some one opinion, which is inconsistent with yours, no wonder if he cannot receive that which is contrary to what he so verily believeth to be the truth. There is a marvellous variety of men's apprehensions, of the same opinions or reasons, as they are variously represented to men, and variously pondered, and as the natural capacity of men is various, and as the whole course of their lives, their education, company, and conversation, have variously formed their minds. It is like the setting together all the parts of a watch when it is in pieces; if any one part of many be misplaced, it may necessitate the misplacing of those that follow, without any wilful obstinacy in him that doth it. If in the whole frame of sacred truth, there be but some one misunderstood, it may bring in other mistakes, and keep out many truths, even from an honest, willing mind. And who is there that can say, he is free from error? Have not you perceived in yourselves, that the truths which you heard a hundred times over, to little purpose, when you were children, were received more convincingly and satisfyingly when you were men? And that you have found a delightful clearness in some points on a sudden, which before you either resisted, or held with little observation or regard? And yet it is common with the scandalizers of souls, to cry out against all that conform not to their opinions and will, as soon as they have heard their reasons, that they are stubborn, and refractory, and wilful, and factious, and so turn from arguments to clubs; as if they had never known themselves or others, nor how weak and dark the understandings of almost all men are. But they shall have judgment without mercy, who show no mercy. And when their own errors shall all be opened to them by the Lord, they will be loth they should all be imputed to their wilful obstinacy. And perhaps these very censorious men, may prove themselves to have been on the wrong side; for pride and uncharitableness are usually erroneous.
_Direct._ XII. Engage not yourselves in an evil cause. For if you do, it will engage you to draw in others; you will expect your friends should take your part, and think as you think, and say as you say; though it be never so much against truth or righteousness.