ESSAY IX. 4n Apology for the Different Judgments and Practices of Sincere Christians, that are weak iii Knowledge. GGIVEA LETTER TO A FRIEND. IVE me leave, my dear friend, to snakea charitable apology for honest and upright souls, who maintain a strict course of pietyand virtue, and yet appear to beunalterably determined for or against the communion of the church of England, upon very slight and feeble grounds ; Perhaps we shall learn compassion to the weaknesses of our fellow-christians, if you and I together meditate on these following considerations : Let us take a survey how many are the circumstances and various occurrences of human life, which do sometimes powerfully determine the opini- ons even of good and sober men, to one or the other side of this controversy, whether they shall fix their communion in the church of England,, or amongst those who separate from it, Here the first thing that naturally occurs, is the education of different persons, which has a mighty influence to form their opinions, and to fix their practice ; and this, it must be confessed, is not in a man's own choice ; the providence of the great and blessed God, the over-ruler of all things, determines this affair in a wise andholy manner, whatever the final event may be. Jonathangoes to worship every Lord's-day wherehis father goes, and as the child was never led to hear a sermon at a pub- lic church, so the youth grows up in a groundless aversion to it, and theman standsat a wider distance, and can hardly be per- suaded to venture in. By use and custom from his very child- hood, he understands the methods of the dissenters' worship, and the terms that are used in their sermons ; and if by any strange occasion he is led to the church of England, he finds no profit by hearing a clergyman preach, for he does not clearly take in the expressions and the meaning ; and it must beacknow- ledged, many of them have a different way of managing the word of God in their explications of it, different phrases and modes of expression, and too many of them preach doctrines dif ferent from their own articles and our common faith ; these things are shocking and offensive to the ear, rather than instructing or edifying to a new hearer. Besides, Jonathan has imbibed long prejudices against the modes of worship and ceremonies of the church, the forms, the gestures, the vestments, the responses, &c. and his soul is there- by mightily unfitted for edification by the prayers of the lurch of England, that are mingled and interwoven with them; his
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