do I owe any good action to the name thereof.  I fear God, yet am not afraid of Him; His mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before His judgments afraid thereof.  These are the forced and secondary methods of His wisdom, which He useth but as the last remedy, and upon provocation; a course rather to deter the wicked, than incite the virtuous to His worship.  I can hardly think there was ever any scared into heaven:  they go the fairest way to heaven that would serve God without a hell.  Other mercenaries that crouch unto Him, in fear of hell, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed but the slaves of the Almighty.

ON PRAYER

I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in particular, without a catalogue for my friends; nor request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour.  I never heard the toll of a passing-bell, though in my mirth, without my prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit.  I cannot go to cure the body of my patient, but I forget my profession, and call unto God for his soul.  I cannot see one say his prayers, but instead of imitating him, I fall into a supplication for him, who, perhaps, is no more to me than a common nature; and if God hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications, there are surely many happy that never saw me, and enjoy the blessing of my unknown devotions.  To pray for enemies, that is, for their salvation, is no harsh precept, but the practice of our daily and ordinary devotions.

ON CHARITY

The vulgarity of those judgments that wrap the Church of God in Strabo’s cloak, and restrain it unto Europe, seem to me as bad geographers as Alexander, who thought he had conquered all the world, when he had not subdued the half of any part thereof.  For we cannot deny the Church of God both in Asia and Africa, if we do not forget the peregrinations of the apostles, the deaths of the martyrs, the sessions of many, and, even in our reformed judgment, lawful councils, held in those parts in the minority and nonage of ours.  Nor must a few differences, more remarkable in the eyes of man than perhaps in the judgment of God, excommunicate from heaven one another, much less those Christians who are in a manner all martyrs, maintaining their faith in the noble way of persecution, and serving God in the fire, whereas we honour Him in the sunshine.  It is true we all hold there is a number of elect, and many to be saved; yet take our opinions together, and from the confusion thereof there will be no such thing as salvation, nor shall any one be saved.  For first, the Church of Rome condemneth us, we likewise them; the sub-reformists and sectaries sentence the doctrine of our Church as damnable; the atomist, or familist, reprobates all these; and all these them again.  Thus, whilst the mercies of God do promise us heaven, our conceits and opinions exclude us from that place.  There must be therefore more than one St. Peter.  Particular churches and sects usurp the gates of heaven, and turn the key against each other:  and thus we go to heaven against each other’s wills, conceits, and opinions, and, with as much uncharity as ignorance, do err, I fear, in points not only of our own, but one another’s salvation.