hs yet to
harvest; there need not be five weeks; had we but eyes to lift up, the
fields are white already.

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much
arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but
knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrors of sect and
schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and
understanding which God hath stirred up in this city. What some lament
of, we rather should rejoice at, should rather praise this pious
forwardness among men, to reassume the ill-reputed care of their
religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a
little forbearance of one another, and some grain of charity might win
all these diligences to join, and unite in one general and brotherly
search after Truth; could we but forego this prelatical tradition of
crowding free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and
precepts of men. I doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger should
come among us, wise to discern the mold and temper of a people, and
how to govern it, observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent
alacrity of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of
truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as Pyrrhus did, admiring
the Roman docility and courage: If such were my Epirots, I would not
despair the greatest design that could be attempted, to make a church
or kingdom happy.

Yet these are the men cried out against for schismatics and sectaries;
as if, while the temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some
squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort
of irrational men who could not consider there must be many schisms
and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the
house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully
together, it can not be united into a continuity, it can but be
contiguous in this world; neither can every piece of the building be
of one form; nay rather the perfection consists in this, that, out of
many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not
vastly disproportional, arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry
that commends the whole pile and structure.

Let us therefore be more considerate builders, more wise in spiritual
architecture, when great reformation is expected. For now the time
seems come, wherein Moses the great prophet may sit in heaven
rejoicing to see that memorable and glorio