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CROMWELL
 

wise men will receive or submit to their conclusions! Nevertheless, as many of these men have good meanings, which I hope in my soul they have, it will be the wisdom of all knowing and experienced Christians to do as Jude saith—Jude, when he reckoned up those horrible things, done upon pretenses, and haply by some upon mistakes: "Of some," says he, "have compassion, making a difference"; others save, "with fear pulling them out of the fire." I fear they will give too often opportunity for this exercise! But I hope the same will be for their good. If men do but so much as pretend for justice and righteousness, and be of peaceable spirits, and will manifest this, let them be the subjects of the magistrate's encouragement. And if the magistrate, by punishing visible miscarriages, save them by that discipline, God having ordained him for that end, I hope it will evidence love and not hatred, so to punish where there is cause.

Indeed this is that which doth most declare the danger of that spirit. For if these were but notions,—I mean these instances I have given you of dangerous doctrines both in civil things and spiritual; if, I say, they were but notions, they were best let alone. Notions will hurt none but those that have them. But when they come to such practises as telling us, for instance, that liberty and property are not the badges of the Kingdom of Christ; when they tell us, not that we are to regulate law, but that law is to be abrogated, indeed subverted; and per-

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