7. Church dividers are the most successful servants of the devil, being enemies to Christ in his family and livery. They gratify Satan, and all the enemies of the church, and do the very work that he would have them do, more effectually than open enemies could do it. As mutineers in an army may do more to destroy it, than the power of the enemy. 8. It is a sin that contradicteth all God's ordinances and means of grace; which are purposely to procure and maintain the unity of his church. The word and baptism is to gather them into one body, and the Lord's supper to signify and maintain their concord, as being one bread, and one body, 1 Cor. x. 17. And all the communion of the church is to express and to maintain this concord. The use of the ministry is much to this end, to be the bonds and joints of this unity of believers, Eph. iv. 13, 14, 16. All these are contemned and frustrated by dividers. 9. Church division is a sin (especially to us) against as great and lamentable experiences as almost any sin can be. About sixteen hundred years the church hath smarted by it. In many countries where the gospel prospered, and churches flourished, division hath turned all into desolation, and delivered them up to the curse of Mahometanism and infidelity. The contentions between Constantinople and Rome, the eastern and the western churches, have shaken the christian interest upon earth, and delivered up much of the christian world to tyranny and blindness, and given advantage to the papacy to captivate and corrupt much of the rest, by pretending itself to be the centre of unity. Oh what glorious churches, where the learned writers of those ages once lived, are now extinct, and the places turned to the worship of the devil and a deceiver, through the ambition and contentions of the bishops, that should have been the bonds of their unity and peace! But doth England need to look back into history, or look abroad in foreign lands, for instances of the sad effects of discord? Is there any one, good or bad, in this age, that hath spent his days in such a sleep, as not to know what divisions have done, when they have made such ruins in church and state, and kindled such consuming flames, and raised so many sects and parties, and filled so many hearts with uncharitable rancour, and so many mouths with slanders and revilings, and turned so many prayers into sin, by poisoning them with pride and factious oppositions, and hath let out streams of blood and fury over all the land? He that maketh light of the divisions of christians in these kingdoms, or loveth not those that speak against them, doth show himself to be so impenitent in them, as to be one of those terrible effects of them, that should be a pillar of salt to warn after-ages to take heed.