_Direct._ XXIV. Worship God yourselves in the purest manner, and under the most edifying ministry that lawfully you can attain; but be not too forward to condemn others that reach not to your measure, or attain not so much happiness; and deny not personal communion sometimes, with churches that are more blemished, and less fit for communion. And when you cannot join locally with them, let them have the communion of your hearts, in faith and charity, and prayer for each other. I fear not here openly to tell the world, that if I were turned loose to my own liberty, I would ordinarily worship God in that manner that I thought most pure and agreeable to his will and word; but I would sometimes go to the churches of other christians, that were fit for christian communion, if there were such about me; sometimes to the independents, sometimes to the moderate anabaptists, sometimes to such as had a liturgy as faulty as that of the Greek or the Ethiopian churches; to show by my practice, what communion my heart hath with them all. _Direct._ XXV. Take heed that you interest not religion or the church in civil differences.[172] This error hath divided and ruined many famous churches, and most injuriously made the holy truth and worship of God to be a reproach and infamy among selfish, partial, carnal men. When princes and states fall out among themselves, they will needs draw the ministers to their sides, and then one side will certainly condemn them, and call them all that self-interest and malice can invent; and commonly when the controversy is only in point of law or politics, it is religion that bears the blame of all: and the differences of lawyers and statesmen must be charged upon divines, that the devil may be able to make them useless, as to the good of all that party that is against them, and may make religion itself be called rebellion. And oh that God would maintain the peace of kingdoms; and kings and subjects were all lovers of peace, the rather because the differences in states do cause so commonly divisions in the church. It would make a man wonder (and a lover of history to lament) to observe in the differences between the pope and Henry the fourth, and other emperors, how the historians are divided, one half commending him that the other half condemneth; and how the bishops and churches were one half for the pope, and the other for the emperor; and one half still accounted rebels or schismatics by the other, though they were all of one religion. It is more to ruin the church, than kingdoms, that Satan laboureth so much to kindle wars, and breed civil differences in the world; and therefore let him that loveth the church's peace, be an obedient subject, and an enemy of sedition, and a lover and defender of the civil peace and government in the place that God hath set him in: for this is pleasing unto God.