But as the truth of history is not to be concealed; and as it can do no service to the christian cause to palliate the faults of any set of christians whatsoever, especially when all parties have been more or less involved in the same guilt; I must observe farther, as an aggravation of this guilt, that the things for which christians have persecuted each other, have been generally “matters of no importance in religion,” and oftentimes such as have been “directly contrary” to the nature of it. If my reader would know upon what accounts the church hath been filled with divisions and schisms; why excommunications and anathemas have been so dreadfully tossed about; what hath given occasion to such a multitude of suspensions, depositions and expulsions; what hath excited the clergy to such numberless violencies, rapines, cruelties, and murders, he will probably be surprised to be informed that it is nothing of any consequence or real importance, nothing relating to the substance and life of pure and undefiled religion; little besides hard words, technical terms, and inexplicable phrases, points of mere speculation, abstruse questions, and metaphysical notions; rites and ceremonies, forms of human invention, and certain institutions, that have had their rise and foundation only in superstition: these have been the great engines of division; these the sad occasions of persecution. Would it not excite sometimes laughter, and sometimes indignation, to read of a proud and imperious prelate excommunicating the whole christian church, and sending, by wholesale, to the devil, all who did not agree with him in the precise day of observing Easter? Especially when there is so far from being any direction given by Christ or his apostles about the day, that there is not a single word about the festival itself. And is it not an amazing instance of stupidity and superstition, that such a paltry and whimsical controversy should actually engage, for many years, the whole christian world, and be debated with as much warmth and eagerness, as if all the interests of the present and future state had been at stake; as if Christ himself had been to be crucified afresh, and his whole gospel to be subverted and destroyed. The Arian controversy, that made such havoc in the christian church, was, if I may be allowed to speak it without offence, in the beginning only about words; though probably some of Arius’ party went farther afterwards, than Arius himself did at first. Arius, as hath been shewn, expressly allowed the son to be “before all times and ages, perfect God, unchangeable,” and begotten after the most perfect likeness of the unbegotten father.