Mr. William Brewster was Robinson’s assistant, and “he was now called and chosen by the church” to fill the place of elder.[52] The Pilgrims “grew in knowledge and gifts and other graces of the Spirit of God, and lived together in peace and love and holiness; and as many came unto them from divers parts of England, they grew to be a great congregation. If at any time differences arose or offences broke out—as it cannot be but sometimes there will, even among the best of men—they were ever so met with and nipped in the bud betimes, or otherwise so well compassed, as still love, peace, and communion, were preserved; or else the church was purged of those that were incorrigible, when, after much patience used, no other means would serve—which seldom came to pass.”[53] Though strict in their discipline and strongly attached to their distinctive principles, the Leyden exiles were far from being bigots. Robinson, though, in Cotton Mather’s phrase, “he had been in his younger time—as very good fruit hath sometimes been, ere age hath ripened it—soured by the principles of rigid separation,”[54] was now developed into a man of large-hearted benevolence and enlightened catholicity. Over his flock he breathed this heavenly spirit. Nothing more offended him than the conduct of those “who cleaved unto themselves, and retired from the common good.”[55] Nothing more provoked him than to witness undue rigidity in the enforcement of subordinate matters, especially when sternness on points of outward order was associated, as is often the case, with laxity in the critics. Robinson knew how to estimate “the tithe of mint and anise and cummin” in their relative value to the weightier matters of the law. Schism he condemned; division he deplored. From the government and ceremonies of the English Establishment his conscience compelled him to dissent, but he was prepared to welcome the disciples of that and of all other Christian communions to the fellowship of the Lord’s table. “Our faith,” said he, “is not negative; nor does it consist in the condemnation of others, and wiping their names out of the bead-roll of churches, but in the edification of ourselves. Neither require we of any of ours, in the confession of their faults, that they renounce or in any one word contest with the Church of England.”[56]