But whilst the first Spring, which moves such Animosities is a desire in ambitious and ill Men or Dominion; well-meaning ignorant People are misled by these from the Truth of the Gospel, to such Zeal for some distinguishing Tenets or Forms as if the stress of Christianity lay in those things:  And that our Religion consisted not in such a Faith in Jesus Christ, as to receive him for our King, becoming his obedient Subjects; but in the belief of Opinions, which have no influence upon our Practice, to the making us live more vertuously; or in Worshipping God after some peculiar Mode or Fashion.  And thus among us Christians, as heretofore in the Heathen World, Vertue and Religion are again distinguish’d; and Religion as something more excellent (and, to be sure, more easy) does still, as formerly it did, eat out Vertue.

Among our selves it is true, that those of the Establish’d Church do generally dislike a distinction often made by some others of a Moral and a Religious Man; Nor, usually, are our Divines wanting to represent from the Pulpit the necessity there is of a good Life to render Men acceptable to God.  But many who condemn such a Doctrine as separates Religion from Morality, do yet in their practices make the like distinction, which may well be presum’d to have been one great cause of their having preach’d up Vertue so ineffectually as they have done.  That which People say having ordinarily less influence upon others, than what they see them Do.  And in regard of our earliest Apprehensions concerning Vertue and Religion, it is certain that these are form’d in Children much more from what they observe in the Conversations or Actions of such Persons as they esteem, than by set Discourses that they now and then hear from the Pulpit; which they can neither understand nor attend to early enough to receive from those Principles that shall influence them.  But so soon (at the least) as they are capable of minding and understanding Sermons, they (where the thing is remarkable by others) do also take notice of it, if he who frequently recommends a good Life to them, does not in his own Conversation, and in the respect he expresses for Vertue in the Persons of others, shew that he indeed prefers it answerably to the Praises he gives it.  And if such a Preacher, as this, shall openly live in the practice of any known Immorality; or not doing so himself shall yet manifestly prefer in his esteem those who do so, is it not natural, for them who look upon this Man as a guide to Heaven, to conclude from hence, that in reference to the obtaining of Eternal Happiness, Vertue is not the thing, the most essentially requisite; and much less certainly will they think it to be so with respect to this present World, if they find their pious Instructor not only to choose the Society of Persons Profligate and Debauch’d for his Friends and Companions; but also (on all occasions) to labour the promotion of the like Men to Employments