Let no differences of principles or practices divide thee in thine affections from any person. He who seems to me as a Samaritan to a Jew, most worthy of contempt and hatred, most apt to wound or kill me, may hide under the shape of a Samaritan, a generous, affectionate neighbor, brother and friend. When I lie wounded and dying, neglected by those who are nearest to me, most esteemed by me; this person may pour wine and oil into my wounds, with tender and constant care, at his own expense, bring me back to life and joy. How evident hath it been in the history of all times, that in parties most remote one from the other, most opposed one to the other; persons have been found of equal excellencies, in all kinds, of equal integrity to truth and goodness. Our most orthodox divines, who have been heated and heightened with the greatest zeal of opposition to the Pope, as the Antichrist, yet have believed a Pope to have ascended from the papal chair, to a throne in heaven. Had my education, my acquaintance, the several circumstances and concurrances been the same to me, as to this person from whom I now most of all dissent, that which is now his sense and state, might have been mine.
Have the same just, equal, tender respects and thoughts with the same allowances of another, which thou requirest from him to thy self. It is a rule in philosophy, That there is the same reason of contrarieties. Two opposed parties or persons, by reason of the opposition, for the most part looking through the same disturbed and colored medium, behold one another under the same uncomely form, in the same displeasing colors. Hath there not been frequent experience of those, who by being of differing parties, alienated, exasperated, having their fancies filled with strange images of each other, when they have been brought together by some intervening providence, have discovered such agreeable beauties of morality and humanity, such an harmonious agreement in essential, in radical principles of divine truth, of the true and ever lasting good, that they have conversed with highest delight, they have departed with an higher esteem of each other, their souls have been inseparably united with angelical kisses and embraces? Some entertaining strangers, have entertained angels.
Do thou so believe, that in every encounter, thou mayest meet under the disguise of an enemy, a friend, a brother, who, when his helmet shall be taken off, may disclose a beautiful, and a well known face, which shall charm all thy opposition into love and delight at the sight of it.
