is, the weakness and folly of too many among you of the lower sort, who are made the tools and instruments of your betters to work their designs, wherein you have no concern. Your numbers make you of use, and cunning men take the advantage, by putting words into your mouths which you do not understand; then they fix good or ill characters to those words, as it best serves their purposes: and thus you are taught to love or hate, you know not what or why; you often suspect your best friends, and nearest neighbours, even your teacher himself, without any reason, if your leaders once taught you to call him by a name which they tell you signifieth some very bad thing.
A third cause of our great want of brotherly love, seemeth to be, that this duty is not so often insisted on from the pulpit, as it ought to be in such times as these; on the contrary, it is to be doubted, whether doctrines are not sometimes delivered by an ungoverned zeal, a desire to be distinguished, or a view of interest, which produce quite different effects; when, upon occasions set apart to return thanks to God for some public blessing, the time is employed in stirring up one part of the congregation against the other, by representations of things and persons, which God, in his mercy, forgive those who are guilty of.
The last cause I shall mention of the want of brotherly love is, that unhappy disposition toward politicks among the trading people, which hath been industriously instilled into them. In former times, the middle and lower sort of mankind, seldom gained or lost by the factions of the kingdom, and therefore were little concerned in them, farther than as matter of talk and amusement: but now the meanest dealer
will
