Yet it coming forth at a time
when I was pretty well at leisure, I intended a full refutation
thereof, and in order thereunto had written between forty and fifty
sheets, when other business, more urgent, intervening, took me off,
and detained me from it so long that it was then judged out of
season, and so it was laid aside.
Hitherto the war I had been engaged in was in a sort foreign, with
people of other religious persuasions, such as were open and avowed
enemies; but now another sort of war arose, an intestine war, raised
by some among ourselves--such as had once been of us, and yet
retained the same profession, and would have been thought to be of
us still; but having through ill-grounded jealousies let in
discontents, and thereupon fallen into jangling, chiefly about
church discipline, they at length broke forth into an open schism,
headed by two Northern men of name and note, John Wilkinson and John
Story; the latter of whom, as being the most active and popular man,
having gained a considerable interest in the West, carried the
controversy with him thither, and there spreading it, drew many, too
many, to abet him therein.
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