Agree with one another, live in peace;
and the God of love and peace will be with you. 2 Corinthians 13:11
As you seek the prosperity of this society, it is of vast importance that you should avoid contention. A contentious people will be a miserable people. The contentions that have been among you, since I was your pastor, have been one of the greatest burdens I have laboured under in the course of my ministry. Not only the contentions with me, but those with one another. Contention, heat
of spirit, evil speaking, and things of like nature, are directly contrary to the spirit of Christianity, and did, in a peculiar manner, tend to drive away God's Spirit from a people, and to render all means of grace ineffectual, as well as to destroy a people's outward comfort and welfare.
Let me therefore earnestly exhort you as you would seek your own future good hereafter, to watch against a contentious spirit (1 Pet. 3:10-11). I would particularly advise those that have adhered to me in the late controversy, to watch over your spirits and avoid all bitterness towards others. However wrong you may think others have been, maintain with great diligence and watchfulness a Christian meekness and gentleness of spirit; and labour, in this respect, to excel those who are of a contrary part. And this will be the best victory, for 'he that rules his spirit, is better than he that takes a city.'
Let nothing be done through strife or conceit. Indulge no revengeful spirit in any case; but watch and pray against it; and, by all means in your power, seek the prosperity of this town. And never think you behave yourselves as becomes Christians, but when you sincerely, sensibly, and fervently love all men, of whatever party or opinion, and whether friendly or unkind, just or injurious, to you or your friends, or to the cause and kingdom of Christ.
Jonathan Edwards, 'Farewell Sermon', Works, i:ccvi-ccvii
