Wisdom from Jeremy Taylor: "things simply necessary"

The Catholic church hath been too much and too soon divided: it hath been used as the man upon a hill used his heap of heads in a basket; when he threw them down the hill, every head run his own way ... and as soon as the spirit of truth was opposed by the spirit of error, the spirit of peace was disordered by the spirit of division; and the Spirit of God hath overpowered us so far, that we are only fallen out about that, of which if we had been ignorant, we had not been much the worse; but in things simply necessary, God hath preserved us still unbroken: all nations, and all ages recite the creed, and all pray the Lord's prayer, and all pretend to walk by the rule of the commandments; and all churches have ever kept the day of Christ's resurrection, or the Lord's-day holy; and all churches have been governed by bishops, and the rites of Christianity have been forever administered by separate orders of men, and those men have been always set apart by prayer and the imposition of the bishop's hạnds; and all Christians have been baptized, and all baptized persons were, or ought to be, and were taught that they should be confirmed by the bishop, and presidents of religion; and for ever there were public forms of prayer, more or less in all churches; and all Christians that were to enter into holy wedlock, were ever joined or blessed by the bishop or the priest: in these things all Christians ever have consented, and he that shall prophesy or expound Scripture to the prejudice of any of these things, hath no part in that article of his creed; he does not believe the holy catholic church, he hath no fellowship, no communion with the saints and servants of God.

From Taylor's sermon 'The Minister's Duty in Life and Doctrine', Part II, in The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Volume IV.