and they make one another easily believe it. Till experience proved it, I did not think that human nature had been liable to such impudent, monstrous lying.

2. The daily business of many is, by wit and diligence to draw men to hate religious men on false pretences. As plainly as Christ preacheth and urgeth love, as his great commandment; so plainly do these press and urge men to hatred but of this before.

3. And hatred tends to hurtfulness. What plotting and labouring is there in the world, to ruin and destroy each other! The malignant spirit is bloodthirsty. It is strange how the unclean devils thirst to draw or suck some blood from witches. Nothing more alienates me from the papal kingdom, than that it lives like leeches upon blood. To read over the history of the inquisition, and of their massacres, would make men take toads, and adders, and mad dogs, and wolves, for harmless things in comparison of some men. If any would requite them (or others) with the like, I hate it in Protestant or Papist. The Turks conquered the Greek empire, partly by the mutinous divisions of the Christians, and partly by promising them liberty of religion. And then the Christians thought they should have that, they yielded up the empire with the less resistance. And that which was so advantageous to the infidels, might, well used and limited, be more advantageous to the Christian truth and church.

But though good things may be used in an ill cause, it is a sign of a bad cause which needeth bad means. That cause which is carried on by lying, perjury, and deceit, by malignant, love-killing endeavours, and by cruelty, and hurtfulness, and blood, is thereby made suspicious to all wise men. It is a wonder of impudence in Baronius, Binnius, and other Papists, to justify Martin, a canonized saint, for renounc ing communion to the death with the synods and bishops who persuaded the emperor to draw the sword against the Gnostic Priscillianists; and themselves to defend a thousandfold greater cruelties and murders in their own church on the account of religion. But sin is mad self-contradiction.

4. I conclude with this great truth: they that hate and oppose godly men's obedience to God, do seek to silence the chief witness of Christ, and to cast out Christianity from the earth. Christianity cannot be proved to be true, but by the Spirit, which is its seal and witness. This witness of

the Spirit was not only extraordinary in languages and numerous miracles, but also ordinary in the work of sanctification. This seal is set on all that shall be saved in all times and places. The Lord knoweth who are his. "And let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” “He redeemed us to purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works; teaching us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world: looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;" Tit. ii. 12-14. By this healing work Christ is known to be indeed our Physician, the real Saviour that saveth his people from their sins. As man generateth man, and the father is known by the similitude of the child; and as he is known to be a good artist that can make others such. This is Christ's standing witness in all times and places. And when you would turn this into scorn, and cloud it with slanders, or the charge of hypocrisy, and would have judged an odious people, and have them driven out of the world, what do you in effect but spit in the face of Christ, and crown him with thorns, and call him a deceiver, and crucify him afresh, and seek to expel Christianity from the earth? What reasonable man could believe Christ to be Christ, the Saviour of the world, if he did not sanctify men, and make them much better and fitter for heaven than other men?

So that in this you directly militate for the devil, the world and the flesh, against God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, against the holy catholic church, and the communion of saints, and the hope of resurrection and life everlasting; which if you did openly under the name of infidels or heathens, or rather as the professed soldiers of the devil, it were less disingenuous and hypocritical, than to do it in the church, and under Christ's colours, and in the Christian name.

And you must be sure that you are stronger than God and our Saviour, if you will prevail to the last. God hath undertaken the defence of the just: Christ hath undertaken to present them triumphant before his Father, and cast their enemies into hell. Are you sure you can overcome him? Vile worms that cannot fetch a breath without him! When began you to be stronger than God? Was it in the womb? Or in infancy when you could not go? devil and the flesh made you mad or

Or was it when the drunken in ignorant

malice? If so, the drunken fit will soon be over, and God will awake a tormenting wit. If you can conquer God, try your strength first on his works: stop the sun; change night and day; turn the tide of the sea; live without meat or air; resolve that you will never die; save all your friends from death. Can you do none of this, and yet will you venture a war against God? Or do you think to fight against his servants, and bribe him to be on your side, and forsake them to your rage? Did Christ take man's nature, and die to save them, and will he now turn on satan's side against them? He overcame the devil's temptation on earth; yea, called Peter satan; Matt. xvi. When he would have tempted him not to die for his chosen. Let men or devils go try him in his glory, whether he will change his mind, and take your part against his own holy truth and servants.

CHAPTER IV.

Objections and false accusations answered.

BUT I know that as Christ and his apostles were not hated, nor killed without pretended cause and reason, nor the martyrs murdered without accusation; so none will now justify the scorning or persecuting an innocent person, or a saint as such, but they will first make them odious, and seem worthy of all that is done against them. They will say, it is not godly men, but wicked hypocrites that we hate and prosecute; a false and odious sort of persons, who are unruly, and set up their own wit and will against the laws and governors of the several kingdoms where they live: they are the very worst of men.

Answ. If they are so indeed, they are none of the men that I am pleading for, nor you the men that I reprove. But before we come to particular accusations, it is your wisdom to answer these few questions.

1. Have you particular matter against them to make good this charge? Or is it only a general malicious accusation?

2. Is it individual persons that you mean, by whom it is proved? Or do you thus accuse whole companies of men? What if one said of Papists, Jews, or Turks, they are mur

derers, adulterers, perjured, &c. do you think he were not an odious slanderer, to speak that of all or most, or the whole party, which he can prove but by some few?

3. Do you know all the persons whom you accuse? And have you heard it proved? Or do you not say this of the whole congregations assembled to worship God, of whom you know not one of many? If this be so, it is inhuman calumny.

4. Have the particular persons been heard speak for themselves, and give the reason of their actions? And were they proved insufficient? Or were they condemned unheard? Or was God's word derided, and taken for no reason?

5. Do you not know that the devil is the great accuser of the brethren? And that he hath malice and craft enough to say as bad as you can say, by the best of men? And must he be believed?

6. Are you sure you can make God believe you, that these men are as bad as you affirm? If not, and if he find a man in prison for obeying his word, and ask who laid him there, will you undertake to prove that he was laid there for some crime? If God own him, and say, he is my servant, will you confute him, and say, No; but he is a schismatic? God knoweth a saint from a schismatic better than you do. Sheep-stealers use to shear the sheep, and cut out the mark. But they have to do with men. God's mark is where man cannot take it away; and the foundation of God standeth The Lord knoweth who are his.

sure.

7. Know you not that Christ, and his apostles, and all the martyrs were as deeply charged, and put to death as malefactors? We must then have better proof than accusation.

8. If they prove faithful Christians whom you thus accuse, Christ hath undertaken their justification: it is his office. And do you think to baffle him? Can hè not answer you? Rom. viii. 32, 33. 35. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth: who is he that will condemn them?

9. Have you not greater sins yourselves than those whom you accuse? If so, you condemn yourselves. Would you have God judge of them as you do? If so, do you not tell him how to judge of you, and even crave him to condemn you?

10. Doubtless you know that you are sinners and how think you to be justified at the bar of God? Is there any but Christ to judge and justify you? And do you think he

will justify his enemies, that hated, accused and condemned his servants?

11. Those that dwell near godly Christians and should know them, are more inexcusable for their malice and slanders than foreigners and strangers are. Men of another land or age may be deceived by lying fame or history; but you that are their neighbours are without excuse. I speak for none but persons fearing and obeying God: and you might easily have known that they are neither fornicators, drunkards, perjured, swearers, liars, oppressors, thieves, nor suffer for any such crimes as these.

12. And if they are as wicked as you say, why do you not prosecute them for such wickedness? What are the French Protestants now prosecuted and ruined for? Have any judicatures proved them guilty of any such crimes against God or man? Or is it not, only for worshipping God contrary to the king's and prelate's laws? And how is that? As Christ's apostles did: they refuse nothing in God's worship which God commanded, or any of Christ's apostles used, or any churches in their days, or long after. And did the apostles offer God so odious a worship as deserved hatred and destruction? When Daniel's enemies designed his ruin, they said, "We shall find no matter against this Daniel except it be concerning the law of his God," Dan. vi.; and so they got a law made against praying to any God but the king for a certain time. Daniel must be cast to the lions for breaking the king's law. The poor flies deserve death for coming into the spider's web: but did not the venomous worm spin it of purpose out of her own bowels, or condensate air, to take and kill the flies by craft? In England there are many that worship God as the French Protestants do, and no better than Christ's apostles did: if this be their horrid wickedness that makes them unworthy to live out of prison, say so, and pretend no other. But if it be heresy, false doctrine, perjury, fornication, robbing, treason, sedition or any other crime, why are they not accused of these before the judges? And why are those charged with them that never were so accused and proved guilty? Will not all wise men take those persons for malicious liars, who by their published accusations thus odiously charge multitudes, and never offer to prove it against them at the judicatures? Their accusations shew they want not will, therefore their not pro