396 DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING AND KEEPING to their religion. Only the church ofRome is a very leper, whose infectious disease Both compel us to avoid her company. (As for any sort of men that deny the fundamentals, 1 will not call them by the name of Christians.) So also in duties of worship, Satan will be casting in scruples. If they should hear the word, he will cause them to be scrupling the callingof the minister, or something in his doctrine to discourage them. If they should dedicate their children to Christ in the baptismal covenant, he will be raising scruples about the lawfulness of baptizing infants. When they should solace their souls at the Lord's supper, or other communion of the church, he will be-raising scruples about the fitness of every one that they are to join with, and whether it be lawful to join With such an ignorant man, or such a wicked man; or whether it be a true church, or rightly gathered, or governed, or the minister a true minister, and twenty the like. When they should-join with the church in singing of God's praises, he will move one to scruple singing David's psalms; another to scruple singing among the un- godly; another singing psalms that agree not to every man's con- dition; another, because our translation is bad, or our metre defec- tive, and -we might have better. ` When men should spend the Lord's day in God's spiritual worship, he causeth one to scruple, whether theLord's day be ofdivine institution. Another he drives into the other extreme, to scruple almost every thing that is not worship. Whether they may provide their meat on that day, (when yet it is a solemn day of thanksgiving, and they scruple not much more on other thanksgiving-days,) or whether they may so much as move a stick out ofthe way. Others he moves to trouble themselves with scruples, as what hour the day begins and ends, and the like. Whereas, if they, 1. Understood that worldly rest is commanded' but as help to 'spiritual worship ; 2. And that they must employas much of that day in God's work as theydo of other days in their callings, and rest in the night as at other times, and that God looks to time for work's sake, and not at thework for the time's sake; this wouldcast out most of their scruples. The like course Satan takes with Christians in reading, praying in se- cret, or in their families, teaching their families reproving sinners, teaching the ignorant, meditation, and all other duties, too long to mention the particular scruples . which he thrusts into men's heads, much more to resolve them, which would require a large volume alone. Now, I would entreat all such Christians to consider, how little they please God, and how much they please Satan, and how much they break their own peace, and the peace of the churches. If nu send a man on a journey, would you like him better that would stand questioning and scrupling every step he goes, whether he
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