CONS'11tMEn CHRISTIAN. 543 places of wealthand honor, but " that under them they may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty; 1 Tim. ii. 2. Yea, though infidel princes hate and persecute them, they continue to pray for them, and to honor their authority, and will not thereby be driven from their duty. If God casttheir lot under infidel, ungodly, and malicious governors, they do not run to arms, to save themselves, or save the gospel; as ifGod had called them to reform the world, or keep it from the oppression of the higher powers. Nor do they think it a strange, intolerable matter for the best men to be lowest,and to be the suffering side, and so fall to fighting that Christ and the saints may have the rule. For they know that Christ's kingdom is not of this world, (John xviii. 36.) that it is not a visiblemonarchy, as his usurping vicar dothpretend ; and that Christ doth most eminently rule unseen, and disposethof all the kingdomsof the world, even where he is hated and resisted and that the reign of saints is in their state of glory; and that all God's graces do fit them more for a suffering life than for worldly power. Their humility, meekness, patience, self-denial, contempt of the world, and heavenly-mindedness, are better exercised and promoted in a suffering than a prosperous reigning state. When they think of the holy blood which bath been shed by heathen Rome, from Christ and Stephen, till the days of Constantine; and the far greater streams which have been shed by the bloody papal Rome; wherever they had power, in Piedmont, Germany, Po- land, Hungary, in Belgia, England, and in other lands ; the thirty or forty thousand murdered in a few days at the Bartholomew massacre in France ; the two hundred thousand murdered in a few weeks inIreland, they are not so unlike their suffering brethrenas tothink that striving for honors and command is their way to heav- en. When Christ hath foretold them that self-denial under the cross, tribulation, and persecution, is the common way, (Luke xiv. 26, 27. 29. 33. Acts xiv. 22. John xvi. 33. Rom. v. 3. viii. 35. 2 Tim. iii. 12. Matt. v. 10-12. 2 Thess. ii. 6, 7. 10. Mark x. 30.) so far are they from fighting against the injuries and cruelties of their governors, that they account the reproach of Christ to be greater riches than all their treasures, (Heb. xi. 25, 26.) and think they are blessed when they are persecuted, (Matt. v. 10.) and say with Paul, " God forbid that I should glo- ry, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucifjed tome, and I unto the world ;" Gal. vi. 14.' and 2 Cor. xii. 19. "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in re- proaches,,in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake ; for when I am weak, then I am strong." "Nay, in all these things, when persecuted and killed all the day long, and counted as sheep to the slaughter, they are more than conquerors through
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