566 CHARACTER OF A SOUND, dom of Satan. He cannot rise by the ruins of the church, nor feed upon those morsels that are the price of the blood ofsouls. 2. And the weakest Christian.is in all this of the same mind, saving that private and selfish interest.is not so fully overcome, not so easily and resolutely denied; Luke'xiv. 26. 33. But here the hypocrite showeth the falseness of his heart. His own interest is it that chooseth his religion; and that he may torment himself, by being wicked in the open light, he maketh himself believe; that whatsoever is most for his own interest is most pleasingunto God, and most for the good of souls, and the interest of the gospel ; so that the carnal Romish clergy can persuade their consciences, that all the darkness and superstitions of their kingdom, and all the opposition of the light of the gospel ofChrist, do make for the honor of God and the good of souls ; because they uphold their tyranny, wealth, and pomp, and pleasure. Or, if they cannot persuade their consciences to believe so gross a lie, let church and souls speed how they.will, they will favor nothing that favoreth not their interest and ends. And the interest of the flesh and Spirit, and of the world and Christ, are so repugnant, that commonly tsuch worldlings take the serious practice of godliness for the most hateful thing, and the serious practicers of it for the most insufferable persons.; wü. 57. xxi. 36. xxii. 22. xxiv. 5, 6. John xix. 15. The enmity of interests, with the enmity of nature, between the woman's and the. serpent's seed, will maintain that warfare to the end of the world, in which the prince of thepowers of darkness shall seem to prevail; (as he did against our crucified Lord;) but he shall be overcome by his own successes, and the just shall conquer by patience, when they seem most conquered. The name, and form, and image of religion, the carnal hypocrite doth not only bear, but favor, and himselfaccept; but the life and serious practice he abhorreth, as inconsistent with his worldly inter- est and ends. For these he can find in his heart, with Ahab, to hate and imprison Micaiah, and prefer his four 'hundred flattering prophets; l Kings xxii. 6. 8. 24. 27. If Luther will touch the pope's crown and the friars' bellies, they will not scruple to op- pose and ruin both him and all such preachers in the worldsif they were able ; John xi. 48.50. Acts v. 28. LVI. 1. A, Christian indeed is one whgse holiness Usually maketh him an eyesore to the ungodly world ;'and bis charity, and peaceableness, and moderation, maketh him to be censured as not strict enough, by the superstitious' and dividing sects of Christians. For seeing the'church bath suffered between these two sorts of op- posers, ever since the suffering of Christ himself, ,it cannot be but the solid Christian offend them both, because he bath that which both dislike. All the ungodly hate him for his holiness, which is cross to their interest and way ; and all the dividers will censure
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