676 CHARACTER OF A SOUND, that deserveth the suspicion or hatred of the world? What harm is there in it ? Or what will it do against them ?- I may say to them of his servants as Christ did of himself: " Many good-works have I showed you from-my Father ` for which of these works do ye stone me ?" John, x. 32. Many heavenly graces are in the 'sanctifiedbeliever; for which"of these do you hate and injure him? I know that ,goodness is so far in credit with human nature, that you will answer as the Jews did; "'For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy; ver. 33; We hate them not for godliness, but for hypocrisy and sin. But if it be so indeed, 1. Speak not against godliness itself, nor against the strictest perform- ance of our duty. 2.. Yea, plead for godliness, and countenance and promote it while ypu speak against hypocrisy and sin. 3. And choose out the hypocrite whose character is here set before you; and let him be the object of your enmity and distaste. Let it fall on those that are worldlings and time-servers, and will stretch their conscienpes to their carnal interest, and can do any thing to . save their, skin ; and being false to Christ, can hardly be true to any of their superiors, but only in subordination to themselves. As it is said of Constantius, that he commanded that all his ser- vants should be turned out oftheir places that would not renounce Christianity. And when he had thereby tried them, he turned out all the apostates, and kept in the sincere, and told them, they could not be true to him, that were not true to their God and Savior. 4. And see that you be not hypocrites yourselves. You profess yourselves Christians; and what is it io be a Christian indeed, you may here perceive. I.any that fall under the character of hypocrites, or worse, shall vilify or hate the sincere Christians as hypocrites, what a horrid aggravation of their hypocrisy, will it be ! Indeed, it is the best and strongest Christians that have-most of the hatred both of the unbelieving and the hypocritical World, And for my own part I must confess,that the very observation of the universal implacable enmity, which is undeniably seen through- out the world, between the woman's and the serpent's seed, (being such as is not found among any ether sorts of men on other occa- sions,) doth not a little confirm my belief of the Holy Scriptures, and seemeth to be an argument not well,to beanswered by -any enemy of the Christian cause. That it should begin between the two first brothers that ever were born in the world, and stop in nothing lower than shedding the righteous blood of Abel', forno other cause, but because the works of Cain were evil, and his brother's righteous ; (1John iii. 12, 13.) and that it shouldgo down to the prophets, and'Christ, and the apostles, and primitive saints, and continue to thisday throughout the earth; and that the pro
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