294 THE ABSOLUTE DOMINION dilemma, to think that either your understandings or your con- sciences are very bad. If, indeed, you so little knowa good cause from a bad, then it must needs tempt men to think you very un- skillful in your profession. The seldom and smaller differences of divines, in a more sublime and - mysterious profession, is yet a dis- covery so far of their ignorance, and is imputed to their dis- grace. But when almost every cause, even the worst that comes to the bar, shall have some of you for it, and some against it, and in the most palpable cases you are some on one side, and some on the other, the strange difference of yotn judgments doth seem to betray their weakness. But if you know the causes to be bad which you defend, and to be good which you oppose, it more evi- dently betrays a deplorable conscience. I speak not of your inno- cent or excusable mistakes in cases of great 'difficulty ; nor yet of excusing a cause bad in the main from unjust aggravations: but when money will hire you to plead for injustice against your own . knowledge, and to use your wits to defraud the righteous, and spoil his cause, or vex him with delays, for the advantage of your own unrighteous client, I would not have your. conscience for all your gains, nor your account to make for, all the world. It is sad, that any known unrighteous cause should have a professed Christian, in the face of a Christian judicature, to defend it, and Satan should plead by the tongues of menso deeply engaged to Christ: but it is incomparably more sad that almost every unjust cause should find a patron; and no contentious, malicious person should be more ready to do wrong, than some lawyers to defend him, or a- (dear- bought) fee! Did you honestly obey God, and speak not a word against your judgment, but leave every unjust man to defend his own cause, what peace would it bring to your consciences; what honor to your now reproached profession ; what relief to the op- pressed ; and what an excellent cure to the troublesome conten- tions of proud or malicious men ! 3. To your juries and witnesses I shall say but this: You also are not your own; and he that owneth you bath told you, "That he will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." It is much into your hands that the law hath committed the cause of the just : should you betray it by perjury and false witnesses, while there is a. conscience in your guilty breast, and a God in heaven, you shall not want a witness of your sin, or a revenger of the op- pressed, if the blood of Christ on your sound repentance do not rescue you. 4. If plaintiffand defendant did well consider that_they are not their own, they would not be too prone to quarrels, but would lose their right, when God, the chief proprietor,'did reauire it. Why
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