SHINE TN OIJR WORKS. 489 peculiar people, zealous ofgood works, that Christ is known to be really the Savior of the world ; and by making his followers better than others, that he and his doctrine and religion are known to be the best.. Travellers tell me that nothing so much hindereth the conversionof the Mahometans as their daily experience that the lives of the Greek Christians, and 'others that live among them, are too .ordinarily worse than 'theirs. More drunkenness, and more falsehood, lying, deceit, it is said, are among.those Chris- tians than among the Turk$.: If that be true, those are no true Christians; but woe be to them by whom such offense cometh, I have oft heard those soldiers justly censured asprofane who turn churches into stables, (without great necessity.) But how much more hurtfully profane are they who, for carnal ends, confound the world and the church, and keep, the multitude of the most sensual, ungodlypersons in their communion, without ever calling them.personally to repentance! and use the church keys but to revenge themselves on those that differ from them in some opin- ions, or that cross their interest and wills, or that seem too smart and zealous in the dislike of their carnality, sloth, and church pollutions,! When the churches are as full of scandalous sinners as the assemblies of infidels and heathens, the world will hardly ever believe that infidelity and heathenism is not as good as the Christian faith. It is mero .by persons than by precepts that the world will judge of Christ and. Christianity. And what men on earth do more scandalize the world; more .expose Christianity to reproach, more harden infidels, more injure Christ, and serve the deuil, than ,they that fill the church with impious, carnal pastors, (as in the church of Rome,) and then with impious, carnal people, maintained constantly in her communion, without any open dis- owning by .a distinguishing, reforming discipline? When such pastors are no better than the soberer sort of heathens, save only in their opinion and formal words, and when their ordinary com- municants' are no better, it is no 'thanks to. them if all turn not infidels that know them, and if Christianity be 'contemned, and decay out of. the world; and it is along of such that disorderly separations attempt that discipline, and distinguishing of the godly and notoriously wicked, which such ungodly pastors will not attempt. See Lev. xix. 17. Matt. xviii..15, 16. 1 Cor. v. Tit. in. 10. Jer. xv: 19. Psalm xv. 2 Thess. iii. Rom. xvi. 17. 2 Tim. iii. 4, 5. III. But O how great an honor is it to God and to religion, when kings, princes, and states do zealouslydevote their power to God, from whom they do receive, it, and labor to make their kingdoms, holy ! When truth, sobriety, and piety have the coun- tenance of human powers, and rulers wholly set themselves to VOL. II. 62
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=