t,ae .'ToedweY'o xXxï that if he did let him go, and condemned him not to death, he was not Cefar's friend, he forthwith proceeded to the condemnatory fentence, and delivered him to the perfecuting and murdering yews to be crucified ; and, poor wretch, he imagined, that the filly lhift of waffling his hands in water, would wafh and purge his deeply defiled Confcience from the guilt and pollution contra&ed by fhedding of that innocent and moll pre- cious blood ; but it fluck faífer to, and was more ftíffiy barkned on his Confcience, than to be fo eafiily wafhed off: And, with fuch poor and pitiful shifts, do fuch men think or fancy to pacify their Confciences, and to purge them from the defilements of the greateft, mof} clamant and horrid crimes. If Pilate had any real demur in his Con- fcience about the thing (as very probably he had) his counteraecing it on to bafe and unworthy accounts, and then foolifhly fancying, that by fuch an empty ceremo- ny, as waffling his hands in water, he could be waffled from the guilt of fo atrocious a crime, were high aggra- vations of it. 5thly, When men pretend Confcience as the reafon of their not committing the leaft fin, nav of their not doing Nome things that are very debatable, whe- ther they be fins or not ; while in the mean time they make no Confcience to ftretch forth their hand to, nay with an high hand to adventure on the commiffion of fins, that are incontrovertably very great and grofs: As the Pharifees pretended Confcience for their not going to the judgment -hall, left, forfooth, they Jhould be defiled, and fo unfitted to eat the pafover ; who yet made no fcruple malicioufly to embrew their wicked hands in the blood of the perfon, that was God, typified by the pafover. 6thly, When Confcience, or a confcientious re- gard, is pretended for divine inflitutions and ordinances, merely and mainly from picque and prejudice at the moil tender and confcientious perfons, as if their war- rantable and confiftent pra &ices were the groffef{ vio- lations and greaten vilifyings of them, and plain incon- tinencies with a jut' regard for them : How often thus did the Scribes and Pharifees quarrel with our Lord and his difciples, as breakers and profaners of the fabbath, bemire of fotnethings done by him, and them thereon, not
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