keep the physic administered to them, but presently cast it up before it hath any operation on them ; and therefore we are even bid to save our physic, and not so much as bestow a reproof on them, lest we have it cast in our faces : ' Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee,' Prov. ix. 7. All we can do is, to write upon their dooi", ' Lord, have mercy upon him ! ' I mean, rather pray for them than speak to them. There hath of old been this sort of sinners mingled amongst the godly. A mocking Ishmael in Abraham's family. Gen. xxi. 9. And observable it is what interpretatioii the Spirit of God makes of his scornful carriage towards his brother : Gal. iv. 29, ' As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.' Pray mark, first, what was the ground of the quarrel ; it was this, — his brother was 'born after the Spirit;' and this he, being 'born after the flesh,' hated. Secondly, observe how the Spirit of God phraseth this his scornful carriage to his brother ; it is called persecuting him.
To aggravate the evil of a scornful spirit and a mocking tongue, which stands for so little a sin in the world's account-book, (who count none persecutors but those that shed blood for religion,) God would have thejeerer and scoffer to know among what sort of men he shall be ranked and tried at Christ's bar — no less sinners than persecutors. But this I conceive is not all : this mocking of holiness is called persecuting, because there is the seed of bloody persecution in it. They who are so free of their tongue to jeer, and shew their teeth in mocking at holiness, would fasten their teeth also on it if they had power to use their cheek-bone. Lastly, observe this was not barely the cross disposition of Ishmael's personal peevish and froward temper, so to abuse his brother, b\it it is laid as the charge of all wicked men ; as he did persecute his brother because after the Spirit, even so now this mocking spirit rmis in the blood, the whole litter are alike ; and if any seem more ingenuous and favourable to the holy ones of God, we must fetch the reason from soiTie other head than their sinful nature ; God rides some of them with a cixrb-bit, who though they open not their hearts to Christ savingly, yet truth is got so far into them by a powerful con- viction, that it makes conscience say to the'm concerning their holy neighboiu's, what Pilate's wife by message said to her husband of Christ, ' Have thou nothing to do with these just men, for I have suffered much concerning them,' Matt, xxvii. 19. But though there were ever mockers of holiness among the saints, because there were ever wicked neighbours ; yet the Spirit of God prophe- sieth of a sort of mockers to come upon the stage in the last days that shoidd differ from the ordinary scoffers that the people of God have beeii exer- cised with. And still the last is the worst; you know, those who mock and jeer at holiness use to be men and women that pretend nothing to religion themselves, such as Avalk in an open defiance of God, and wallow in all manner of wickedness ; but the Spfrit of God tells us of a new gang that shall mock at holiness under the colour of holiness : they shall be horribly wicked, some of them, as the worst of the former sort were, but wicked in a mysterj' : Jude ver. 17, 18, ' But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.' But mark, lest we should expect them at the wrong door, and so mistake, thinking they should arise, as formerly, from among the common swearers, drunkards, and other notorious sinners among us, he in the next words gives you as clear a character of them as if they carried their name on their forehead : ver. 19, 'These be they who separate themselves, sensual, not having the Spirit.' Learned Mr. Perkins reads the words thus: 'These be sect-makers, fleshly, not having the Spirit.' Sect-makers ! those that separate themselves! Do not our hearts tremble to see the mockers' arrows shot out at this window? These are they who pretend more to purity of worship than others, and profess they separate on conscience' accoimt, because they cannot suffer themselves so much as to touch them that are \mclean by joining with them in holy ordinances; and they mockers, they fleshly ! Truly, if the Spirit of God had not told us this, we should have gone last into their tent, (as Laban did into Rachel's,) as least suspecting that any mocker of holiness could stay there ; yea, God forbid that we should lay it in general as the charge of all who have separated from com- munion in the public, many of whom my conscience tells me are lovers of
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