" drunk." O professors ! where are your bowels to the poor souk of sinners ? If your neighbour's ox or ass fall into the pit, you are bound to deliver him, if you can ; and will you not do as much for a precious soul, as you would do for a beast ? Nay, you dig pits, by your scandalous lives, to destroy them. If you sin, there are instruments enough to spread it, and multitudes of souls ready pre- pared to take the infection. Say not, if they do, the fault is theirs ; for though they are principals in the murder of their own souls, by taking the scandal, yet you are accessories in giving it : He is a mad man that will kill himself with a sword, and he no better that will put it into his hand.
O, therefore, if you have any regard to the precious souls of men, live up to the rules of your profession ! O, be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke, in the midst of a per- verse and froward generation ! let the heavenliness of your conver- sation stop those mouths that accuse you as men of a worldly spirit; let them see, by your moderation in seeking it, your patience in losing it, your readiness in distributing it, that it is a groundless ca- lumny under which your names suffer. Let them see, by your ap- parel, company, and discourses, you are not such proud, lofty spirits, as you are represented to be. Convince them, by your flexibleness to all things that are lawful and expedient, by manifesting, as much as in you lieth, that it is the pure bond and tie of conscience, which keeps you from compliance in all other things, and by your meekness in suffering, for such non-compliance, that you are not such turbulent, factious incendiaries, as the wicked world slander- ously reports you to be. Convince the world by your exact righ- teousness in all your civil dealings, and by the lip of truth in all your promises and engagements, that you have the fear of God in your hearts, as well as the livery of Christianity upon your backs. In a word, so live, that none may have just ground to belijeve the impudent slanders the devil raises in the world against you. Let your light so shine before men, that you may glorify your Father which is in heaven. Without your care and circumspection, the shedding of a world of precious soul-blood can never be prevented.
2. Let me advise and beseech all men to be so just to others, and merciful to their own souls, as not to cast them away for ever, by receiving prejudices against godliness, from the miscarriages of some, who make more than a common profession of it. To prevent this fatal effect of scandal and prejudice at religion, I desire a few particulars may be impartially weighed.
Firsts Very many of those scandals, bandied up and down the world against the professors of godliness, are devised and forged in hell, as so many traps and snares to catch and destroy men's souls, to beget ^n irreconciieable aversion and enmity in men to the ways
A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAN. 5^13
of God. " They devise deceitful matters (saith the Psahnist) a- " against them that are quiet iu the land," Psal. xxxv. 20. So Jer. xviii. 18. " Come, say they, let us devise devices against Jeremiah, " and smite him with the tongue." And there is as little equity in the credulous receiver, as there is honesty in the wicked forger of these slanders : with one arrow of censure you wound no less than three, viz. the honour of God, your innocent brother, and your own souls: As to the two former wounds, they will in due time be healed ; God will vindicate his own name fully, and the reputation of his innocent servants shall be cleared, and repaired abundantly ; but, in the mean time, your souls may perish by the wounds prejudices have given, so that you may never be recon- ciled to godliness and its professors whilst you live, but turn scoffers and persecutors of them.
Secondly^ Examine whether the matters that are charged upon them as their crimes, be not their duties. Sometimes it falls out to be so ; and if so, you fight more immediately and directly against God, than men. This was David's case, Psal. Ixix. 10. " When " I wept, and chastened my soul, that was to my reproach ;" my piety was turned to reproach. They called his tears crocodile's tears, and his fastings, hypocritical shadows of devotion and humi- lity. Thus the very matter of his duty was turned into scorn and reproach. And so it was with the primitive Christians, their very owning of themselves to be Christians was crime enough to con- demn them.
Thirdly^ If professors of religion do in some things act unbe- coming their holy profession, yet every slip and failing in their lives, is no sufficient warrant for you to censure their persons as hypo- crites ; much less to fall upon religion itself, and cqndemn it for the faults of them that profess it. There is many an upright heart overtaken by temptation. You see their miscarriages, but you see not their humiliations and self-condemnations before God for them. * Foul, and fearful (saith a grave divine *) was the scandal ' of David ; and what was the issue ? Presently the enemies of ' God and godliness began to lift their heads, and fall upon Da-
* vid's religion, 2 Sam. xxii. they blasphemed the name of God.
* O, this is he that was so grand a zealot, that the zeal of God's ' house did eat him up. This is the man, that, out of his trans-
* cendent zeal, danced before the ark ; this is he that prayed thrice
* a day, at morning, noon, and night : This is he that was so precise and strict in his family, that a wicked person should not
Jer. Dyke, of scandal, p. 5Z.
814! A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAN.
* dwell in his house. This your great, precise zealot, hath defiled ^ the wife, and murdered the husband. Now you see what his re- ' ligion is, now you see what comes of this profession of so much ' holiness and godliness.**
O that men would seriously consider their evil in such censures as these ! what is all this to religion ^ Doth religion any way countenance, or patronize such practices ? Nay, doth it not im- partially and severely condemn them ? It is the glory of the Chris- tian religion, that it is pure and undefiled, James i. 27. These practices flow from no principle of religion, nor are chargeable upon it, for it teacheth men the very contrary. Tit. ii. 11, 12. If I see a Papist sin boldly, or an Arminian slight grace, I justly condemn their principles, in, and with their practices, because Popery sets pardons to sale, and Arminianism exalts nature into the place of grace: But doth the doctrine of the gospel lead to any immora- hties ? Charge it, if you can.