come in contact with them, the more you are pained by them; " the best of them proving as a brier, and the most upright of them as a thorn-hedge g:" insomuch that he is really the hap- piest man who has least dependence on, or, except in a very distant way, communication with, his fellow-man. Such was the state of society in that day: and such, alas! it is at this very hour.]
2. Where piety is discountenanced —
[At different periods of the Jewish history, it was at the peril of a man's life to espouse the cause of the God of Israel ; so entirely had idolatry superseded the worship of the one true God. At those seasons it was dangerous for a man to " trust his friend, or even the wife of his bosom," if he was inclined to serve the living God. " A son would rise up against his father, and a daughter against her mother; and a man's greatest enemies were often those of his own household."
It is remarkable, that our blessed Lord has cited this very pas- sage, not only as applicable to, but as particularly characteristic of, the dispensation ivhich he came to introduce : " The brother," says he, "shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child ; and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes shall be those of his own household11." Such times have been in the very country in which we live : and such they would be again, if popery were to regain its ascendant. Not that we need go back to times of popery for acts of in- tolerance in reference to religion ; for the same hatred of piety exists at the present day : and it not unfrequently happens, that persons are obliged to conceal from their parents, or from those under whom they live, their attachment to the Gospel of Christ ; knowing that a disclosure of it would infallibly expose them to hatred and contempt.]
Such, then, are the circumstances under which the godly are placed : and, as they are confessedly arduous, it will be proper for me to shew,
II. To what measures they should have recourse —
Here the prophet's example will point out to us the precise line which every Christian should pursue. Mark,
1. The determination of his mind — [Difficult as it was to maintain his integrity in such a time as that, he determined to spread his case before the
s ver. 4. h ver. 5, G. with Matt. x. 21, 35, 36.