Meditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many years sinceMeditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many yeares since

Fourthly, the prevailing of the Gospel by the ministry of but a few, and those unarmed, impotent, and despised men, and that too, against all the opposition which power, wit, or malice could call up, making it appear, that Christ was to rule in the midst of enemies. When Lucian, Porphyry, Libanius, and Julian, by their wits; Nero, Severus, Diocletian, and other Tyrants by their swords, the whole world by their scorn, malice, and contempt, and all the arts which Satan could suggest, laboured the suppression, and extinguishing of it. The prevailing, I say, of the Gospel by such means, against such power, in the midst of such contempt, and danger, and that over such persons as were by long custom and tradition from their fathers trained up in a Religion extremely contrary to the truth, and very favourable to all vicious dispositions, and upon such conditions to ⟨p. 212⟩deny themselves, to hate the world, and the flesh, to suffer joyfully the loss of credit, friends, peace, quiet, goods, liberties, life and all, for the name of a crucified Saviour, whom their eyes never saw, and whom their ears daily heard to be blasphemed, such a prevailing as this must needs prove the original of the Gospel to be divine, for had not God favoured it as much as men hated it, impossible it must needs have been for it, to have continued.

Fourthly, the prevailing of the Gospell by the ministery of but a few, and those unarmed, impotent, and despised men, and that too, against all the opposition which power, wit, or malice could call up, making it appeare, that Christ was to rule in the midst of enemies. When Lucian, Porphyrie, Libanius, and Iulian, by their wits; Nero, Severus, Diocletian, and other Tyrants by their swords, the whole world by their scorne, malice, and contempt, and all the arts which Satan could suggest, laboured the suppression, and extinguishing of it. The prevaling, I say, of the Gospell by such meanes, against such power, in the midst of such contempt, and danger, and that over such persons as were by long custome and tradition from their fathers trained up in a Religion extreamely contrary to the truth, and very favourable to all vitious dispositions, and upon such conditions to ⟨p. 212⟩deny themselves, to hate the world, and the flesh, to suffer joyfully the losse of credit, friends, peace, quiet, goods, liberties, life and all, for the name of a crucified Saviour, whom their eyes never saw, and whom their eares daily heard to bee blasphemed, such a prevailing as this must needs prove the originall of the Gospell to bee divine, for had not God favoured it as much as men hated it, impossible it must needs have been for it, to have continued.