A guide to godliness or a Treatise of a Christian life showing the dutiesA guide to godlynesse or a Treatise of a Christian life shewing the duties

The twelfth sign is, when as men delight in a pleasing and flattering Ministry, who will soothe them up in their sinful courses, and let them sleep securely in their wickedness without any disturbance. So the secure and hard-hearted Jews, being resolved to walk on still in their evil ways, would either have the Prophets save their labour and not prophesy at all; or if they would needs take the pains, they condition with them to speak unto them, not right but smooth things, ¹and to prophesy deceits. So the Prophet Michah, out of the experience of his time, saith: If a man walking in the Spirit and falsehood, do lye; or walking with the wind, that is, be so vain and ambitious of mens praises, that he will be carried any way with the breath of their ⟨p. 40⟩mouths, to speak falsehood and untruth, saying; I will prophesy unto ²thee of wine and of strong drink, he shall even be the Prophet of this people. And secure and hard-hearted Ahab could not endure the sharp, though wholesome, reproofs of Elijah; nor to be crossed in his courses by Michaias; but is well pleased with the lies of the four ³hundred false prophets, because they spake according to his appetite, and fitted their words and matter according to his humour. The reason is, because being fully resolved to continue impenitently in their sinful courses, and even to hazard their souls to extremest perils, rather then to leave delighting of themselves with the pleasures of sin, they are willing to be free from all outward checks of the Word, and inward checks of Conscience, and to preserve as much, as may be, their minds in peace and security, that they may take their fill of carnal delights, when as they are not embittered with any disturbance. Wherein they are like unto foolish Patients, who preferring their ease before their health, will not have their festered sores searched to the bottom by the skilful Chirurgeon, because they will not endure the pain of the cure, but rather entrust themselves into the hands of some Mountebank and Impostor, who will take upon him to cure them with a healing plaster. Or like those who are sick of the Lethargy, who being insensible of their estate, had rather continue in it without disturbance to their destruction; then to be awakened out of it by any unpleasing means, though they are fit and necessary for their recovery.