A26871:5
Cain and Abel malignity that is, enmity to serious godliness, that is, to an…
Cain and Abel malignity that is, enmity to serious godliness, that is, to an holy and heavenly state of heart and life : lamented, described, detected, and unanswerably [sic] proved to be the devilish nature, and the militia of the devil against God and Christ and the church and kingdoms, and the surest sign of a state of damnation / by Richard Baxter, or, Gildas Salvianus ...Cain and Abel malignity that is, enmity to serious godliness, that is, to an holy and heavenly state of heart and life : lamented, described, detected, and unananswerably [sic] proved to be the devilish nature, and the militia of the devil against God and Christ and the church and kingdoms, and the surest sign of a state of damnation / by Richard Baxter, or, Gildas Salvianus ...
London: printed for Tho. Parkhurst, 1689
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
READER,
THIS reprehensive Lamentation of English Malignity, or hatred, and scorn, and persecution of serious Godliness, by them who profess to believe in God, and to be Christians, was written in prison (but without any provoking sense of my suffering) in Anno 1685. or 1686. And by one that was not wholly ignorant, how much of the Papists counsel and power, was causal in our change since the return of K. Ch. 2. 1660. And therefore it grateth so much upon the Papists, though they were professed Protestants who were the open Agents.
It was written by one who can remember, at least since 1627. that the serious practice of Godliness was the common scorn of the vulgar rabble; and he that did but read the Scripture, and Books of Piety, and pray in his family, and catechize Children or Servants, or hear a Sermon at the next Parish ⟨image 3⟩Church from a Godly Conformist, when he had none at home; yea that did but seriously talk of Christ or Scripture, or the Life to come, or preparation for Death and Judgment, went under the name of a Puritan, which was a reproach in the mouth of drunkards, swearers, fornicators, and all the sensual, worldly sort, both high and low. And that Conformable Ministers (yea and Gentlemen) that were but seriously Religious, no more scaped this scorn than Nonconformists (who were then so few, that they were in most places unknown.) He sadly remembereth how greatly this malignant rabble triumphed in the Bishops Visitation Articles, and in the Preaching and Talk of many Priests, who sharpened their Sermons with Invectives against Puritans as dangerous Hypocrites, though they had not a Nonconformist within many miles. He heard the Godly Conformable Ministers lament, that the Bishops and Ecclesiastical Courts by their jealousy and heat against the Nonconformable Puritans, became the strength and encouragement of this malignant vicious rabble; and that the young worldly Ministers took it for the way to