The cure of church-divisions, or, Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being…

Thirdly, and because they are not able to endure the light, nor to stand before the power of open truth, they find it necessary to do almost all their work by back-biting: When they are out of the hearing of those whom they back-bite, among such as are as little sensible of this hateful sin as they; then they have this man and that man; this party and that party to reproach.

Fourthly, And (as Mr. Robert Bolton well noteth) to hide the malignity of their sin, and to cheat the hearers and their own consciences) they will first seem to praise him, and to confess that he is in other respects a very worthy, a learned or a pious man, and then bring in their back-biting with a [but.] And that which must sanctify all this sin, and turns it into a work of zeal, is the seeming interest of God, and of religion. They do all out of a zeal of God (I cannot say, A zeal for God) though it be not according to knowledge. If it was an untruth which they spake it was for religion: If they did back-bite it was ⟨p. 406⟩to preserve the hearers from error and danger: If they reviled that which they never understood, it was to keep the Church from the infection: If they tear the Church, and use their reputation to murder Love, and to make others odious who are wiser than they, all this is but for the defence of truth: And if it be non-sense or envy which they vent, they never repent of it (that's the mischief) because they think that the Lord and the Church, and the hearers have need of it. And so all those Texts are to them Apocrypha, which condemn their sin. Psal. 15. 3. 2 Cor. 12. 20. Rom. 1. 30. Prov. 25. 23. And sin is so be friended in mans corrupted nature, that they meet but with few angry countenances to drive away such reverend back-biting tongues.