One sheet against the Quakers

Many of them live idly and disorderly, going up and down the Country, and living on the bread of others, and not working with their hands, contrary to 2 Thes. 3. 6, 11.

Many of them live idly and disorderly, going up and down the Countrey, and living on the bread of others, and not working with their hands, contrary to 2 Thes. 3. 6, 11.

Reason 5. The worst of all is, that they behave themselves like Malignant enemies to the very Cause, and Church, and Gospel, and Servants of Jesus Christ. And if they be of the Serpentine brood, they cannot be the only servants of Christ sure. Most of them that I have seen, have an altered countenance, looking upon every man that they suspect to be a Minister or a friend to the Ministry, with such detestation and hatred, as if malice it self had chosen their faces to demonstrate its complexion in. Their very design, Religion and work, is, to make the people hate the Ministers and revile them as they do, as if this were a mark of a converted man. And besides this Ministry (as much as they revile them) who have we to carry on the work of the Gospel? A mean wit may easily see what would come of the Gospel, and of the Church, and the souls of men, if the Ministry were hated, rejected or cast out. Doth it go well with any Nation on earth without them? Name me the place. Will the Gospel be propagated without Preachers? Or have you better enough if all these were down? Where be they? that we may see and know them. He that would destroy the Commanders, and Magistrates, is like to be an enemy to the Army and the Common-wealth. They take the same course against the Church and Cause of God, as the malicious enemies in all ages have done; even to oppose the best and painfullest Ministers. Such as the Heathens tormented, and the Papists burnt, and others silenced, these men choose out to vilify and oppose. Mark when they come to any Town, whether they do not ten times more oppose the Ministers that spend themselves in private and public labours against sin, then they do the most ignorant or vicious men. Cannot we see whose servants they are, when we see who they fight against, even the choicest servants of Christ! It is a wonderful thing that even Malignant enemies shall be thought to be Christs only servants by any that know what it is to serve him, or what an enemy differeth from a friend.