The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…

Answ. I have told you in the fore-going answer. 1. If you were truly Christians, you might know it by possession in your selves: as you know that you love your friend, or a learned man knoweth that he hath learning. 2. If you have it not your selves, you may see that others do not dissemble, when you see them, as afore-said, make it the drift of all their lives, and prefer it before their worldly interest, and their lives, and hold on constantly in it to the death. When you see a holy life, what reason have you to question a holy heart? especially among so great a number, you may well know, that if some be dissemblers, all the rest are not so.

Obj. But I see no Christians that are really so holy: I see nothing in the best of them above civility, but only self-conceit, and affectation, and strictness in their several forms and modes of Worship.

Answ. 1. If you are no better than such your self, it is the greatest shame and plague of heart that you could have confessed: and it must needs be, because you have been false to the very light of Nature, and of Grace. 2. If you know no Christians that are truly holy, it must needs be, either because you are unacquainted with them, or because your malice will not give you leave to see any good in these that you dislike. And if you have acquainted your self with no Christians that were truly holy, what could it be but malice or sensuality that turned you away from their acquaintance, when there have been so many round about you? If you have been intimate with them, and known their secret and open conversation, and yet have not seen any holiness in them, it can be no better than wilful malice that hath blinded you. And because a negative witness that knoweth not whether it be so or not, is not to be regarded against an affirming witness ⟨p. 299⟩who knoweth what he saith,