A saint or a brute the certain necessity and excellency of holiness, &c. ...…

Direct. 1. IF you would taste the pleasure of a holy life, bethink you better of the necessity and excellency of it; and cast away your prejudice and false conceits, which have deceived you, and turned your minds against it: A child may be deluded to take his own Father for his enemy, if he see him in an enemies garb, or be persuaded by false suggestions that he hateth him. A ⟨p. 349⟩man may be persuaded to hate his meat, if you can but make him believe that it is poison: or to hate his clothes, if you can make him believe they are infected with the plague. If you will suffer your understandings to be deluded, so far as to overlook the amiable nature of holiness, and to think the image of God is but a fancy, or that a heavenly life is nothing but hypocrisy, and that it is but pride that maketh men seek to be holier then others, and that makes them they cannot go quietly to Hell in despite of the commands and mercies of the Lord, as others do; I say, if the Devil the great deceiver, can possess you with such frantic thoughts as these, what wonder if you hate the very name of Holiness? How can you find pleasure in the greatest good, while you take it for an evil? If you will believe all that the Devil and his foolish malicious instruments say of God and of a holy life, you shall never love God, nor see any loveliness, or taste any sweetness in his service.

Direct. 1. IF you would taste the pleasure of a holy life, bethink you better of the necessity and excellency of it; and cast away your prejudice and false conceits, which have deceived you, and turned your minds against it: A child may be deluded to take his own Father for his enemy, if he see him in an enemies garb, or be perswaded by false suggestions that he hateth him. A ⟨p. 349⟩man may be perswaded to hate his meat, if you can but make him believe that it is poyson: or to hate his cloaths, if you can make him believe they are infected with the plague. If you will suffer your understandings to be deluded, so far as to overlook the amiable nature of holiness, and to think the image of God is but a fancie, or that a heavenly life is nothing but hypocrisie, and that it is but pride that maketh men seek to be holyer then others, and that makes them they cannot goe quietly to Hell in despight of the commands and mercies of the Lord, as others do; I say, if the Devil the great deceiver, can possess you with such frantick thoughts as these, what wonder if you hate the very name of Holiness? How can you find pleasure in the greatest good, while you take it for an evil? If you will believe all that the Devil and his foolish malicious instruments say of God and of a holy life, you shall never love God, nor see any loveliness, or taste any sweetness in his service.