8. If yet you know not the better part, to whom will you appeal? Will you go to the Multitude and put it to the vote, not only among Christians, but throughout the world? Truly there is no great reason for this, when most men are so blind and wicked: but yet if you should, they would go against you, twenty, if not an hundred to One. I know well enough that when it comes to practice, they will not live a holy Life, and show thereby a root of bitterness: But if you ask them what their judgement is, Whether God or the world, whether Heaven or earth, whether Holiness or sin be best and to be chosen, most men are against you, and would give it you as their judgement under their hands, that God and everlasting life should be first sought: Though by this Confession they condemn themselves, yet is it their Confession. As I told you before, the Jews are for this doctrine; the Turks and other Mahometans are for it; most of the Heathen world is for it, doctrinally, though they will not practice it: Only there are three sorts against it in the world, that ever I heard of. One sort are the Cannibals that eat mens flesh, and go naked, and live like beasts, and never heard of another life; and some such savages as they. Another sort is a few of the Heathen Philosophers and and their followers, that differ in this from all the rest. A third sort is here and there a debauched apostate, that by the righteous judgement of God are so far forsaken by his Grace, for their pride and falsehood against the truth, that they have lost the belief ⟨p. 125⟩of a Life to come, and live under the visible plagues of God upon their souls, as men that have sinned wilfully against the truth, and have no more sacrifice for sin, but a fearful looking for of judgement and fire that shall devour the adversary, Heb. 6. 6, 7. & 10. 26. and are near the state of the Devils themselves, that are reserved in the chains of spiritual darkness to the judgement of the great day, Jude 6. Job 21. 30. And will you take the judgement of here and there a forlorn wretch, a deplorate apostate, an Epicure, or a Country of inhumane Cannibals, before the judgement of the most wise and godly, and of almost all the world? What excellency hath the understanding of these singular men, that it should be so valued above all others? You know partly in this place, who they be that are of this Opinion:
8. If yet you know not the better part, to whom will you appeal? Will you go to the Multitude and put it to the vote, not only among Christians, but throughout the world? Truly there is no great reason for this, when most men are so blind and wicked: but yet if you should, they would go against you, twenty, if not an hundred to One. I know well enough that when it comes to practice, they will not live a holy Life, and shew thereby a root of bitterness: But if you ask them what their judgement is, Whether God or the world, whether Heaven or earth, whether Holiness or sin be best and to be chosen, most men are against you, and would give it you as their judgement under their hands, that God and everlasting life should be first sought: Though by this Confession they condemn themselves, yet is it their Confession. As I told you before, the Jews are for this doctrine; the Turks and other Mahometans are for it; most of the Heathen world is for it, doctrinally, though they will not practice it: Only there are three sorts against it in the world, that ever I heard of. One sort are the Cannibals that eat mens flesh, and go naked, and live like beasts, and never heard of another life; and some such savages as they. Another sort is a few of the Heathen Philosophers and and their followers, that differ in this from all the rest. A third sort is here and there a debauched apostate, that by the righteous judgement of God are so far forsaken by his Grace, for their pride and falshood against the truth, that they have lost the belief ⟨p. 125⟩of a Life to come, and live under the visible plagues of God upon their souls, as men that have sinned wilfully against the truth, and have no more sacrifice for sin, but a fearful looking for of judgement and fire that shall devour the adversary, Heb. 6. 6, 7. & 10. 26. and are near the state of the Devils themselves, that are reserved in the chains of spiritual darkness to the judgement of the great day, Jude 6. Job 21. 30. And will you take the judgement of here and there a forlorn wretch, a deplorate apostate, an Epicure, or a Countrey of inhumane Cannibals, before the judgement of the most wise and godly, and of almost all the world? What excellency hath the understanding of these singular men, that it should be so valued above all others? You know partly in this place, who they be that are of this Opinion:
