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

You may as honestly say that the Sun is the greatest cause of darkness, as that Christ and holiness are the cause of seditions, rebellions, treasons, or perfidiousness in the world. All the world set together hath not done so much as he hath done against them. If men threaten hanging and quartering to such offences, Christ threateneth damnation in hell fire to them: And would you wish him to inflict a sharper punishment, or more severely to manifest his hatred of the crimes!

You may as honestly say that the Sun is the greatest cause of darkness, as that Christ and holiness are the cause of seditions, rebellions, treasons, or perfidiousness in the world. All the world set together hath not done so much as he hath done against them. If men threaten hanging and quartering to such offences, Christ threatneth damnation in hell fire to them: And would you wish him to inflict a sharper punishment, or more severely to manifest his hatred of the crimes!

I tell you therefore if you should find Rebellion and Sedition among Christians, it is but as you may find corruption in the bodies of the living, which is contrary to life and health, and to be found much more among the dead. I am not here pleading for individual persons, but for Christianity and Godliness. If any professed Christians forsake the way of Patience and Subjection, and turn to Rebellion and disloyalty, they do far forsake Religion and Godliness, and much more wrong and offend their heavenly master, then their King and Governors. Plead who will for the wickedness of such men; for my part I will not. I am sure Christ will not plead for their sin which he condemneth. He may justify them from it, upon repentance; but he will never justify them for it and in it. It is not because they are godly but for want of Godliness, that any men have ever been guilty of rebellions, or resisting Lawful powers: As Dr. Ward hath fully ⟨p. 173⟩proved in his Sermon on Rom. 13. 2. Nothing more tendeth to the ruin of Rulers and people, then to hearken to the Devil and the Enemies of Holiness, that would persuade the world into a conjunction with them in the Enmity against the way of Godliness and the faithful servants of the Lord, upon pretence that they are adversaries to Governors and Government. It is a weighty truth that the foresaid Doctor begins his Sermon with [Among all the stratagems of the Devil, tending to the undermining of Religion, and the subversion of the souls of men, though there cannot be any more unreasonable, yet there was never any more unhappily successful then the creating and fomenting an Opinion in the world, that Religion is an Enemy to Government, and the bringing sincerity and zeal in Religion into jealousy and disgrace with the Civil Powers.] It was by this Jealousy blown into the heads of the High Priests and the Sanhedrin amongst the Jews, and of Herod and Pontius Pilate, that Christ himself was accused, condemned and executed on a tree: By this the Apostles were haled before the Governors of Provinces; forced from one City to fly to another: for this they endured bonds and sundry kinds of death. It was through this fancy that the Christians for three hundred years together endured the rage of Heathen Emperors, being destitute, afflicted and tormented: