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

8. Another reason why I will never believe you, that the world was better when there was less preaching and Religion, is because you speak against the very end and nature of preaching and Religion. For the word of God is written and preached to this very end, to make men better. And is that the way to undo the world, to persuade them to amend! O Impudent malignant tongues! What doth the word of God speak against but sin! Doth it anywhere speak against any thing that is Good? or doth ⟨p. 187⟩it anywhere command you any thing that is bad? Let the bitterest enemy of God upon earth, say so, and prove it if he can. I here in defiance of the Devil, and all his instruments and servants, challenge them in their bitterest malice, to say the worst they can of the Gospel, or of true Religion, and prove that ever it encouraged men to sin, or that ever any was a loser by it! O wonderful! Must the God of heaven indite such Laws against all evil, condemning it, and threatening damnation for it: and yet will these wretches have the faces to say that it is long of the Scripture or of Religion that the world is Evil? What! Will preaching against your wickedness make you wicked? If it do, be it known to the faces of you, that it is you, and not preaching that shall be one day found to be the cause, and be condemned for it. Must Princes and Parliaments make Laws to hang thieves and murderers! and when they have done, will you say it is long of them and their Laws that men are robbed and murdered? Why this is not yet so impudently unjust as you deal with God. For they threaten but hanging, and he threateneth everlasting damnation against sin; and executeth it on all the unconverted, as sure as he threateneth it. And would you have him yet do more to testify his dislike of sin? Tell me, thou that blasphemest the holy commands of thy Creator? Wouldst thou have him do more then everlastingly to damn unconverted sinners, to prove that he is no friend or cause of sin? what should he do more? Is there a greater plague then Hell to threaten? Or wouldst thou have him do more to show how much he loveth Goodness, then to command it, and persuade men daily to it, and to promise Everlasting Glory for their Reward? Is there any greater Reward to be promised?

8. Another reason why I will never believe you, that the world was better when there was less preaching and Religion, is because you speak against the very end and nature of preaching and Religion. For the word of God is written and preached to this very end, to make men better. And is that the way to undoe the world, to perswade them to amend! O Impudent malignant tongues! What doth the word of God speak against but sin! Doth it anywhere speak against any thing that is Good? or doth