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

[Them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed] Behold ye despisers, and wonder and perish: for this word shall be fulfilled upon you, and the work be wrought which you would not believe when God foretold it, and will not yet understand and believe, though it be declared to you, Acts 13. 41. Think not that the infirmities of the Godly do justify your contempt of Godliness. Think not that a Judas in Christs family will Justify you for making a scorn of his family, and persecuting his disciples? or that a Ham in the Ark, or the sin of Noah will warrant you to make them as bad as the destroyed world, whom God had done so much to save? Think not when you have jeered at a Holy life, that God will take it for a good excuse, to tell him that you had found a fault in his servants, or an hypocrite crept into his Church. He hateth their faults much more then you: but will you therefore hate their goodness? Condemn the breaches of his Laws and spare not; but will you therefore condemn the keeping of them? O England! if thou hadst had the grace or wit to use Christ better in his ways and servants, he would have used thee better, and dealt more gently with thy inhabitants, and flames and calamities might have been prevented. Often wast thou told from 2 Chron. 36. 14. what it was that captivated Israel, and made their Priests and people to be the Heathens slaves [When the Lord God sent unto them by his Prophets, because he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place, they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his Prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy.] But alas, thou hast gone much further then this. Israel mocked the Prophets; but I remember not that it is ever said of them, that the way of godliness it self was made a common scorn among them: but still they gloried in the Lord, and in the Law, and in the Temple, and the Holy Worship. But here, if a man did but talk of heaven, or of any holy subject, or reprove a swearer, or not join with them in their impieties, the common cry was [This is one of the holy Brethren: here is is one of the Saints: It will never be well till we are rid of these Puritans and Precisians.] How oft have I heard almost the same words from English men, as Lot did from Sodomites, Gen. 19. 9.