London's lamentation, or, A serious discourse concerning the late fiery dispensation that turned our…

3. It is to aggravate the horribleness of this sin of persecution, as being a main piece of the Devils business, what ever the instruments are.

3. It is to aggrevate the horribleness of this sin of persecution, as being a main piece of the Devils business, what ever the instruments are.

4. It is to comfort and encourage the people of God to patience and constancy in all their sufferings for Christ, seeing that it is the Devil that is their grand enemy, and that makes (in his instruments) the highest opposition against them. A gracious man in the midst of all oppositions (as Chrysostoms said of Peter) is as a man made all of fire walking in stubble, he overcom•• and consumes all oppositions; all difficulties are but whet-stones to his fortitude. When Christians meet with great opposers and great oppositions, they should say as that noble Soldier Paedarelus (in Erasmus) did to him that told him of a numerous and mighty Army which was coming against him. (Tanto plus gloriae reforemus quoniam eo plures superabimus) The number of opposers makes the Christians conquest the more illustrious. It is very observable, that in Dioclesians time, (under whom was the last and worst of the ten persecutions) When Christian ¹Religion was more desperately opposed than ever, yet then it prospered and prevailed more than ever. So that Diocletian himself observing, that the more he sought to blot out the name of Christ, the more legible it became: and the more ⟨p. 149⟩he laboured to block up the way of Christ, the more passible ²it became. And what ever of Christ he thought to root out, it rooted the deeper, and rose the higher: thereupon he resolved to engage no further, but retired to a private life. All the oppositions that the Devil and his instruments had raised against the Saints in all the ages of the world, hath not diminished, but increased their number. For the first three hundred years after Christ there was a most terrible persecution. Historians tell us, that by seven and twenty several sorts of deaths they tormented the poor people of God. In these hot times of persecution, many millions of Christians were destroyed. And yet this was so far from diminishing of their number, that it increased their number: for the more they were oppressed and persecuted, the more they were increased. And therefore some have well observed, that though Julian used all means imaginable to suppress them, yet he could never do it. He shut up all their Schools, that they might not have learning; and yet never did learning more flourish than then. He devised all manner of cruel torments, to terrify the Christians, and to draw them from their holy faith: