Paradise opened, or, The secrets, mysteries, and rarities of divine love, of infinite wisdom,…Paradice opened, or, The secreets, mysteries, and rarities of divine love, of infinite wisdom,…

And the unbelieving Jews at Thessalonica did as much for the Apostles, they said they were the men that turned the world up s•le down: So Luther ¹was called the Trumpet of Rebellion: and Tertul•us calls Paul A pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition; [Greek or Hebrew], A Pestilence, A Batch; foolish Tertul•us mis-took the Antidote for the Poison,² the remedy for the disease. Now if so precious a man as Paul (than whom, saith Chrysostom, the earth never bare a better, since it bore Christ) were accounted and called a Pest, a Botch, let not us think much if the choicest Saints in our days are accounted and esteemed as so many Pests and Botches. This is the reward the ingrateful world gives the servants of Christ, for their zeal and faithfulness in the cause of Christ: instead of encouraging them, they load them with ignominious and hateful terms of Rebellion and Turbulency, &c. labouring thereby to make them odious, and to enrage the people against them; as the Persecutors of old used to wrap the Christians up in Bears skins and Lyons skins, &c. and then to bait them with Dogs. It is a very great vanity to think of passing to heaven without suffering; the Saints in all Ages have found the way thither paved with troubles, and it would be a foolish, childish thing for any of us to think of finding it otherwise now. Constantine the Great, as piously as wittily, told Ac•sius the Novatian, that if he would not take up with³ Persecution, and such like dealing, he must provide him a ladder, and climb alone to heaven; we must go to heaven some other way than the Saints have done of old, except we resolve of going thither through much tribulation, Act. 14. 22.

And the unbelieving Jews at Thessalonica did as much for the Apostles, they said they were the men that turned the world up s•le down: So Luther