Heaven upon earth in the serene tranquillity and calm composure, in the sweet peace…

yet when he was told, that if he did let him go, and condemned him not to death, he was not Caesars friend, he forthwith proceeded to the condemnatory Sentence, and delivered him to the persecuting and murdering Jews to be crucified; and, poor wretch, he imagined, that the silly shift of washing his hands in water, would wash and purge his deeply • fil•d Conscience, from the guilt and pollution contracted by shedding of that innocent and most precious Bloo• bu• it stuck faster to, and was more stiffly barkened on his Conscience, then to be so easily washed off: & with such poor and pitiful shifts, do such men think or fancy to pacify their Consciences, and to purge them from the defilements of the greatest, most clamant and horrid crimes: If Pilate had any real demur in his Conscience about the thing (as very probably he had) his counteracting it on so base and unworthy accounts, and ⟨image 18⟩then foolishly fancying, that by such an empty ceremony, as washing his hands in water, he could be washed from the guilt of so atrocious a Crime, were high aggravations of it. 5ly. When men pretend Conscience as the reason of their not committing the least sin, nay of their not doing somethings that are very debatable, whether they be sins or not; while in the mean time they make no Conscience to stretch forth their hand to, •ay with an high hand to adventure on the commission of sins▪ that are incontrovertibly very great, and gross, as the Pharisees pretended Conscience, for their not going to the Judgement Hall, least forsooth, they should be defiled, and so unfitted to eat the Passover, who yet made no scruple ma•ciously to imbrue their wicked hands in the blood of the person, that was God, and typified by the Passover. 6ly. When Conscience, or a conscientious regard is pretended for divine institutions and ordinances, merely and mainly from pique and prejudice at the most tender and conscientious persons, as if their warrantable and consistent practices, were the grossest violations and greatest vi•ifyings of them, and plain inconsistencies with a just regard for them▪ How often thus did the Scribes and Pharisees quarrel with our Lord and his Disciples, as breakers and profaners of the Sabbath? because of somethings done by him, and them thereon, not in the least in-compatible with the sanctification thereof;