The Christians labour and reward, or, A sermon, part of which was preached at…

but to call him Almighty, and then ask what he can do, shows they were sunk beneath reason. Who, indeed, can exercise reason against God? you see here this prejudice against Piety, is as Ancient, as Jobs time, who is judged to have lived about, if not before Moses his Age. Yet was it not then Novel, for Eliphas speaks, ver. 15. Hast thou marked the old way ⟨p. 90⟩which wicked men have trodden? indeed, Luther said right. Cain would kill Abel to the end of the world; and so had they, and will have vile and cheap thoughts of Religion. It held, I am sure, in Malachi his time; Ye have said it is vain to serve God, Chap. 3. ver. 14. And have we any reason to think, that the same prejudice against Religion, continues not amongst many ungodly ones, in these last times? wherein the world is grown as older, so colder to Religion. Old Age, indeed, is not wont to cure, but rather increase diseases that are hereditary: the prodigious profaneness, and filthiness, of our present Age, with the scorn that is cast upon all serious endeavours, after Holiness, is no good indication that it is ceased, but the contrary; that such as these have a most vile and base opinion of Religion; how else were it possible they would dub themselves, while wallowing in their brutish lusts, for the wise and happy men; and despise others, as doting Fools, that dare not ⟨p. 91⟩venture their Souls in their company, by running with them into the same excess and riot? If they did not first think Religion an insignificant thing, Piety a needless scrupulosity, and all the Christians pains therein, in vain; and those to be in the right, and go away with all the gains, who will have nothing to do with Religion, but live in an open defiance of it. Now, though what hath been said already of the glorious reward, which will certainly crown the Christians labour, be enough to wipe of this dirt from the face of Religion, and leave it on their own that throw it; yet I shall a little, and ex abundanti, speak to the vindication of it in this point. And who, though but a stripling, would not venture to cope with such Goliaths, or Giants of the Earth; that defy the Living God, and his Hosts of Saints? Is it not strange that those poor wretches should not take notice in whose hand the Pencil is, by the ill-favouredness of the Portraiture that here is drawn of God and ⟨p. 92⟩Religion?