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above mere rational apprehension, and therefore they will not dispute, nor be moved by any arguments or Scriptures that you bring, affirming that ratiocination cannot prevail against their intuition. The sum of their doctrines is, that we must be perfect, and for subjecting the flesh to the intellect, we must live in contemplation, lay by all offices in the commonwealth, and own no fleshly relations, as they call them, not the relation of brother or sister, not the relation of a magistrate, or of a master, not the relation of a father or mother, son or daughter, nor love any because of such a relation, but only as justice binds us to requital for what they have done for us. That none should own the relation of husband or wife, nor love each other as so related. That we should endeavour to be perfect, and therefore to forbear all carnal acts of generation, as being of sin and of the devil, and therefore husband and wife should part asunder, or abstain. That all things should be common, and none - should own propriety, with abundance more, which are founded on certain vain, unproved fancies of Behmen, that God at first created man a spiritual body, in one sex only, and that containing both sexes virtually, having an angelical power of spiritual generation, and that this gross corporeity, and diversity of sex, marriage, and generation, are all the fruits of sin and Satan, with abundance more such audacious vanities, not worth the reciting.

The truth is, there is a strange combination of the endeavours of the papists and the devil in most of these late heresies. The matter and manner, the strange imposture, and transportations and motions, and wicked, abominable lives of some of them, and railing of others, do show that he is the father of it: so do the intolerable doctrines which they bring, and the opposition that all make to Christ, or the christian faith and communion.

And that the popish priests or jesuits are the leading, busy actors of the whole game, we easily discern, both in that they are frequently discovered in it, and in that the whole frame of the design hath a popish aspect, and the face of their doctrines shows that they came from Rome. Their main business is to bring down the credit of the Scriptures and ministry, and if that were done, the papists would think they had the day. They also directly lead to their monastical and eremetical solitude, and making that rigour to the body, and denying marriage, propriety, and worldly employments, to be for their

righteousness, which they trust in, and in this they must be perfect. But, doubtless, the issue of this (as the powder plot, and all other wicked attempts have done) will cast such a shame on the face of Rome, that it will prove no small wound to their cause, and, I hope, much cross their own expectations. I confess very much to turn my heart from them further than else it would be.

it doth

1. To see that their cause is such, and their doctrine such as needeth and owneth such abominable ways to maintain it; and that their most zealous, learned men are such as dare own and practise such wicked courses. Doth Christ's kingdom need such hellish plots and attempts for the sustaining of it? If the Roman kingdom were Christ's, it would not stand on such cursed props, nor would they go to hell for armour to defend it. It appears, that they will rather introduce all the heresies, blasphemies, and infidelity itself, by their secret seductions, than they will neglect to promote their own interests and designs.

2. And it confirms me much against them to see that the devil and the pope are both of a mind, and that Satan doth so notoriously join with them in the design, and show so much of his power and malice in the prosecution of it.

I have been somewhat long upon this work of the great enemy, to show how he brings up his band of heretics against Christ. I shall be more brief in the rest; though they are such as might hold us long, if we stood upon the application of them to the matter in hand, as the usefulness doth deserve; for they all put it out of doubt, that Satan is the leading enemy of Christ.

Sect. IX.

The sixth way by which the devil hath showed his enmity to Christ, is by open persecution of his subjects, and violence against his Gospel and kingdom; in which, though he could go no further than God in wisdom saw good to permit him, yet so far hath he gone, as that the effects of his hellish rage are the subject of many voluminous histories, which being common in men's hands, I shall say but little of it.

As Satan was a murderer from the beginning, (John viii. 24,) maliciously supplanting our new-created progenitors, and drawing them under the guilt of threatened death, so when the eternal Word did interpose for their redemption, and opened again to man a door of life, the malice of the enemy is so far from being abated, that it is more enraged and engaged against

us than before. He had before a malicious hatred to man, büt now he hateth him as recovered yet more, and hath a special enmity to the promised seed, both Christ and all his members. And so speedily and openly doth this appear, that he arms one of Adam's sons against the other upon this account. The first man that was born into the world is so far overcome by this envious spirit, as to murder his brother, because his own works were evil, and his brother's good. (1 John iii. 12.) And thus did he still rage against the promised seed, as in Egypt by Pharaoh and his witches or magicians, from whom Moses bore the reproach of Christ, that is, which the serpent principally intended against Christ, and which was cast upon him for the cause of Christ. (Heb. xi. 26.) So also from generation to generation. But the seed incarnate, and seed now come on earth among men, did yet draw out more of the rage of the enemy than the seed as merely promised did. How quickly is Herod enraged by the tempter to seek his life, while he is yet in infancy, even to the murdering of multitudes of infants for his sake! How cruelly doth that devil that provoked Herod to keep his brother's wife, provoke him also to imprison and behead the forerunner of Christ, John the Baptist! When it pleased the Lord Jesus to submit himself to an extraordinary combat with the tempter, (Matt. iv.,) how maliciously did he seek to draw him to sin, even that sin which is most abominable," the worshipping of himself instead of God. Of purpose did Christ submit to this conflict; because as happiness was lost by the first Adam, through the victory of the tempter, so must it be recovered by the second Adam, through his victory over the tempter. He that did conquer must thus be conquered, that sinners might be rescued from the captivity in which he held them. First, Christ must overcome by obedience, tried to the utmost by temptation, and then he must also overcome by suffering. By overcoming temptation he must overcome Satan as tempter, who had got the rule of the will of man; and by death he must overcome him as the prince of death, that had got the power of executing God's sentence. (Heb. ii. 14.)

The continual rage of Satan's instruments against Christ while he was on earth, did further testify his hatred of Christ. Though they confessed the glory of his works, and the excellency of his words, and though none of them could convince him of sin, yet they hated him. The reason he tells them, "Because they were of their father the devil, who was a mur

derer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth." (John viii. 44.) It is evident that it was an extraordinary enmity of Satan that possessed the Jews with this rage against Christ, through God's permission, and wise and gracious ordering for the redemption of the world: for the Jews were at that time in an expectation of the Messiah, and ready to run after any other that called himself the Messiah. Those that came in their own name, without any testimony of mission from God, they would receive but Christ that came, in his Father's name, with his testimony of prophecies, miracles, and the rest, him they received not. When false Christs came presently after him, according as he had foretold, they run out after them, one after another, even to rebellion against the Romans, and the desolation of their nation.

All Christ's sufferings, as they were the effects of man's sin, and God's hatred of sin, and his governing justice, considering Christ as made sin for us; so were they the effects of the malice and rage of the devil, who now was at the sword's point with him, and at the closing stroke, and was doing the worst he could against him. This was the time that the serpent must eminently bruise his heel. Christ himself tells the Jews that so it was when they came to take him, that this was their day and the power of darkness. (Luke xxii. 53.) That is, in which the prince and power of darkness must so far prevail as to cause his shameful death, or else he could not be a sacrifice for sin, nor conquer and triumph by a resurrection, and lead captivity captive, and give the gifts of the Spirit to men upon his ascension. And therefore he would not call for that help from heaven, nor those legions of angels which were at his will, because this was the time of the power of darkness: but when his hour was not yet come, nor this murdering piece of the enemy ready to be discharged, then, though he were daily teaching among them in the temple, and stirring up their rage, yet laid they not hands on him, Two hours of the power of darkness did Christ especially meet with; the aforesaid hour of temptation in the wil-. derness, where the tempter must be let loose in an extraordinary kind; and this hour of his suffering. It was Satan that here buffetted Christ by the hands of wicked men; that spit upon him by their mouths, that crowned him with thorns; that crucified and pierced him, and put him to death, and would have kept him there if all the power of hell could have done it.

When Christ had overcome and was ascended into glory, the

enemy draws his sword against his servants, and provokes the deluded Jews to persecute them, and the high priests and pharisees to stir up the people, and also the Roman power against them. How furiously are the apostles threatened and scourged, even when they confirmed the doctrine of Christ by miracles! (Acts iii.) How cruelly is Stephen stoned to death! How quickly is James killed, and Peter imprisoned to the like intent! Paul haleth men and women to prison, to compel them to blaspheme; and when he could persecute them no longer, he is persecuted himself, imprisoned, scourged, tossed up and down, having many conspiracies against his life; everywhere are the Christians spoken against and persecuted, cast out of synagogues, called before kings, hated of all wicked men, having all manner of evil sayings and doings against them, for the sake of Christ, as he had foretold them it should be. So cruelly were the apostles themselves used, that it is supposed, that of the twelve, with Paul adjoined, there were none but John that escaped their murderous hands, the rest being all offered in martyrdom for Christ; and to John himself they did their worst, and banished him when they could not kill him. Their successors also succeeded them in their sufferings. The common lot of Christians was reproach, imprisonment, and cruel death; so that the Holy Ghost doth warn them all to expect it, telling them that through many tribulations they must enter into the kingdom of heaven, and that all that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution, and not think the fiery trial strange. Few of the pastors of the church did then escape martyrdom. So that of thirty Roman bishops successively very few escaped this death. The like was the lot of other pastors, at Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage, and the rest of the world where Christianity was set up.

That this was the doing of the malicious serpent, appeareth evidently:

1. In that the worst of men were their greatest persecutors: Nero led the way, and was most cruel; Domitian, and most of the rest, were of his strain; the best emperors and people had the least hand in it, for the most part.

2. In that it was for the maintaining of idolatry that this cruelty was exercised, together with the suppression of the christian faith.

3. The savage and hellish cruelty that they exercised doth manifest it. It were endless to mention the multitudes that

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