the veay life and well-being of which depend absolutely on keeping up that spirit of piety and virtue he inspired it with. This body still renders him liable to injuries and persecutions; and he may, even at this day, be betrayed, or crucified. He hath open enemies enough to do the one, and treacherous followers in abundance to do the other.

The treatment he met with in his natural body, was an exact type throughout of that which he hath all along suffered in the mystical. In the first he was exposed in a manger, when an infant; and although notified to mankind by angels, was by men driven from his country; persecuted afterward, when he returned to it, with extreme malice; at length betrayed by one of his followers; deserted by all the rest; and crucified by his enemies. In the latter he was, from the beginning, treated with the utmost contempt, by the wise and great people of the world; and, although preached to mankind by the most undesigning and the best of men, and even by the power of God, manifested in the most astonishing miracles, yet was harrassed with ten blood ypersecutions; torn to pieces by heresies and schisms, the poisonous produce of worldly and fleshly minds; and is now, at length, deserted, or betrayed, a thousand different ways, by those who call themselves after his name; while his enemies' crucify him afresh,' and make a jest of his sufferings.

Christ, in respect of his adversaries and followers, is in much the same circumstances and situation as when on earth. The attack made on him is artful and bitter; the defence cold and careless.,

The enemies of his person and preaching were the wise, politic, and powerful persons of the time and place he lived in. He was called a king; but, as his kingdom was not of this world,' they treated him as a mock king, with the utmost contempt and derision; and although people seldom give themselves much trouble to oppose or suppress him whom they despise, yet they hated him for the freedom of his reproofs, for the strictness of his doctrine and morals; that is, for the good he did, and would have others to have done; and therefore persecuted him, as an enemy to themselves, because he was a friend to mankind. His mission from God was what most alarmed them; because, as their

power was either not from God, or employed against his honour and intention to the service of the devil, they could not help apprehending the most disagreeable consequences from the increase of an opposite sort of power. They were of this world, and of their father the devil,' and their kingdom was the kingdom of darkness.' But Christ was from above, was of the Father of lights,' and his kingdom brought with it such light, 'as reproved their evil deeds.' From hence arose the most opposite kind of contrariety. He supported his cause with truth and miracles; and they, ascribing those miracles to the devil, opposed that cause with worldly policy and power. As truth could not be refuted by reason, they were forced to use art and cunning for that purpose; and, when that also failed, bribery, false witness, violence, and murder, were called in to manage the debate. Swords, staves, scourges, crosses, were an odd sort of argument: but when an odious set of truths cannot be either answered, or resisted, those who speak them must be killed; and this will silence them effectually. There is no middle term like that which strangles or cuts the throat of an opponent.

The present adversaries of Christ, and his religion, are of the same kind, and animated with the same spirit. They leave no art untried, which their cunning can suggest, nor instrument of injury unemployed, which power hath put into their hands, to undermine or batter the cause of Christ; and both their cunning and power, although as yet limited by the public toleration given to religion, are far from being inconsiderable. As to their cunning, which long concealed itself under the mask of benevolence towards mankind, and regard to what they call true religion, it begins, now that the foundation of infidelity is sufficiently laid in the false reasonings and corrupt affections of mankind, to shew itself more openly. The freedom of thinking, so loudly called for, in order, as it was pretended, to combat popery and superstition with, appears to be no less than an unlimited. licence, claimed by each libertine, to think for himself; that is, to put truth for falshood, and falshood for truth; good for evil, and evil for good; when his own peculiar schemes of pleasure, or profit, or honour, require the transposition. Men who think in order to one common good, must all think one way. But this, as it would too

much hamper a genius that aspires to an unlimited thinking, is too narrow and slavish; and therefore, under the plausible pretence of pursuing the common good in a way peculiar to himself, each of them is for sheltering his own private scheme of thought; than which nothing can be more strongly opposed to the common good of mankind, either spiritual or temporal. Many ingenious treatises of independent morality have been published within these fifty years; each overweening moraliser inventing a new system of duty, and placing obligation on a different and favourite footing of his own. These are put, by those who love to be foremost in the fashion of opinions, where their bibles were formerly placed; and are become so common, as to be admired and followed by creatures that can hardly read them. The world, being furnished with these, is in no want of revelation; and the raw divine, forgetting the word of God, and the great ties of religion, retails the moral beauties,' and 'the fitnesses of things,' in the pulpit. Others, under pretence of defending the Christian religion in this or that respect, have laboured in their writings, with infinite art, to run it up to absurdities and contradictions, or to make it speak against its own authority or necessity. These goodly magazines furnish matter for those talkers, who, over their wine, assault, by surprise, the half-digested principles of their loose and unwary companions; and, favoured by that opportunity, infuse a more dangerous and lasting intoxication, than that which flows from the bottle. That their declamations may penetrate the farther, they are pointed with wit and humour, borrowed from the same store; which pass as sterling arguments on such occasions, and in such a cause; though, God knows, to men in their cool senses, they are as far from wit, as reason.

As to the power of those persons, who persecute Christ in these times, it is almost as great as fortune and station can make it it is, in a word, like the power of those who persecuted him at first. Luxury follows wealth, and vice is rather the companion, than the follower, of luxury. Now vice can never be secure or easy, till it hath fitted itself with proper principles, that is, with infidel principles. A man of sense ought to sin on principle, or not at all; for to sin against principle, is to taste but half the gout of sin. But

he who studies only to please himself, can easily bring himself to think as he pleases. A slight argument is sufficient to convince him, who goes more than half-way to meet it; nay, who, rather than stick out, will yield to his appetites, and go the whole length. A person of this sort is of no disposition to continue in, or close with, such principles, as confine him to narrow bounds, and oblige him to pursue happiness, through the eye of a needle.' He is a great man, his taste is exquisite, his appetites strong, his desires high and extensive, and his conscience large. He must have room; and therefore if his principles are narrow, they must burst and fall off; and such as are more lax and easy must be put on. Men who live in affluence and ease, and are given up to this world, and the enjoyment of what is here, as they have desires of different sizes, generally adopt proportionable principles; from whence it proceeds, that there are different degrees of latitude in their shemes of thinking. Some retain more, and some less, of religion; but hardly any of them will admit of more than he knows how to reconcile with the plan of life, dictated to him by his pleasures and worldly views. Now all men are pleased with their own ways of thinking, and desire to bring others over to them, or, at least, are willing to defend them; and from defending one's self, to the proselyting of others, there is but one short step. Besides, the same vanity that moves a man to despise an old or common notion, and to beat out new ones, prompts him strongly to spread those of his own invention; especially if he is any way doubtful of their truth, he can never rest thoroughly satisfied with them, till he hath tried them upon the understanding of other men; and then, if they happen to close with them, although perhaps on his recommendation, or upon motives as weak and bad as his, yet this serves to countenance his adherence to them, and he fancies they return upon him with some additional force in the rebound. The men of wealth and figure, who espouse the cause of libertinism, having the advantage of the ground, make easy conquests upon those below them. Their actions preach up infidelity; insomuch that they have no occasion, in order to increase the number of libertines, to say any more than is necessary to make those of the rank below them sensible, that they have very good reasons for being wicked. How

ever, they are seldom content with this. They take a pleasure in shewing how clearly they see into the received errors of former times, and how easy it is for them to discover those truths that have hitherto been concealed. They do this with wit and humour enough to demonstrate any thing; and, as the behaviour of the clergy is too like that of other men, they make it most evident, from the failings of some among that order of men, that they are all perfect monsters; and that, of consequence, it is impossible they should speak one word of truth, either in or out of the pulpit. They contrive a thousand entertaining stories for this purpose; and, as to the wit necessary to turn the clergy into ridicule with, they can copy as much in half an hour into their pocketbooks, from any libertine writer, as may serve them for a whole year. It requires but little reading, and no learning, to persecute Christianity through its ministers; and therefore this is the topic of the young and illiterate libertine, who can see, that a bad action done by a clergyman, refutes his religion; but cannot perceive, that a thousand good ones done, some of them perhaps by the very same clergyman, and the rest by others on whom malice can fix no imputation, redound nothing to the credit of religion. The more learned topics, on which religion may be attacked, become the province of those, who, having little to do, and being in small request among people of their own profession or employment, are always reading on the opposite side to religion, and come in time to be most able antichristians. Having but few opportunities given them of doing mischief in law, physic, or other branches of businesss, they exercise their talents on religion, and the church of Christ. All the opposers, or, I may rather say, maligners, of religion, persecute it as far as the laws of their country will permit; and though, to save appearances, and avoid the dreadful penalties inflicted by law on blasters, they give Christ his title of Saviour, and speak with some decency of his religion, before those men in power, who are known to be Christians, yet they treat both with the utmost indignity and virulence, whenever it is safe for them so to do. As far as in them lies, they use Christ as his first persecutors did. They listen to none but his accusers. They give him his titles, and call him their Saviour; but it is only by way of accusation.