giving such honourable names and appellations to the worst of men and actions, and base, reproachful titles to the best: such as are calling faction, and a spitting in their prince's face, petitioning; fanaticism and schism, true protestantism; sacrilege and rapine, thorough reformation, and the like. As, on the contrary, branding conformity to the rules and rites of the best church in the world, with the false and odious name of formality; and traducing all religious, conscientious observers of them, as mungrel Protestants, and Papists in masquerade. And indeed many are and have been called Papists of late years, whom those very persons who call them so know to be far from being so. But what then do they mean by fixing such false characters upon men, even against their own consciences? Why, they mean and design this: they would set such a mark upon those whom they hate, as may cause their throats to be cut, and their estates to be seized upon, when the rabble shall be let loose upon the government once again; which such beggarly, malicious fellows impatiently hope and long for.

Though I doubt not (how much soever knaves may abuse fools with words for a time) but there will come a day, in which the most active Papists will be found under the Puritan mask; in which it will appear, that the conventicle has been the Jesuits safest kennel, and the Papists themselves, as well as the fanatics, have been managers of all those monstrous outcries against popery, to the ruin of those Protestants whom they most hate, and whom alone they fear. It being no unheard-of trick for a thief, when he is closely pursued, to cry out, Stop the thief, and thereby diverting the suspicion from him

self, to get clear away. It is also worth our while to consider with what terms of respect and commendation knaves and sots will speak of their own fraternity. As, What an honest, what a worthy man is such an one! And, What a good-natured person is another! According to which terms, such as are factious, by worthy men, mean only such as are of the same faction, and united in the same designs against the government with themselves. And such as are brothers of the pot, by a good-natured person, mean only a true, trusty debauchee, who never stands out at a merry-meeting, so long as he is able to stand at all; nor ever refuses an health, while he has enough of his own to pledge it with; and, in a word, is as honest as drunkenness and debauchery, want of sense and reason, virtue and sobriety, can possibly make him.

2dly, The other way by which some men encourage others in their sins is, by preferment. As, when men shall be advanced to places of trust and honour for those qualities that render them unworthy of so much as sober and civil company. When a lord or master shall cast his favours and rewards upon such beasts and blemishes of society, as live only to the dishonour of Him who made them, and the reproach of him who maintains them. None certainly can love to see vice in power, but such as love to see it also in practice. Place and honour do of all things most misbecome it; and a goat or a swine in a chair of state, cannot be more odious than ridiculous.

It is reported of Cæsar, that passing through a certain town, and seeing all the women of it standing at their doors with monkeys in their arms, he

asked, whether the women of that country used to have any children or no? thereby wittily and sarcastically reproaching them for misplacing that affection upon brutes, which could only become a mother to her child. So, when we come into a great family or government, and see this place of honour allotted to a murderer, another filled with an atheist or blasphemer, and a third with a filthy parasite, may we not as appositely and properly ask the question, whether there be any such thing as virtue, sobriety, or religion amongst such a people, with whom vice wears those rewards, honours, and privileges, which in other nations the common judgment of reason awards only to the virtuous, the sober, and religious? And certainly it is too flagrant a demonstration, how much vice is the darling of any people, when many amongst them are preferred for those practices, for which, in other places, they can scarce be pardoned.

And thus I have finished the third and last general thing proposed, for the handling of the words, which was, to shew the several sorts or kinds of men, which fall under the charge and character of taking pleasure in other men's sins.

Now the inferences from the foregoing particulars shall be twofold.

1. Such as concern particular persons; and,

2. Such as concern communities, or bodies of men. And first for the malignity of such a disposition of mind, as induces a man to delight in other men's sins, with reference to the effects of it upon particular persons. As,

1. It quite alters and depraves the natural frame of a man's heart: for there is that naturally in the heart of man, which abhors sin, as sin; and conse

quently would make him detest it, both in himself and in others too. The first and most genuine principles of reason are certainly averse to it, and find a secret grief and remorse from every invasion that sin makes upon a man's innocence; and that must needs render the first entrance and admission of sin uneasy, because disagreeable. Yet time, we see, and custom of sinning, can bring a man to such a pass, that it shall be more difficult and grievous to him to part with his sin, than ever it was to him to admit it. It shall get so far into, and lodge itself so deep within, his heart, that it shall be his business and his recreation, his companion and his other self; and the very dividing between his flesh and his bones, or rather, between his body and his soul, shall be less terrible and afflictive to him, than to be took off from his vice.

Nevertheless, as unnatural as this effect of sin is, there is one yet more so: for, that innate principle of self-love, that very easily and often blinds a man, as to any impartial reflection upon himself, yet, for the most part, leaves his eyes open enough to judge truly of the same thing in his neighbour, and to hate that in others, which he allows and cherishes in himself. And therefore, when it shall come to this, that he also approves, embraces, and delights in sin, as he observes it, even in the person and practice of other men; this shews that the man is wholly transformed from the creature that God first made him; nay, that he has consumed those poor remainders of good that the sin of Adam left him; that he has worn off the very remote dispositions and possibilities to virtue; and, in a word, turned grace first, and afterwards nature itself, out of doors. No man

knows, at his first entrance upon any sin, how far it may carry him, and where it will stop; the commission of sin being generally like the pouring out of water, which, when once poured out, knows no other bounds but to run as far as it can.

Such a temper

2dly, A second effect of this disposition of mind is, that it peculiarly indisposes a man to repent, and recover himself from it. For the first step to repentance is a man's dislike of his sin: and how can we expect that a man should conceive any through dislike of that, which has took such an absolute possession of his heart and affections, that he likes and loves it, not only in his own practice, but also in other men's? Nay, that he is pleased with it, though he is past the practice of it. of mind is a downright contradiction to repentance; as being founded in the destruction of those qualities which are the only dispositions and preparatives to it. For that natural tenderness of conscience, which must first create in the soul a sense of sin, and from thence produce a sorrow for it, and at length cause a relinquishment of it; that, I say, (we have already shewn,) is took away by a customary, repeated course of sinning against conscience: so that the very first foundation of virtue, which is the natural power of distinguishing between the moral good and evil of any action, is, in effect, plucked up and destroyed; and the Spirit of God finds nothing in the heart of such an one to apply the means of grace to. All taste, relish, and discernment of the suitableness of virtue, and the unsuitableness of vice, being utterly gone from it.

And as this is a direct bar to that part of repentance, which looks back with sorrow and indignation