This
is indeed the most lively image of the devil: who hates his brother is of
the devil. He that hates the Son, can he love the Father? he that hates
him that is begotten, hates also him that begat him and he that loves him
that begat, loves him that is begotten. Now, how can he be begotten of
God, who hates that nature he is said to partake of--who hates him that is
begotten? I wonder that many of your consciences are not touched with
this? How can ye imagine ye are children of God, when there are none of
your neighbours that your heart riseth more against, that ye can less
abide, than those who seek God most diligently, whose conversation is
different from the worlds? Do not flatter yourselves, as if it were
hypocrisy ye hated. No, no ye can agree with profanity, and how can ye
hate hypocrisy? Ye can agree with a profane hypocrite--with a profane man,
that feigns and dissembles repentance but if once he were so thoroughly
changed, as to hate his former way, and forsake it, then your antipathy
beginneth. What a ridiculous thing is it for profanity to take upon it to
censure hypocrisy! Certainly if profanity cast out with hypocrisy, it must
be because it hath a form of godliness, which it so much detesteth. It is
a strange hatred at godliness that a profane man hath, that he cannot
abide the very shadow of it. I beseech you who love not holiness in your
own persons, who hate to be reformed yourselves, do not add this height of
sin to it, as to hate it in others also. If ye be not godly yourselves, do
not add this declared manifest character of a child of the devil to it, to
hate godliness in others. There were some hope of you, if ye held it in
reverence and estimation where ye saw it. There are many other spots not
incident to his children, as this, that men will not take with their sin
and the curse. It is a great difficulty to convince the most part of men
how miserable they are, how void of God. All the world will not put them
out of a good opinion of themselves, and I think this hath been the spot
of this people, they would not take with their guiltiness--a stubborn
hearted people, wholehearted. There needs no more to declare a number of
you not to be God's children, but this,--ye have lived all your time in the
opinion and belief that ye were God's children, that ye believed in him,
ye never saw yourselves lost and miserable. This was the spot of this
people that they esteemed themselves children, though they had m