ears his account of you. What matter of a name
among men? It is often a shadow without substance, a name without the
thing. If God name you otherwise, you shall have little either honour or
comfort in it, when men bless you and praise you, if the Lord reckon you
among the beasts that perish, are ye honoured indeed? Well, then, hear
your name before God. What account hath he of you? Ye rulers are rulers of
Sodom, and ye people are people of Gomorrah. And if ye think this a hard
saying, I desire you will notice the way that the prophet Isaiah takes to
prove his challenge against them, and the same may be alleged against
rulers and people now. We need no proof but one of both, see ver. 23,--"Thy
princes are rebellious, because, though they hear much against their sins,
yet they never amend them, they pull away their shoulder, if they hear,
yet they harden their heart." Is there any of them hath set to pray in
their families, though earnestly pressed? Well, what follows? "Every one
loves gifts." Covetousness, then, and oppression proves rulers to be
rulers of Sodom. Shall then houses stand, "shalt thou reign, because thou
closest thyself in cedar?" Jer. xxii. 15. No certainly, men shall one day
take up a proverb against them. "Woe to him that increaseth that which is
not his, and ladeth himself with thick clay, they shall be for booties to
the Lord's spoilers," Hab. ii. 6. Woe to them, for they have consulted
shame to their houses, and sinned against their own soul. Their design is
to establish their house, and make it eminent, but they take a compendious
way to shame and ruin it. Alas, it is too public, that rulers seek their
own things, for themselves and their friends, and for Jesus and his
interests they are not concerned. But are ye, the people, any whit better?
O that it were so! But alas, when ye are involved in the same guiltiness,
I fear ye partake of their plagues! What are ye then? "People of
Gomorrah." Is not the name of God blasphemed daily because of you? Are not
the abominations of the Gentiles the common disease of the multitude, and
the very reproach of Christianity? Set apart your public services and
professions, and is there any thing behind in your conversation, but
drunkenness, lying, swearing, contention, envy, deceit, wrath,
covetousness, and such like? Have not the multitude of them been as civil,
and carried themselves as blamelessly, and without offence, as the throng
of our visible church? What have