_Direct._ V. Yea, though you do prefer Christ's interest in the main, you must carefully take heed of stepping into any forbidden way, and espousing any interest of your own or others, which is contrary to the laws or interest of Christ. Otherwise in the defence or prosecution of your cause, you will be carried into a seeming necessity of persecuting before you are aware. This hath been the ruin of multitudes of great ones in the world. When Ahab had set himself in a way of sin, the prophet must reprove him; and then he hateth and persecuteth the prophet, because he prophesied not good of him, but evil.[126] When Jeroboam thought that his interest required him to set up calves at Dan and Bethel, and to make priests for them of the basest of the people, the prophet must speak against his sin; and then he stretcheth out his hand against him, and saith, "Lay hold on him." If Asa sin, and the prophet tell him of it, his rage may proceed to imprison his reprover.[127] If Amaziah sin with the idolaters, the prophet must reprove him, and he will silence him, or smite him. And silenced he is, and what must follow? 2 Chron. xv. 16, "The king said to him, Art thou made of the king's counsel? Forbear: why shouldst thou be smitten? (This seemeth to be gentle dealing.) Then the prophet forbore and said, I know that God hath determined to destroy thee, because thou hast done this, and hast not hearkened to my counsel." If Pilate do but hear, "If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar's friend,"[128] he thinketh it is his interest to crucify Christ: as Herod thought it his interest to kill him, and therefore to kill so many other infants, when he heard of the birth of a king of the Jews. Because of an Herodias and the honour of his word, Herod will not stick to behead John the Baptist; and another Herod will kill James with the sword, and imprison Peter, because he seeth that it pleaseth the Jews.[129] Instances of this desperate sin are innumerable. There is no way so common, by which Satan hath engaged the rulers of the world against the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and against the preachers of his gospel, and the people that obey him, than by persuading them as Haman did Ahasuerus, Esther iii. 8, 9, "There is a certain people scattered abroad, and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom, and their laws are diverse from all people, neither keep they the king's laws: therefore it is not for the king's profit to suffer them; if it please the king, let it be written that they may be destroyed." When once the devil hath got men, by error or sensuality, to espouse an interest that Christ is against, he hath half done his work: for then he knoweth, that Christ or his servants will never bend to the wills of sinners, nor be reconciled to their wicked ways, nor take part with them in a sinful cause. And then it is easy for Satan to persuade such men, that these precise preachers and