_Direct._ IX. And hearkening to malicious backbiters and slanderers, and favouring the enemies of godliness in their calumnies, will engage men in persecution ere they are aware. For when the wicked are in the favour and at the ear of rulers, they have opportunity to vent those false reports, which they never want a will to vent! And any thing may be said of men behind their backs, with an appearance of truth, when there is none to contradict it. If Haman may be heard, the Jews shall be destroyed, as not being for the king's profit, nor obedient to his laws. If Sanballat and Tobiah may be heard, the building of the walls of Jerusalem shall signify no better than an intended rebellion. They are true words, though to some ungrateful, which are spoken by the Holy Ghost, Prov. xxix. 12, "If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked" (for they will soon accommodate themselves to so vicious a humour). Prov. xxv. 4, 5, "Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer. Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness." If the devil might be believed, Job was one that served God for gain, and might have been made to curse him to his face. And if his servants may be believed, there is nothing so vile which the best men are not guilty of. _Direct._ X. Take heed of engaging yourselves in a sect or faction. For when once you depart from catholic charity, there groweth up instead of it, a partial respect to the interest of that sect to which you join; and you will think that whatsoever doth promote that sect, doth promote christianity; and whatever is against that sect, is against the church or cause of God. A narrow, sectarian, separating mind, will make all the truths of God give place to the opinions of his party; and will measure the prosperity of the gospel in the world, by the prosperity of his party, as if he had forgot that there are any more men on the face of the earth, or thought God regarded none but them. He will not stick to persecute all the rest of the church of Christ, if the interest of his sect require it. When once men incorporate themselves into a party, it possesseth them with another spirit, even with a strange uncharitableness, injustice, cruelty, and partiality! What hath the christian world suffered by one sect's persecuting another, and faction rising up in fury to maintain its own interest, as if it had been to maintain the being of all religion! The bloodthirsty papists, whose inquisition, massacres, and manifold murders, have filled the earth with the blood of innocents, is a sufficient testimony of this. And still here among us they seem as thirsty of blood as ever, and tell us to our faces, that they would soon make an end of us, if we were in their power: as if the two hundred thousand lately murdered in so short a time in Ireland, had rather irritated than quenched their thirst. And all faction naturally tendeth to persecution.