16. Also an honest name for sin, and a dishonest name for duty to God, doth serve the turn for many men's perdition. To call drunkenness, good fellowship, or, to take a cup; and gluttony, good housekeeping; and voluptuousness, recreation or pastime; and pride, the maintaining of their honour; and worldliness, good husbandry; and prodigality, liberality; and lust and whoredom, love, and having a mistress; and oppression, the seeking of their due; and perfidious dissimulation, courtship; and jeering, wittiness. These, and more such, are traps for souls. And of the same use is the calling of duties by names of vice, which tend to make them odious or contemptible. 17. Also the flattering of sinners, and praising them in their sin, is a soul-murdering encouragement to them in ill-doing; and great sinners seldom want such enemies. 18. An obedient readiness to all that wicked superiors command, is an encouragement to them to proceed in mischief. If parents or masters command their inferiors to spend the Lord's day in dancing, or other unlawful exercises; or bid them steal, or lie, or forbid them to worship God; those that obey them, do harden them in their sin. As Daniel and the three witnesses had done the king, if they had obeyed him.[144] 19. Also when those that have power to hinder sin, and further godliness, do not do it. When they either give men leave to sin, or forbear their duty when they should restrain it. He that stands by, and seeth his neighbour robbed or murdered, and doth not what he can to save him, is guilty of the sin, and the sufferer's hurt. 20. Silence, when we are obliged to reprove a sinner, or to instruct the ignorant, or exhort the obstinate, or any way speak for men's salvation, is injurious to their souls, and maketh us partakers of their sin. Soul murder may be done by bare omissions. 21. Opposing magistrates, ministers, or any others, in the discharge of their duty for godliness, or against sin, is an act of hostility against God, and men's salvation. 22. An unnecessary occasioning of sin, or doing that needlessly, which we may foresee that by accident another will destroy himself by, is to be guilty of his sin and destruction; as he is that would sell poison to him, that he might foresee would kill himself with it; or lend fire to his neighbour, who he knoweth will burn his house with it. But of this before, in the chapter of scandal. 23. They that are guilty of schisms or church divisions, are murderers of souls; by depriving them of that means (the concord and harmony of believers) which God hath appointed for men's conviction and salvation;[145] and by setting up before them the greatest scandal, to bring religion into contempt, and debilitate the godly. 24. Those also that mourn not for the sins of the times, and confess them not to God, and pray not against them, and pray not for the sinners when they ought, are thus guilty.[146]