IV. This miserable defection from primitive times, when the glory of Christianity was the purity of its professors, I cannot but call the second and worst part of the Jewish tragedy upon the blessed Saviour of mankind. For the Jews, from the power of ignorance, and the extreme prejudice they were under to the unworldly way of his appearance, would not acknowledge him when he came, but for two or three years persecuted, and finally crucified him in one day. But the false Christians' cruelty lasts longer: they have first, with Judas, professed him, and then, for these many ages, most basely betrayed, persecuted, and crucified him, by a perpetual apostasy in manners, from the self-denial and holiness of his doctrine; their lives giving the lie to their faith. These are they that the author of the epistle to the Hebrews tells us, "Crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to open shame:" (Heb. vi. 6:) whose defiled hearts John in his Revelation styles, "The streets of Sodom and Egypt, spiritually so called, where also our Lord was crucified." (Rev. xi. 8.) And as Christ said of old, a man's enemies are those of his own house, so Christ's enemies now are chiefly those of his own profession; they spit upon him, they nail and pierce him, they crown him with thorns, and give him gall and vinegar to drink. (Matt. xxvii. 34.) Nor is it hard to apprehend; for they that live in the same evil nature and principle the Jews did, that crucified him outwardly, must needs crucify him inwardly; since they that reject the grace now in their own hearts, are one in stock and generation with the hard-hearted Jews, that resisted the grace that then appeared in and by Christ.