"This earthly-minded minister of a new gospel has taken a text which seems to favour his naughty purpose of weaning the well-disposed little ones of Christ from that perfect purity of heart and spirit which is necessary to all such as mean to live in our Lord Jesus. O Lord, what shall become of the flock when their shepherds betray them into the hands of the ravenous wolf! when a minister of Thy word perverts it to overthrow Thy kingdom, and to destroy Scripture with Scripture! Solomon, in the person of a desponding, ignorant, indolent liver, says to the man of righteousness: 'Be not righteous over-much, neither make thyself over-wise. Why shouldest thou destroy thyself?' But must my poor, angry, over-sighted brother Trapp, therefore, personate a character so unbecoming his function, merely to overthrow the express injunction of the Lord to us, which obliges us never to give over pursuing and thirsting after the perfect righteousness of Christ till we rest in Him? Father, forgive him, for he knows not what he says! Oh, what advantage might not Satan gain over the elect, if the false construction put upon this text by that unseeing teacher should prevail! Yet though he blushes not to assist Satan to bruise our heel, I shall endeavour to bruise the heads of both, by shewing the genuine sense of the text in question." Having given what he conceives to be "the genuine sense," Whitefield proceeds:-- "This is the true, genuine sense of the text, and every other sense put upon it is _false_ and _groundless_, and wrested rather to pervert than to explain the truth. O Christian simplicity, whither art thou fled? Why will not the clergy speak the truth? And why must this false prophet suffer thy people to believe a lie, because they have held the truth in unrighteousness? Raise up, I beseech Thee, O Lord, some true pastors, who may acquaint them with the nature and necessity of perfect righteousness, and lead them to that love of Christian perfection which the angry-minded, pleasure-taking Dr. Trapp labours to divert them from, by teaching that 'all Christians must have to do with some vanities.' Lord, open his eyes, and touch his heart, and convert him, and all those erring ministers who 'have seen vain and foolish things for Thy people, and have not discovered their iniquity to turn away their captivity.' For 'they have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.'"