7. Meanwhile they did not fail to _cast out their name as evil_: so that this _sect was every where spoken against. Men said all manner of evil of them_, even as had been done of the _prophets that were before them_. And whatsoever any would affirm, others would believe. So that offences grew as the stars of heaven for multitude. And hence arose, at the time foreordain’d of the Father, persecution in all its forms. Some, for a season, suffered only shame and reproach; some, _the spoiling of their goods_; some _had trial of mocking and scourging_; some _of bonds and imprisonment_; and others _resisted unto blood_. 8. Now it was that the pillars of hell were shaken, and the kingdom of God spread more and more. Sinners were every where _turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God_. He gave his children _such a mouth, and such wisdom, as all their adversaries could not resist_. And their lives were of equal force with their words. But, above all, their sufferings spake to all the world. They _approved themselves_ the servants of God, _in afflictions, in necessities; in distresses; in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours; in perils in the sea, in perils in the wilderness; in weariness and painfulness, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness_. And when having _fought the good fight_, they were _led as sheep to the slaughter, and offered up on the sacrifice and service of their faith_, then the blood of each found a voice, and the Heathen owned, _He being dead, yet speaketh_. 9. Thus did _Christianity_ spread itself in the earth. But how soon did the tares appear with the wheat? And the _mystery of iniquity_ work as well as the _mystery of godliness_! How soon did Satan find a seat, even _in the temple of God_! Till _the woman fled into the wilderness, and the faithful were_ again _minished from the children of men_. Here we tread a beaten path: the still increasing corruptions of the succeeding generations, have been largely described from time to time, by those witnesses God raised up, to shew that he had _built his church upon a rock, and the gates of hell should not_ wholly _prevail against her_.