72. But waving the things that are past: which of you now convinceth us of sin? Which of you (I here more especially appeal to my brethren, the clergy) can personally convict us of any ungodliness or unholiness of conversation? Ye know in your own hearts, (all that are candid men, all that are not utterly blinded with prejudice) that we _labour to have a conscience void of offence both toward God and toward man_. Brethren, I would to God that in this ye were even as we. But indeed (with grief I speak it) ye are not. There are among yourselves ungodly and unholy men; openly, undeniably such: drunkards, gluttons, returners of evil for evil, liars, swearers, prophaners of the day of the Lord. Proof hereof is not wanting, if ye require it. Where then is your zeal against these? A clergyman, so drunk he can scarce stand or speak, may, in the presence of a thousand people¹, set upon another clergyman of the same church, both with abusive words and open violence. And what follows? Why, the one is still allowed to dispense the sacred signs of the body and blood of Christ. But the other is not allowed to receive them.――――Because he is a field preacher. ¹ At _Epworth_, in _Lincolnshire_. 73. O ye pillars and fathers of the church, are these things well-pleasing to him, who hath made you overseers over that flock which he hath purchased with his own blood? O that ye would suffer me to boast myself a little! Is there not a cause? Have ye not compelled me? Which of your clergy are more unspotted in their lives, which more unwearied in their labours, than those whose _names ye cast out as evil_, whom ye count _as the filth and off-scouring of the world_? Which of them is more zealous _to spend and be spent_, for the lost sheep of the house of _Israel_? Or, who among them is more ready to _be offered up for their flock upon the sacrifice and service of their faith_? 74. Will ye say, (as the historian of _Catiline_) _Si sic pro patria!_ If this were done in defence of the church, and not in order to undermine and destroy it! That is the very proposition I undertake to prove, That “we are now defending the church, even the church of _England_, in opposition to all those who either secretly undermine, or more openly attempt to destroy it.” 75. That we are _Papists_, (we, who are daily and hourly preaching that very doctrine which is so solemnly anathematized by the whole church of _Rome_) is such a charge, that I dare not waste my time in industriously confuting it. Let any man of common sense only look on the title pages of the sermons we have lately preached at _Oxford_, and he will need nothing more to shew him the weight of this senseless, shameless accusation;――unless he can suppose the governors both of _Christ-Church_ and _Lincoln-College_, nay, and all the university, to be _Papists_ too.