But do you, as a people, avoid what you condemn? Are no whoremongers or adulterers found among you? No children disobedient to their parents? No servants that are slothful or careless? That _answer again_? That do not _honour their masters as is meet in the Lord_? Are there none among you that censure or _speak evil of the ruler of their people_? Are there no drunkards, no gluttons, no luxurious men, no regular _epicures_, none _whose belly is their God_, who, as their fortune permits, _fare sumptuously every day_? Have you no _dishonest dealers_, no _unfair traders_, no _usurers_, or _extortioners_? Have you no _liars_, either for gain, or for good manners, so called? Are you clear of _ceremony_ and _compliment_? Alas, you are sensible, in most if not all these respects, you have now small ♦pre-eminence over us. ♦ “preheminence” replaced with “pre-eminence” How much more sensible must you be of this, if you do not rest on the surface, but enquire into the bottom of religion, the religion of the heart? For, what inward unholiness, what evil tempers are among us, which have not a place among you also? You likewise bewail that ignorance of God, that want of faith and of the love of God and man, that inward idolatry of various kinds, that pride, ambition and vanity, which rule in the hearts even of those who still have _the form of godliness_. You lament before God, the deep covetousness that _eats so many souls as doth a gangrene_; and perhaps are sometimes ready to cry out, _help, Lord, for there is_ scarce _one godly man left_. Lay to thine hand: _for the faithful are minished from the children of men_! 2. And yet you retain _the truth that is after godliness_, at least, as to the substance of it. You own what is laid down in scripture, both touching the _nature_ and _condition_ of _justification_ and _salvation_. And with regard to the _author of faith and salvation_, you have always avowed, even in the face of your enemies, that _it is God which worketh in us, both to will and to do, of his good pleasure_: that it is his Spirit alone who _teacheth us all things_, all we know of _the deep things of God_: that every true believer has _an unction from the Holy One_ to _lead him into all_ necessary _truth_: that _because we are sons, God sendeth forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying Abba, Father_; and that _this Spirit, beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God_.