A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian Politics

by Richard Baxter

84. And the younger, and more indiscreet, passionate sort, will frequently reproach such, as unconscionable temporizers, that will do any thing for worldly ends, and that as hypocrites for a fleshly interest, concur with the corrupters and afflicters of the godly.

85. These censures and reproaches will provoke those conforming ministers, who are not masters of their passions, nor conquerors of their pride, to think as badly of the censurers as their afflicters do, and to join with them in the displaying of all enormities, and promoting their further sufferings, and publishing the folly and turbulency of their spirits, with spleen and partiality.

86. By these kind of speeches, preachings, and writings, multitudes of the debauched will be hardened in their sin against all religion: for when they observe that it is the same party of men, who are thus reproached, that are the strictest reprovers of their lewdness, their fornications, tippling, gaming, luxuries, and ungodliness; they will think it is no great matter what such a defamed, giddy sort of people say, and that really they are worse themselves.

87. Each party of these adversaries will characterize the adverse party as hypocrites: the passionate sufferers will call the afflicters hypocrites and Pharisees, that have no religion, but a formal show of outside ceremonies and words, and that tithe mint and cummin, and wash the outside, while within they are full of persecuting cruelty, and are wolves in sheep's clothing, loving the uppermost seats, and great titles, and ceremonious phylacteries, whilst they are enemies to the preaching of the gospel of Christ, and get revenues to themselves, and devour not only the houses, but the peace and lives of others, under pretence of long liturgies; and that devour the living saints, while they keep holy days and build monuments for the dead ones, whom their fathers murdered, &c. And the powerful clergy will call the others hypocrites, and labour to show that the Pharisees' character belongeth to them, and that their pretences of strictness in religion, and their long praying and preaching, is but a cloak to cover their disobedience, and covetousness, and secret sins; and that their hearts and inside are as bad as others, and that their fervency in devotion is but a hypocritical, affected whining and canting; and that they are worse than the lesser religious sort of people, because they are more unpeaceable, and disobedient, and add hypocrisy to their sin.

88. The ignorant, worldlings, drunkards, and ungodly despisers of holiness and heaven, being in all countries most contradicted in their way, by this stricter sort of men, and hearing them in pulpit and press so branded for hypocrites, will joyfully unite themselves with the censurers; and so they will make up as one party, in crying down the precise hypocrites; and usually make some name to call them by, as their brand of common ignominy: and they will live the more quietly in all their sins, and think they shall be saved as soon as the precisest, that make more show, but have no more sincerity, but more hypocrisy, than themselves.

89. The suffering party, seeing the ungodly and the conforming afflicters of them thus united, and made one party in opposition to them, will increase their hard thoughts of the adverse clergy, and take them for downright profane, and the leading enemies of godliness in the world, that will be captains in the devil's army, and lead on all the most ungodly against serious godliness, for their worldly ends.

90. And the young and indifferent sort of people, in all countries, that were engaged in neither part, being but strangers to religion, and to the differences, will be ready to judge of the cause by the persons: and seeing so many of the dignified, advanced clergy, and the more sensual sort of the people, on one side, and so many men of strict lives on the other, that suffer also for their religion, and hearing too that it is some name of preciseness that they are reproached by, will think them to be the better side; and so the title of the godly will grow by degrees to be almost appropriated to their party, and the title of profane and persecutors to the other.

91. All this while the nonconforming ministers will be somewhat differently affected, according to the different degrees of their judiciousness, experience, and self-denial.

Some of them will think these passions of the people needful, to check the fierceness of the afflicters (which doth but exasperate it); and therefore will let them alone, though they will not encourage them.

Some of the younger or more injudicious, hot-brained sort will put them on, and make them believe, that all communion with any conforming ministers or their parish churches is unlawful, and their forms of worship are sinful and antichristian; and that they are all temporizers and betrayers of truth and purity, that communicate or assemble with them.