gods with them, and secretly carried on an infer nal familiarity with devils, practising magic art. "For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps."

It is called the vine of Sodom, as springing up from Satan, the root of wickedness; bitter clusters, because they imbitter the heart, and fill it with enmity against God and his sovereign will; wine, because it intoxicates the soul, stupifies the conscience, blinds the understanding, confuses the judgment, and employs the tongue in nothing but inconsistencies, contradictions, and mere non

sense.

As wine sets people to staggering, boasting, prating, wrangling, and whoring, so errors set people a staggering at the truths of God, boasting of human merit, prating against those that are orthodox, wrangling with simple souls, and to committing spiritual fornication against the Lord. Errors lead the heart of the deceived to an infernal conjunction with the devil himself. Hence it is called wine of fornicationl.

Popery I call the mother of whoredoms, and the Arminian body her younger sister; and such I believe in my conscience they will appear in the great day; for I can see no more difference between Popish principles and the principles of Arminianism, than I can between my two eyes. The church of Rome is said to make people drunk with

the wine of her fornication; that is, the spirit of error; as it is written, "I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore,-with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication," Rev. xvii. 1, 2.

Thus the spirit of error is said to make men drunk, as Milton represents the intoxication of Adam and Eve. After they had taken their fill of forbidden fruit, they thought they felt new divinity springing up within them, until their false drop conveyed the bane of guilt into their conscience, and then they saw their nakedness, and began, as he represents, their vain contest, that found no end. So Zophar represents the false joys and airy flights of the deceived hypocrite. "The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment. Though his excellency [mark that!] mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds, yet he shall perish for ever. Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though he hide it under his tongue,— yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within him," Job xx. 5-14. And, as he loves such nourishment, God says he shall have no breast to suck but that; and, as he fed on the viper's bane, he shall be destroyed by the viper's tongue. "He shall suck the poison of asps; the viper's tongue shall slay him."

Hence it appears that the false preacher's mouth

is the hole of the asp; and the tongue of such a deceiver conveys the very venom of the devil, with his doctrine, which lies concealed under his tongue; as it is written, They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders' poison is under their lips," Psalm cxl. 3.

And to this agrees the apostle Paul; "With their tongues they have used deceit: the poison of asps. is under their lips," Rom. iii. 13. It is called wine of fornication, because it seduces men from the covenant of grace, which is a covenant of wedlock, and alienates the affections from God, instead of attracting them to him, and in the end leads souls into an affinity with the devil himself; as it is written, "Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel," Jer. iii. 20. And pray how was this done? by perverting their way, and forgetting their God, Jer. iii. 21, until God was broken with their whorish heart which departed from him, and with their eyes that went a whoring after their idols, Ezek. vi. 9. False prophets lead to false doctrines, false doctrines lead to false gods; and their false gods led them to false devils, and devils led them to hell. And so it is now; for, if you obscure, or cast a false light upon any essential truth, you obscure an attribute of God that shines in that truth; for all his perfections shine in his word; and hence it is that he has magnified his word above all his name, Psalm cxxxviii. 2. And, by obscuring God's truths, or setting them

forth in a false light, they have obscured the tre mendous and illustrious attributes of the most high and eternal God.

I can prove, from the Arminian writings, that they have beclouded three parts out of four of the revealed perfections of the Almighty. None have gone farther in this work than they, except the Atheists, who, by denying the being of a God, have, in fact, denied themselves all sense, reason, and motion, and laboured to prove themselves in a state of annihilation; for God's existence and man's existence stand or fall together, according to scripture," For in him we live, move, and have our being."

If the truths of God are obscured, the perfections of God are obscured, and God is represented in a false light; and consequently I am led to entertain false ideas of God, and to set up a false god in my own imagination, which will float and vary just as I do. "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver," Psalm 1. 21, 22.

the

Having treated of the child, of his breast, of asp, and of his hole, I come now to treat of the sport that may warrantably be made of this asp, and of the rules of the game, which I take to be five-fold:

First, We may whip him with the scourge of

the tongue.

Secondly, We may treat him with irony.

Thirdly, We may lay our hands on the hole, and defy his power.

can.

Fourthly, We may stop up the hole, if we

Fifthly, We may set fire to the hole, and run away safely by the light of it.

asp

with the scourge

First, We may whip this of the tongue, as the prophet Isaiah did. He calls them foolish pastors and shepherds, that cannot understand. He pays no regard to their hoary heads, their venerable appearance, nor to the honour they assume. He passes over both their age and their honour without any respect to them, because the word of the Lord was against them. "Therefore the Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day. The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed," Isaiah ix. 14-16.

John, in his Revelation, honours one of Satan's prelates with the title of key keeper, or porter of hell. "And to him was given the key of the bottomless pit," Rev. ix. 1. In the second verse he tells us that the business of this prelate was to let out the steam of the infernal regions, in order to