Use for reproof of several sorts of persons 3/4

1. What was the ground of the quarrel.  It was this.  His brother ‘was born after the Spirit,’ and this, he, being ‘born after the flesh,’ hated.
2. Observe how the Spirit of God phraseth this his scorn­ful carriage to his brother—it is called perse­cuting him.  To aggravate the evil of a scornful spirit, and a mocking tongue, which stands for so little a sin in the world’s account-book—who count none perse­cutors but those that draw blood for religion—God would have the jeerer and scoffer know among what sort of men he shall be ranked and tried at Christ’s bar—no less sinners than persecutors.  But this I con­ceive is not all.  This mocking of holiness is called persecuting, because there is the seed of bloody perse­cutions in it.  They who are so free of their tongue to jeer, and show their teeth in fleering at holiness, would fasten their teeth also on it, if they had power to use their cheek-bone.
3. Observe this was not barely the cross disposi­tion of Ishmael’s personal, peevish, and froward tem­per, so to abuse his brother, but it is laid as the charge of all wicked men.  As he did persecute his brother, because born after the Spirit, ‘even so it is now.’  This mocking spirit runs in the blood.  The whole litter are alike, and if any seem more ingenuous and favourable to the holy ones of God, we must fetch the reason from some other head than their sinful natures.  God rides some of them with a curb bit, who, though they open not their hearts to Christ savingly, yet truth is got so far into them by a powerful conviction, that it makes conscience say to them concerning their holy neighbours, what Pilate’s wife by message said to her husband of Christ, Matt. 27:19, ‘Have thou nothing to do with these just men, for I have suffered much con­cerning them.’  But though there were ever mockers of holiness among the saints, because there were ever wicked to be their neighbours, yet the Spirit of God prophesieth of a sort of mockers to come upon the stage in the last days, that should differ from the ordinary scoffers that the people of God have been exercised with.  And still the last is the worst.  You know those who mock and jeer at holiness used to be men and women that pretended nothing to religion themselves—such as walk in an open defiance to God, and wallow in all manner of wickedness—but the Spirit of God tells us of a new gang that shall mock at holiness under a colour of holiness.  They shall be as horribly wicked, some of them, as the worst of the former sort were, but wicked in a mys­tery.  ‘But, beloved, remem­ber ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts,’ Jude 17, 18.  But mark! lest we should expect them at the wrong door, and so mis­take, thinking they should arise as formerly from among the common swearers, drunkards, and other notorious sinners among us, he in the next words gives you as clear a character of them as if they carried their name on their forehead, ‘these be they who sep­arate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit,’ ver. 19.

Learned Master Perkins reads these words thus, ‘These be sect-makers, fleshly,’ not having the Spirit. Sect-makers! those that separate themselves!  Do not our hearts tremble to see the mockers arrows shot out at this window?  These are they who pretend more to purity of worship than others, and profess they separ­ate on account of their conscience, because they can­not suffer themselves so much as touch them that are unclean by joining with them in holy ordinances. And they mockers? they fleshly?  Truly, if the Spirit of God had not told us this, we should have gone last into their tent, as Laban did into Rachel’s, as least suspecting that any mocker of holiness could stay there.  Yea, God forbid that we should lay it in gen­eral as the charge of all who have separated from communion in the public, many of whom, my con­science tells me, are lovers of holiness, and led, though out of their way, by the tenderness of their consciences, which, when God hath better enlight­ened, will bring them as fast back to their brethren, as now it carrieth them from them.  And truly I think it might give a great lift to the making of them think of a return, if they would but, in their sad and serious thoughts, consider how far many of those who went from us with them, are gone—even to mock at the holiness of those from whom once they parted, be­cause they were not holy enough for their company (God the searcher of hearts knows that I speak this with a sad heart), so that were they to come and join with us again in some ordinances, such scandal hath been given by them, that they who durst not join with us, ought not, as they are, to be admitted by us.  How many of those have you heard of, that began with a separation from our assemblies, who mock at Sab­baths, cast off family duties, indeed all prayer in se­cret by themselves, yea, drink in those cursed opin­ions that make them speak scornfully of Christ the Son of God himself, and the great truths of the gos­pel, which are the foundation of all true holiness, so that now, none are so great an object of their scorn as those who walk most close to the holy rule of the gospel.