Here’s a Reproof to all Religious Cheats and Impostors that Promise
more then they are able to Perform, and Preach those Doctrines to their
Disciples, which they do not Believe themselves. When Churchmen come
once to be Mercenary, and to Prostitute the Truth for Mony, no wonder,
after their Example, if the Laity Govern their Consciences too by the
same Measure. It makes Religion look liker a Trade, or a Contrivance of
State, then a Divine Inspiration: Nay, it staggers People in the very
Foundations of their Faith, to see Ministers at Variance with themselves,
and the Pulpits changing with the Times, and Paradoxing upon the Gospel.
Holy Men Teach in their Lives as well as with their Lips, and it draws
an Irreverence upon the Function, where the one bears a Contradiction to
the other. There must be no Preaching of Salvation one Day, and Damnation
another, upon one and the same Text. There are Quacks in Divinity, as
well as in Physick, and Pretenders to the Absolving of all Sins, as well
as to Remedies for all Diseases. But the Curate went beyond his Province,
when he stretch’d his Patent for the Cure of Souls, to a kind of Tutelary
Guardianship over Goods and Chattels. When such an Impostor has once
forfeited the Credit of his Doctrin, ’tis a shrew’d Temptation to his
Disciples to question the very Authority of his Commission, and to take
the Stories he tells ’em of the next World, to be no better then a Trick
of Spiriting Men away into a Fool’s Paradise: But when he comes once to
be Detected, he has either the _Wolf_ or the _Devil_ to bring him off
again.