Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Ver. 11. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake] There are tongue-smiters, as well as hand-smiters; such as malign and molest God's dearest children, as well with their virulent tongues as violent hands: "Such as will revile you," saith our Saviour, twit and upbraid you with your profession, bit you in the teeth with your God (as they dealt by David, and that went as a murdering weapon to his soul), and lay your preciseness and conscientiousness in your dish. This is the force of the first word. (Basil εις τους μαρτυρας ονειδισωσιν, Psa 2:10) Further, "they shall persecute you," eagerly pursue and follow you hot-foot, as the hunter doth his prey. (Διωκειν est more venatorum persequi proedam. Aretius.) The word betokeneth a keen and eager pursuit of any other, whether by law or by the sword, whether by word or deed. For scoffers also are persecutors, as Ishmael, Galatians 4:29, and for such shall be arraigned, Judges 1:15. And cruel mockings and scourgings are set together by the author to the Hebrews, as much of a kind, Hebrews 11:36; especially when (as it follows in the text) they "shall say all manner of evil against you," call you all to pieces, and think the worst word in their bellies too good for you. This is collateral blasphemy, blasphemy in the second table, and so it is often called in the New Testament. God, for the honour he beareth to his people, is pleased to afford the name of blasphemy to their reproaches, as importing that he taketh it as if himself were reproached, Ephesians 4:31; Titus 3:2; Colossians 3:8; 1 Peter 4:4; 2 Peter 2:10. Thus the Israelites were of old called by the profane heathens, Apellae (Credat Iudaeus Apella. Hor.), and Asinarii, as if they worshipped a golden asshead, and in derision of their circumcision; as afterward they called the primitive Christians, murderers, church robbers, incestuous, traitors to the state, &c.; and if inundations, famine, or other public calamities occured, they presently cried out, Christianos ad leones. To the Lions Christians. (Tertul. Apolog. Si Tiberis ascendit, si terra movit, si fames, si lues.) So, in after times, the Arians called the orthodox Christians, Ambrosians, Athanasians, Homousians, what not? The pseudo-catholics, "speaking evil of that which they knew not," Judges 1:10, disgraced the professors of the truth by the names of Wyclevists, Waldenses, Huguenots, poor men of Lyons, &c. Thus of old, as of late, Heretics, New-Gospellers, Puritans, all manner of evil they speak against us, but "falsely," that is our comfort; not earing what they speak, nor whereof they affirm, so they may promote their catholic cause and the devil's kingdom, which as it began in a lie, so by lies do they maintain it. A friar a liar, was anciently a sound argument in any man's mouth (saith Thomas Walsingham), tenens tam de forma, quam de materia. Hic est frater, ergo mendax; sicut et illud, Hoc est album, ergo coloratum. But the Jesuits have won the whetstone from all that went before them, for frontals and prodigious lies and slanders. Eudaemon Joannes, that demoniac, blusheth not to affirm that these are our decrees and doctrines, that no God is to be worshipped, that we must shape our religion according to the times, that gain is godliness, that we may make the public cause a pretence to our private lusts, that a man may break his word whensoever he thinketh good, cover his hatred with fair flatteries, confirm tyranny by shedding innocent blood. Salmeron the Jesuit hath published to the world in his Comment upon the Gospels, that the Lutherans now make fornication to be no sin at all. And a little before the massacre of Paris, the monks slanderously reported that the Huguenots met together for no other purpose than that (after they had fed themselves to the full) they might put out the lights and go together promiscuously, as brute beasts. Cenalis, Bishop of Auranches, wrote against the congregations of Christians at Paris, defending impudently that their assemblies were to maintain whoredom. The lives of Calvin and Beza were (at the request of the Popish side) written by Bolsecus, a renagde friar, their sworn enemy; and though so many lines, so many lies, yet are they in all their writings alleged as canonical. (Acts and Mon.) Wycliffe disallowed the invocation of saints, whom he called servants, not gods. For the word knave, which he used, signified in those days a child or a servant; not as it doth in our days, a wicked varlet, a as his enemies maliciously interpret it; -Bellarmine for one, a man utterly ignorant of the English tongue. (Genebrard basely reporteth that Luther and Bucer died of drunkenness.) Hereupon the people are taught to believe that the Protestants are blasphemers of God and all his saints; that in England churches are turned into stables, the people are grown barbarous, and eat young children; that they are as black as devils, ever since they were blasted and thunderstruck with the pope's excommunication (contraxisse amorem diabolicum, Prid.); that Geneva is a professed sanctuary of roguery, &c.; that the fall of Blackfriars (where besides a hundred of his hearers slain, Drury the priest had his sermon and brains knocked out of his head together) was caused by the Puritans, who had secretly sawed in two the beams and other timber. With like honesty they would have fathered the Gunpowder Plot upon the Puritans, by their proclamations, which they had ready to be sent abroad immediately, had Fawkes but fired the powder. And a certian Spanish author hath taken the boldness, since, to aver that they were the authors of that hellish conspiracy. Puritanos eosdem tradit coniurationis sulphurariae authores fuisse. (Author quidam Hispanicus, Dr Prideaux.) There is a book recently published, and commonly sold in Italy and France, containing a relation of God's judgments shown on a sort of Protestant heretics by the fall of a house in Blackfriars, London, in which they were assembled to hear a Geneva lecture, October 26, 1623. And Dr Weston doubted not to make his boasts to a nobleman of England, that at the recent conference and disputation between Fisher and Featly (with certain others of both sides), our doctors were confounded, and theirs trimuphed and had the day; insomuch that two earls and a hundred others were converted to the Roman Carbolic faith. Whereas he, to whom this tale was told, was himself one of the two earls, continuing sound and orthodox, and knew full well that there were not a hundred Papists and Protestants (taken together) present at that disputation. But this was one of their piae fraudes, holy deceits, doubtless; much like their legend of miracles of their saints, which the Jesuit confessed to myself, saith Dr Prideaux, to be for the most part false and foolish; but it was made for good intention; and that it was lawful and meritorious to lie and write such things, to the end the common people might with greater zeal serve God and his saints. (Spanish Pilg.) So long since, because freedom of speech was used by the Waldenses, in blaming and reproving the dissolute life and debauched manners of the Popish clergy, Plures nefariae affingebantur iis opiniones, a quibus omnino fuerant alieni, saith Girardus: they were cried out upon for odious heretics and apostates. Manichees they were said to be, and to make two first beginnings of things, viz. God and the devil. (Field of the Church.) And why? because they preached and maintained that the emperor depended not upon the pope. Moreover, they were Arians too, and denied Christ to be the Son of God, because, forsooth, they denied a crust to be transubstantiated into Christ, as one speaketh, Crustam in Christum fuisse transubstantiatam. But blessed be God, that although they have in all ages spoken all manner of evil against us, yet they have done it falsely, and for Christ's sake; wherefore we may take up their books written against us, and "wear them as a crown." "Do well and bear it, is written upon heaven's gates," said that martyr, Bradford. "Christ himself," saith Father Latimer, "was misreported, and falsely accused, both as touching his words and meaning also." Count it not strange to be traduced, disgraced, scandalized. Austere John hath a devil; sociable Christ is a wine bibber, and the scribes and Pharisees (whose words carry such credit) say as much. Contra sycophantae morsum non est remedinm. It is but a vain persuasion for any child of God to think, by any discretion, wholly to still the clamours and hates of wicked men, who when they think well, will learn to report well. In the mean time, let our lives give them the lie-confute them by a real apology.
a A person of a low, mean, or knavish disposition; a knave, rogue, rascal. ŒD