ul-ruining scandal, though they intend no such thing as the ruin of
souls.(42)

X. If once you yield to these English ceremonies, think not that
thereafter you can keep yourselves back from any greater evils, or grosser
corruptions which they draw after them; for as it is just with God to give
such men over to strong delusions as have not received the love of the
truth, nor taken pleasure in the sincerity of his worship, 2 Thess. ii.
10, 11; so there is not a more deceitful and dangerous temptation than in
yielding to the beginnings of evil. "He that is unjust in the least, is
also unjust in much" saith he who could not lie, Luke xvi. 20. When Uriah
the priest had once pleased king Ahaz, in making an altar like unto that
at Damascus, he was afterwards led on to please him in a greater matter,
even in forsaking the altar of the Lord, and in offering all the
sacrifices upon the altar of Damascus, 2 Kings xvi. 10-16. All your
winning or losing of a good conscience, is in your first buying; for such
is the deceitfulness of sin, and the cunning conveyance of that old
serpent, that if his head be once entering in, his whole body will easily
follow after; and if he make you handsomely to swallow gnats at first, he
will make you swallow camels ere all be done. Oh, happy they who dash the
little ones of Babylon against the stones! Psal. cxxxvii. 9.

XI. Do not reckon it enough to bear within the inclosure of your secret
thoughts a certain dislike of the ceremonies and other abuses now set
afoot, except both by profession and action you evidence the same, and so
show your faith by your fact. We are constrained to say to some among you,
with Elijah, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" 1 Kings xviii. 21;
and to call unto you, with Moses, "Who is on the Lord's side?" Exod.
xxxii. 26. Who? "Be not deceived; God is not mocked;" Gal. vi. 7; and, "No
man can serve two masters," Mat. vi. 24. However, he that is not against
us, _pro tanto_, is with us, Mark ix. 40, that is, in so far he so
obligeth himself unto us as that he cannot speak lightly evil of our
cause, and we therein rejoice, and will rejoice, Phil. i. 18; yet,
_simpliciter_, he that is not with us is against us, Matt. xii. 30; that
is, he who by profession and practice showeth not himself to be on our
side, is accounted before God to be our enemy.

XII. Think not the wounds which the church hath received by means of these
nocent ceremonies to be so deadly and desperate,