Because of the multitude of thine iniquities, and thy great hatred

Because of the multitude of your iniquities, and your great hatred.

If you understand it of the true Prophets, the sense will run thus, You shall know in the time of your visitation, whether they were mad men and fools or no; it was upon the multitude of your iniquity and great hatred that you accounted them so, to be such fools and mad-men before, it was because of the malignity of your spirits and the hatred against the right ways of God; you had many exceptions against them, but the truth is, you saw nothing, but the malignity of your hearts lay at the bottom, you accounted them fools and mad-men because of the multitude of your iniquities. Men who are not so able to judge of things sometimes in controversy, yet they may have this rule to help them to judge of ministers and of their cause, (who they are that are most like to be in the truth) by this rule,

What is the side that men incline most to as they grow most in godliness? And what side men incline most to, as they grow more loose and formal in their ways?

Consider of that, If there be a side or party, you are not able to judge which is in the truth, there's some good men on one side, and some of the other; but you being weak and not able to examine the ground of things, take this rule as a help: What is the side that men most encline to as they grow in godliness? And what side is that that men most cleave to as they grow most loose and most formal in their way and profiting? When (I say) men whose multitude of iniquities increase, and according to the increase of the multitude of their iniquities, so they encline to a party; I cannot but be the more suspicious of it, when I see the other way that the most conscientious men are, and the more the fear of God prevails in them, and the more strict they grow in their ways, they do more encline to another side; I cannot but think that there may be much of God there. And yet it's true, that the greatest heretics that ever were have pretended great holiness, that must be granted too. But still, if this opinion were not of God, those that did indeed grow up in true holiness, the more holy they were, the less did they savour that way, though it had never such a pretence of holiness. And if it be but a pretence of holiness and not true, then certainly the more loose and formal professors grow, the more will they close with that way (if it be but a pretence;) so it is here, their hearts were taken off from the true Prophets of God through the multitude of their iniquities; the more they grew to looseness the more were their hearts taken off from the true Prophets of God.