"But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues;"  -  Mat 10:17

     This is the caution which the Son of God gave to His disciples when He ministered among them on earth, and the Holy Ghost caused it to be penned, that the true Church of God might use it as a watchword to the end of time; and never since this caution dropped from the lips of Jesus, has it been more needed than now; for men seem to vie with the prince of darkness who shall most effectually oppose the kingdom of Christ and the spiritual interests of His blood-bought family.

    “Beware of men,” not merely of profane men, open infidels; little caution is necessary respecting them, because “The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not.  Woe unto their soul!  For they have rewarded evil unto themselves” (Isaiah 3:9).  But the men who assume the profession of Christianity, without possessing its vital principle, are the men of whom the Savior’s watchword is, “Beware!”  The men who put on “a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof,” whose carnal minds and carnal interests have always warred against the pure truth of God, and perverted the whole plan of salvation by lying fables and human traditions, seducing the souls of millions to utter destruction.

    “Beware of men” such as our dear Redeemer has described, “which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts; which devour widows’ houses, and for a shew make long prayers: the same shall receive greater damnation” (Luke 20:46-47).  And again, the same divine Teacher says, “they outwardly appear righteous before men, but within are full of hypocrisy and iniquity;” therefore He denounces them as “serpents and a generation of vipers, who shall not escape the damnation of hell” (Matthew 23:28-33).

    “Beware of men,” even of those who pass for evangelical men; for every grade of error is to be found among them.  Even while I am writing this paper, my soul is distressed with the awful perversions of the Word of God which surround me and which are advocated by men of renown; one drowning the doctrine of regeneration in the baptismal font; another substituting the credence of carnal reason for the faith of God’s elect, and another denying the Son of God; while the great bulk of so-called evangelical preachers try to dethrone Christ, and to enthrone proud free-will as the absolute sovereign.  “Beware of men!”