CHRIST'S TEARS OVERDO JERUSALEM. Whereunto is annexed a comparative admonition to LONDON.  
A JOVE MUSA.  
By Tho. Nash.  
LONDON, Printed for Thomas Thorp. 1613.   

TO THE MOST HONOURED, AND VIRTUOUS beautified Lady, the Lady Elizabeth Carey.  
EXcellent accomplished Courtglorifying Lady, give me leave with the sportive Sea Porpoises, preludiatly to play a little before the storm of my Tears: to make my prayer ere I proceed to my sacrifice. Lo, for an oblation to the rich burnished shrine of your virtue, a handful of jerusalem's mummanized earth, (in a few sheets of waste paper enwrapped,) I here (humiliate) offer up at your feet. More embellished should my present be, were my ability more abundant. Your illustrate Ladyship ere this (I am persuaded,) hath beheld a bad flourish with a Text pen: all my performance herein is no better. I doubt you will condemn it for worse. Wit hath his dregs, as well as wine, Divinity his dross. Expect some tars in the Treatise of Tears. far unable are my dim Ospray eyes, to look clearly against the sun of God's truth. An easy matter is it for any man, to cut me (like a Diamond) with mine own dust.  
A young imperfect practitioner am I in Christ's school. Christ accepteth the will for the deed. Weak are my deeds, great is my will. O that our deeds only should be seen, and our will die invisible. Long hath my intended will (renowned Madam,) been addressed to adore you. But words to that my resolved will, were negligent servants. My woe-infirmed wit, conspired against me with my fortune. My impotent care-crazed style, cast off his light wings, and betook him to wooden stilts. All agility it forgot, and gravelled itself in gross brained formality. Now a little is it revived, but not so revived, that it hath utterly shook off his dank upper mourning garment. Were it effectually recured, in my soule-infused lines, I would show that I perfectly lived, and in them your praises should live: whereas now only amongst the dead I live in them, and they dead all those that look upon them. That which my Teare-stubbed pen, in this Theological subject hath attempted, is no more but the course-spun web of discontent: a quintessence of holy complaint, extracted out of my true cause of condolement.  
Peruse it judicial Madam, and something in it shall you find that may pierce. The world hath crowned you for Religion, piety, bountihood, modesty, and sobriety: (rare induments in these reckless days of security.) divers well-deserving Poets, have consecrated their endeavours to your praise. Fame's eldest favourite, Master Spencer, in all his writings high prizeth you. To the eternising of the heroical family of the Careys, my choicest studies have I tasked. Then you, that high allied house, hath not a more dear adopted ornament. To the supportive perpetuating of your canonised reputation, wholly this book have I destined. Vouch safe it benign hospitality in your Closet, with slight interview at idle hours: and more polished labours of mine ere long shall salute you. Some complete history I will shortly go through with, wherein your perfections shall be the chief argument. To none of all those majestical wit forestalling worthies of your sex, myself do I apply but you alone. The cunning courtship of fair words, can never over-worke me to cast away honour on any. I hate those female braggarts, that contend to have all the Muses beg at their doors: and with Doves, delight evermore to look themselves in the glass of vainglory, yet by their sides, wear continually Barbary purses, which never open to any but pedantical Parasites.  
Divine Lady, you I must and will memorise more especially, for you recompense learning extraordinarily. Pardon my presumption, lend patience to my prolixity, and if any thing in all please, think it was compiled to please you. This I avouch, no line of it was laid down, without awful looking back to your frown. To write in Divinity I would not have adventured, if ought else might have consorted with the regenerate gravity of your judgement. Your thoughts are all holy, holy is your life: in your heart lives no delight but of Heaven. far be it I should proffer to vnhallow them, with any profane papers of mine. The care I have to work your holy content, I hope God hath ordained, to call me home sooner unto him.  
Varro saith, the Philosophers held two hundred and eight opinions of felicity: two hundred and eight felicities to me shall it be, if I have framed any one line to your liking. Most resplendent Lady, encourage me, favour me, countenance me in this, and something ere long I will aspire to, beyond the common mediocrity.  
Your admired Ladyships most devoted. Tho. Nash.   

To the Reader.  
NIL nisi flere libet; Gentles here is no joyful subject towards, if you will weep, so it is: I have nothing to spend on you but passion. A hundred unfortunate farewells to fantastical Satirisme: In those veins heretofore have I misspent my spirit, and prodigally conspired against good hours. Nothing is there now so much in my vows, as to be at peace with all men, and make submissive amends where I have most displeased.  
As the Title of this Book is Christ's Tears, so be this Epistle the Tears of my pen. Many things have I vainly set forth, whereof now it repenteth me. S. Augustine writ a whole book of his Retractations. Nothing so much do I retract, as that wherein-soever I have scandalized the meanest. Into some spleanative veins of wantonness, heretofore have I foolishly relapsed, to supply my private wants: of them no less do I desire to be absolved then the rest, and to God and man do I promise an unfeigned conversion.  
To a little more wit have my increasing years reclaimed me then I had before: Those that have been perverted by any of my works, let them read this, and it shall thrice more benefit them. The Autumn I imitate, in shedding my leaves with the trees, and so doth the Peacock shed his tail. Buy who list, contemn who list, I leave every Reader his free liberty. If the best sort of men I content, I am satisfiedly successful. Farewell all those that wish me well, others wish I more wit to.  
Tho. Nash.   

CHRIST'S TEARS OVERDO JERUSALEM.  
SInce these be the days of dolour and heaviness, wherein (as holy David 
Psal. 9 16  saith,) The Lord is known by executing judgement, and the axe of his anger is 
Mat. 3.  put to the root of the Tree, and his Fan is in his hand to purge his Floor: I suppose it shall not be amiss to write something of mourning, for London to hearken counsel of her great Grandmother jerusalem.  
Omnipotent Saviour, it is thy Tears I intent to write of, those affectionate Tears, which in the 23. and 24. of Matthew thou weptst over jerusalem and her Temple; Be present with me (I beseech thee) personating the passion of thy love. O dew thy spirit plentiful into my ink, and let some part of thy divine dreariment live again in mine eyes. Teach me how to weep as thou slepst, and rend my heart in twain with the extremity of ruth. I hate in thy name to speak coldly to a quickwitted generation. Ratlier let my brains melt all to ink, and the floods of affliction drive out mine eyes before them, than I should be dull and leaden in describing the dolour of thy love.  
far be from me any ambitious hope of the vain merit of Art: may that living vehemence I use in lament, only proceed from a heaven-bred hatred of uncleanness and corruption. Mine own wit I clean disinherit, the fiery Cloven-tongued inspiration be my Muse. Lend my words the forcible wings of the Lightnings, that they may pierce unawares into the marrow & reins of my Readers. New mint my mind to the likeness of thy lowliness: file away the superfluous affectation of my profane puffed up phrase, that I may be thy pure simple Orator. I am a child, (as thy holy jeremy said) and know not how to speak; yet, On nia possum in 
jerem. 1.  eo qui me comfortat, I can do all things through the help of him that strengtheneth me. The tongues of 
Phil. 4.  Infants it is thou that makest eloqnent; and teachest the 
N●…d. 10.  heart understanding. Grant me (that am a Babe and an Infant in the mysteries of Divinity) the gracious favour to suck at the breasts of thy sacred Revelation, to utter something that may move secure England to true sorrow and contrition. All the pours of my soul (assembled in their perfectest array) shall stand waiting on thy incomprehensible Wisdom, for Arguments, as poor young Birds stand attending on their Dam's bill for sustenance. Now help, now direct: for now I transform myself from myself, to be thy unworthy Speaker to the World.  
IT is not unknown, by how many and sundry ways God spoke by Visions, Dreams, Prophecies and Wonders, to his chosen jerusalem, only to move his chosen jerusalem wholly to cleave unto him. Visions, Dreams, Prophecies and Wonders, were in vain: This gorgeous strumpet jerusalem, too too-much presuming of the promises of old, went a whoring after her own inventions; She thought the Lord unseparately tie to his Temple, and that he could never be divorced from the Ark of his Covenant; that having bound himself with an oath to Abraham, he could not (though he would) remove the Law out of Jude, or his judgement-seat from Mount Silo. They erred most temptingly & contemptuously; for God even of stones (as Christ told them afterward) was able to raise up children to Abraham. But what course took the high Father of Heaven & Earth, after he had unfruitfully practised all these means, of Visions, Dreams, Wonders and Prophecies? There is a Parable in the 21. of Matthew, of a certain Housholder that planted a Vineyard, hedged it round about, made a Winepress therein, and built a Tower, and let it out to Husbandmen, and went into a strange Country. When the time of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the Husbandmen to receive the increase thereof. The Husbandmen made no more a do, but (his Servants coming) beat one, killed another, and stoned the third Again he sent other Servants, more than the first, and they did the like unto them. Last of all, he sent his own Son, saying: They will reverence my Son, but they handled him far worse than the former.  
The Householder that planted the vinyeard and hedged it round about, was Israel's merciful I●…hou●…h, who in Israel planted his Church, or his Winepress: made it a people of no people, and a Nation beyond expectation. Long did he bless them, and multiply their seed on the face of the earth, as the sand of the Sea, or the stars of heaven: from all their enemies he delivered them, and brought their name to be a byword of terror to the Kingdoms round about them; Their Rivers overflowed with Milk and Honey, their Garners were filled to the brim: every man had wellsprings of Oil and Wine in his house, and finally, there was no complaint heard in their streets.  
The time of fruit drew near, wherein much was to be required of them to whom much was given: he sent his servants, the Prophets, to demand his rent, or tribute of thanksgiving at their hands. Some of them they beat, others they killed, others they stoned, and this was all the thanksgiving they returned. And then he sent other Prophets or Servants more than the first, and they did the like unto them: yet could not all this cause him proceed rashly unto revenge. The Lord is a God of long patience and suffering: nor will he draw out his sword unadvisedly in his indignation. Still did he love them, because once he had loved them, and the more their ingratitude was, the more his grace abounded: he neglected the death of his servants, in comparison of the salvation of them he accounted his Sons. He excused them himself unto himself, and said: Peradventure, they took not these my servants I sent, for my Servants, but for seducers and deceivers, and thereupon entreated them so uncourteously: I will send my only natural Son to them, whom they (being my adopted Sons) cannot choose but reverence and listen to. This his natural Son was Christ jesus, whom he sent from Heaven to persuade with these Husbandmen: He sent him not with a strong power of Angels, to punish their pride and ingratitude as he might: He sent him not royally trained and accompanied like an Ambassador of his greatness, nor gave he him any Commission to expostulate proudly of injuries, but to deal humbly, and meekly with them, and not to constrain but to entreat them. He sent his own only Son alone, like a sheep to the slaughter, or as a Lamb should be made a Legate to the Wolves. When he came on earth, what was his behaviour? Did he first show himself to the chief of these Husbandmen the Scribes & pharisees? Did he take up any stately lodging according to his degree? Was he sumptuous in his attire, prodigal in his fare, or haughty in his looks, as Ambassadors wont to be? None of these: Instead of the Scribes and pharisees, he first disclosed himself to poor Fishermen: for his stately lodging, he took up a Crib or a Manger, and afterward the house of a Carpenter: His attire was as mean as might be, his fare ordinary, his looks lowly. He kept company with Publicans and sinners, the very outcast of the people; yet in their company was he not idle, but made all he spoke or did preparatives to his Embassy.  
If any Nobleman (though never so highly descended) should come alone to a King or Queen in Embassage, without pomp, without followers, or the apparel of his state, who would receive him, who would credit him, who would not scorn him? It was necessary that Christ (coming thus alone from the High-commaunder of all Sovereignties, the controller of all Principalities and Powers) should have some apparent testimony of his excellency. According to the vanity of man, he thought it not meet to place his magnificence in earthly boast, as in the pride of shame, which is apparel, or in the multitude of men after him, for so met wicked Esau his Brother jacob. but in working miracles above the imagination of man, and in preaching the Gospel with power and authority; Whereby, after he had thoroughly confirmed himself, to be the owner of the Vineyards true Son, and that these ill Hus-bandmen the jews, should have no credible or truthlike exception left them, (that they took him for a counterfeit or colourable practiser:) he went into their chief assemblies, and there (to the High-priests & Heads of their Synagogues) freely delivered his message, declared from whence he came, gently expostulated their ill dealing, desired them to have care of themselves: told them the danger of their obstinacy, and wooed them (with many fair promises) to repent and be converted. All this prevailed not, they set him at nought, as they rejected his Fathers other Servants the Prophets: Wherefore his last refuge was, to deal plainly with them, and explain to the full what plagues and wars were entering in at their gates, for their disloyalty and doggedness. In the 11. of Matthew, he pronounceth grievous woes to Corazin and Bethsaid●…: in diverse other places he intermixeth curses with blessings, tempers Oil with Vinegar, tears with threats: denounceth sighing, and in his sighs well-near swoundeth: even as a Father constrained to give sentence on his own Son. In the 13. of Luke, he telleth how often he had been an intercessor for the reprieve of their punishment. The Husbandman which is my Father (saith he) hath come many years together to a Figtree in his Vineyard, to demand fruit of it, and found none. What hath hindered him from cutting it down but I, who have took upon me to be the dresser of the Vineyard: and desired him to spare it this year, and that year, and I would prune it, dung it, and dig round about it, and then if it brought not forth fruit, let him deal with it as he pleased. Almost this 30. year have I pruned it, dunged it, digged round about it: that is, reproved, preached, exhorted with all the wooing words I could, endeavouring to mollify, melt, and pierce your hearts, yet all will not serve; my prayers and my pains, in stead of bringing forth repentance in you, bring forth repentance in myself.  
As I said before, no remedy, or sign of any breath of hope, was left in their commonwealths sinne-surfetted body, but the malady of their incredulity, overmastered heavenly physic. To desperate diseases must desperate Medicines be applied. When neither the white-flagge or the Red which Tamburlaine advanced at the siege of any City, would be accepted of, the black-flag was set up, which signified there was no mercy to be looked for: and that the misery marching towards them was so great, that their enemy himself (which was to execute it) mourned for it. Christ, having offered the jews the white-flag of forgiveness and remission, and the red-flag of shedding his blood for them, when these two might not take effect, nor work any yielding remorse in them, the black-flagge of confusion and desolation was to succeed for the object of their obduration.  
This black-flagge is waved or displayed in the 23. of Matthew, where directing his speech to his Disciples and the multitude, against the Scribes & pharisees that were the Princes of the people, he first urgeth the infamous disagreement of their lives and their doctrines: which that it should breed no scandalous backsliding in the hearts of his Hearers, he inserteth this caution, Do as they say, not as they do. And to like effect saith S. Augustine, 
August. tom. ●…0. hom. 5.  Sermo Dei proferat eum peccator, proferat eum justus, sermo Dei est, inculpabilis est: The Word of God, be it preached by Hypocrite or Saint, is the Word of God, and not to be despised or disanuld. Next this, he pronounceth eight terrible woes against them, for their eight-folde hypocrisy and blindness: Besides other fearful comminations wherein he threatens, that all the righteous blood which was shed from the time of Abel the righteous, unto the blood of Zaccharias the Son of Barrachias, that was slain betwixt the Temple and the Altar, should come upon them, should call and exclaim on their souls for vengeance, slain the sky with cloddred exhalations, interrupt the Sun in his course, and make it stick fast in the congealed mud of gory Clouds; yea, dim and overcast God sitting in his Throne, till he had took some astonishing satisfaction for it.  
Then on the sudden starting back, as over-examining the words he had said, and condemning himself (in his thought) for being so bitter: he presently weary and excuseth it in these terms, that it was not his fault but theirs, O jerusalem, jerusalem, which killest the Prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee. That is, which are guilty of all the accusations my Father in this time would not in pity lay against thee: yea, feared to be cruel in once suspecting of thee, though now they are proved, How often would I have gathered thy Children together, as the Hen gathereth her Chickens together under her wings, and ye would not? How often would I have revoked, reduced, and brought you into the right way, But you would not? Therefore your habitation shall be left deso- So that in these words most evidently you see, he cleareth himself, and leaveth them unexcusable.  
The more to penetrate and enforce, let us suppose Christ in a continued Oration thus pleading with them.  
Jerusalem the Daughter of my people, I am sore vexed and compassionate for thee, jerusalem the midst of the earth, the mother of us all, in the midst of whom I have wrought my salvation: jerusalem that for all the good seed I have sown in thee, afford nothing but stones to throw at my Prophets, thou that slayest whom I send to save thee, and imprisonest any man that wisheth thy peace; thy sins are so great, that when I look on thee, mine eyes can scarce persuade me that thou standest, but that thou art sunk down like Sodom, and entombed in Ashes like Gomorra. O let me pity thee, for I love thee impatiently. A thousand shapes of thy confusion muster before mine eyes, & the pains on the cross I am to sustain; cannot be so great pains unto me, as to think on the ruin and massacre that is already travailing towards thee. Famine, the Sword and the Pestilence, have all three sworn and conspired against thee: Thou (one poor city) by these three unreleming enemies shalt be overcome. Ehu, quantus equis, quantus viris adest sudor? Alas, what huge sweat and toil is at hand for Horse and Man?  
here do I weep in vain, for no man regardeth me, no man waileth with me; here do I prophecy, that my weeping in vain, shall be the cause of a hundred thousand Fathers and Mothers weeping in vain. O that I did weep in vain, that your defilements & pollutions gave me no true cause of deplorement. Often wished I, that I might have said to mine eyes and ears they li●…e, when they have told me what they have seen & heard of thy treasons. I wished that I might be as wretched as the damned, so my senses therein were deceived. I am not deceived, 'tis thou that deceivest thy Saviour, and deceivest thyself to cleave unto Satan.  
Satan, refrain thine odious embraces, the bosom of jerusalem is mine: touch not the body contracted to me; Improbe tolle manus, quam tangis nostra futura est, she will touch him, he stretcheth not out his hand to her, but she breaketh violently from me, to run ravishtly into his rugged arms. Alas! the one half of my soul, why wilt thou backslide thus? I love and can have no love again: I love thee for thy good, thou lov'st him that flatters thee for thy hurt. What less thing then to believe and be saved? How canst thou believe & wilt not hear? Thy prayers are frivolous unto God, if thou deniest to hear God: He must first hear God, that will be heard of God. I have heard quietly all thy upbraid, reproofs and derisions: as when thou saidst I was a drunkard, and possessed with a devil, that I cast out devils by the power of Beelzebub the Prince of the devils: that I blasphemed, was mad, and knew not what I spoke; Nor was I any more offended with these contumelies, then when thou called'st me the son of a Carpenter. If I give ear to all your bitterness, will not you vouchsafe me a little audience when I bless you.  
O jerusalem, jerusalem, that stonest, and astoniest thy Prophets with thy perverseness, that lendest stony ears to thy Teachers, and with thine iron breast, drawest unto thee nothing but the Adamant of God's anger, what shall I do to mollify thee? The rain mollifieth hard stones, O that the stormy tempest of my Tears raight soften thy stony heart. Were it not harder than stone, sure ere this I had broken and bruised it, with the often beating of my exhortations upon it.  
Moses struck the Rock and water gushed out of it, I (that am greater than Moses) have strooken you with threats, and you have not mourned. O ye heavens, be amazed at this, be afraid and utterly confounded: my people have drunk out of a Rock in the Wilderness, and ever since had Rocky hearts. Yet will the Rocks tremble when my Thunder falls upon them. The Mason with his Axe hews and carves them at his pleasure. All the thunder of judgements which I spend on this stony jerusalem, cannot make her to tremble or refrain from stoning my Prophets. Should I rain stones upon her, with them she would arm herself against my holy ones. Little doth she consider, that all my Prophets are Ambassadors, and the wronging of an Ambassador amongst mortal men, is the breaking of the law of Nations; which breach or wrong, no King or Monarch but (at his coronation) is sworn to revenge. If earthly King's revenge any little wrong done to their Ambassadors, how much more shall the King of all kings, revenge the death and slaughterdom of his Ambassadors? The Angels in heaven, as they are the Lords Ambassadors, (in regard of their own safety) would prosecute it, though he should overslip it. The devil that useth daily to solicit the Murderers own conscience for vengeance against himself, will he spare to put the Lord in mind of his ancient decree, A murderer shall not live. God said unto Cain, The voice of thy brother Abel's blood, crieth to me out of the earth: that is, not only Abel's own blood, but the blood of all the sons that were to issue from his loins, cry unto me out of the earth. It is said in the 6. of Genesis, whosoever shall shed humane blood, his blood shall be shed likewise. Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth, much more life for life shall be repaid, and this equity or amends, the veriest Beggar or contemptiblest creature on the earth (cut off before his time) shall be sure to have. If I do them right, that in their own enmities lavish their lives, shall I let their blood be trodden to dirt under foot, and be blown back by the winds into the crannies of the earth, (when it offers to sprinkle up to heaven) who in my service spend their lives. At my head jerusalem threw stones when she stoned my Heralds. Who stabbeth or defaceth the picture of a King, but would do the like to the King himself, if he might do it as conveniently. Every Prophet or messenger from the Lord, representeth the person of the Lord, as a Herald representeth his King's person, and is the right picture of his royalty.  
O jerusalem, jerusalem, what thou hast done to the least of my Prophets, thou hast done unto me likewise: My Prophets thou hast stoned, me likewise thou hast stoned, and withstood. The very stones in the street shall rise up in judgement against thee.  
By the old Law, he that had blasphemed, reviled his Parents, or committed adultery, was stoned to death by the Prophets and Elders; Thou hast blasphemed, reviled thy (spiritual) Parents, committed adultery with thine own abominations: and lo, chose thine Elders and Prophets thou stonest to death. Can I see this and not rise up in wrath against thee? For this shalt thou grind the stones in the Mill with Samson, and whet thy teeth upon the stones for hunger: and if thou askest any man bread, he shall give thee stones to eat. The dogs shall lick thy blood on the stones like jezabels; & not a stone be found to cover thee when thou art dead. One stone of thy Temple, shall not be left upon another that shall not be thrown down. The stone which thy foolish Builders refused, shall be made the head stone of the corner. Your hearts (which are Temples of stone) I will forswear for ever to dwell in. There shall be no David any more amongst you, that with a stone sent out of a sling, shall strike the chief Champion of the Philistines in the forehead; And finally, you shall worship stocks and stones, for I will be no longer your God. O jerusalem jerusalem, all this shall betid thee, because thou stonest the Prophets, and killest them that are sent unto thee.  
The Fathers have eaten sower-Grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge: your Fathers took hard courses against the Prophets, killed those I sent unto them; And if you had no other crime, but that you are the sons of them that killed the Prophets, it were too to sufficient for your subversion, but you yourselves have stoned the Prophets, and killed those I sent unto you, not only you yourselves, but your sons (for this) shall be put to the edge of the Sword.  
The bloodthirsty & deceitful man shall not live out half his days. Who strikes with the sword, shall perish with the sword. He that but hateth his brother is a homicide. What is he then that slayeth his Brother? Nay more, what is he that slayeth God's Brother? Not one that believeth in me, and doth my will, but is my Brother and Sister. In slaying them that are sent to declare the will of God, you resist the will of God, and are guilty of all their damnations which are yet unconverted, whom living, their preaching might have reduced. The violating of any of the Cömmandements is death, Thou shalt not kill, is one of the principal Commandments: your fault at the first sight deserveth hell-fire. What do you but proclaim open war against heaven, when you destroy or overthrow any of the Temples of the holy Ghost? (which are men's bodies.) They are the Tabernacles which the Lord hath chosen (by his Spirit) to dwell in. But the bodies of my Saints and Prophets (which you slay and stone) are no trivial ordinary Tabernacles, such as Peter my Disciple, would have had me to make in the Wilderness, for Moses, Elias and myself, but Tabernacles like the Tabernacle at jerusalem, where I have ordained my name to be worshipped. Their words as my words I will have worshipped; Their heads are the Mounts from whence I speak to you in a holy flame, as to your forefathers wandering in the desert.  
I have told you heretofore they are the Salt of the Earth, with whose Prayers and Supplications, if this mass of sin were not seasoned, it would savour so detestably in God's nostrils, he were never able to endure it. They are the eyes and the light of the world, if the eye lose his light, all the whole body is blind; and hence it came that they were surnamed Seers, for they only foresaw, prayed, and provided for the people. I tell you plainly, if it were possible for you to pluck the Sun out of Heaven, and you should do it, & so consequently leave all the world in darkness, you should not be liable to so much blame as you now are, in killing them I send unto you. They are your Seers, your Prophets (your chief Eyes) which you have slain, destroyed and put out.  
Was Cain a Vagabond on the face of the earth for killing but one Abel? ten thousand just Abel's have you slain, that were more near, and aught to have been more dear to you then Brothers, and shall I not destitute your habitation for it, & scatter you as vagabonds throughout the Empires of the world? As you have made no conscience to stone my Prophets, and slay them I sent unto you, so shall the strange Lords that lead you captive, and they amongst whom many hundred years you shall sojourn, make no conscience to cut your throats for your treasure, and give a hundred of you together, to their Fencers and Executioners, to try their weapons on for a wager, and win masteries with deep wounding you. O jerusalem, jerusalem, deep woes and calamities hast thou incurred, in stoning my Prophets, and slaying them I sent unto thee. How often would I have gathered thy children together when they went astray? How often would I have brought them home into the true sheepfold when I met them straying? I came into the World to no other end, but to gather together the lost Sheep of Israel. You are the flock and Sheep of my pasture, when I would have gathered you together, you would not hear my voice, but hardened your hearts. You gather yourselves in counsel against me, every time I seek to call you or to gather you. Deny if you can, that I sent not my Prophets (in all ages) to gather you: That with my Rod and my staff of correction, I have not sought (from time to time) to gather you? that by benefits and manifold good turns, I have not tried (all I might) to tie you, or gather you unto me. Lastly, that in mine own person, I have not practised a thousand ways to gather you to repentance and amendment of life. If you should deny it, and I not contradict it, the devil (my uttrest enemy) would confirm it.  
Let me speak truly and not vauntingly, (although it be lawful to boast in goodness) such hath always been my care to gather you, that I thought it not enough to gather myself, but I have prayed to my Father, to join more Labours and Gatherers with me, to reap and gather in his Harvest. How often have I gathered the multitude together, and spoke unto them. When the people were flocked or gathered unto me out of all Cities and had nothing to eat, I fed them miraculously with five Barlie-loves & two fishes. I would not have showed the wonders of my Godhead, but to gather you together. The first gathering that I made, was of poor Seafaring men, whom I have preferred to be mine Apostles.  
Would you have been gathered together when I would have had you, you had gathered to yourselves the Kingdom of Heaven, and all the riches thereof. Now what have you gathered to yourselves, but ten thousand testimonies in the Son of God's testimony, that he desired and besought you to suffer yourselves to be gathered by him, and you would not? Soldiers that fight scatteringly, and do not gather themselves in rank or battle array, shall never win the day. If you knew how strong and full of stratagems the devil were, with how many Legions of lustful desires he cometh embattled against you: that secret ambushes of temptations he hath laid to entrap you, than would you gather yourselves into one body to resist him: then would you gather yourselves to gather in prayer to withstand him: then would you gather for the poor, which is, to gather for Soldiers to fight against him. E●…eemosyna a morte liberat, et non patitur hominemire in tenebras, Alms deeds deliver a man from death, and keepeth his soul 
Tob. 4. 10.  from seeing confusion. As water quencheth fire (saith the Wiseman) so alms giving resisteth sin. And if it resisteth sin, it resisteth the Devil which is the father of sin.  
All my Father's Angels stand gathered together about his Throne; No bread is made, but of grains of Corn gathered together: no building is raised, but of a number of stones glued and gathered together. There is no perfect society or City, but of a number of men gathered together. Geese (which are the simplest of all fowls) gather themselves together, go together, fly together.  
Bees in one Hive hold their consistory together. The stars in Heaven do shine together. What is a man, if the parts of his body be disparted, and not incorporated and essentiate together? What is the Sea but an assembly or gathering together of waters, and so the Earth, a congestion or heaping up of gross matter together? A Wood or Forrest, but an host of Trees encamped together? A general Counsel or Parliament but a congregation or gathering together of special wise men, to consult about Religion or laws? O what a good thing is it (saith David) for brethren to live or be gathered together in unity.  
If there were no other thing to ratify the excellence of it, but the evil of his diameter opposite, which is division or distraction it were infinitely ample to establish the title of his dignity. Nor David, nor all the evils of division, nor all the instances of Angels, Bread, buildings, Societies, Geese, Bees, Stars, Men, Seas, counsels, Parliaments may conform these ungracious degenerates. They will not only not gather themselves into order, (which I their Captain might exact at their hands) but scorn to be directed, mustered, and gathered by me, when with the mildest discipline I offer to marshal them. Sorry I am jerusalem, that my kindness and conversing with thee, hath left thee without any cloak or cloud of defence.  
It shall not be laid to thy charge, that thou wert ignorant, and foolish, and knewest not how to gather thyself into my family or household the Church: but that when thou mightest have been gathered or called, thou refusedst, and contemned; neither shall it be imputed that thou goest astray, but that going astray, thou reviledst and strookest at him that would have gathered or brought thee into the right way. Ah woe is me, that ever I opened my mouth to call thee, or gather thee, for now (by opening my mouth, and thou stopping thine ears when I opened it) I have opened & enwidened Hell mouth, to swallow thee and devour thee. I took flesh upon me, to the end that Hell (not jerusalem) might perish under my hand. The vanquishment of that ugly nest of Harpies, hath been reserved as a work for me, before all beginnings; Now know I not which I may first confound, Hell or jerusalem, since both know me, and have armed their foreheads against me.  
Blessed is thy land, O jerusalem, for I was borne in it. Cursed is thy Land, O jerusalem, for I was borne in it. Borne I am to do all Country's good but thee. Thee I came principally to do good to, but thou resistest the good I would doethee; Thou interdicts and prohibits me with reproaches & threats, from gathering thee, and doing thee good. Of my birth thou reapest no benefit but this, that I shall come at the last day to bear witness against thee. Blind and inconsiderate, what wilt thou do to thine Enemy, that thus entreatest thy Friend? that thus rejectest thy Redeemer? O were thy sin (though not to be defended) yet any way excusable, it were somewhat. Why did I ever behold thee to make thee miserable, and mine eyes thus miserable in beholding.  
I might have beheld the innocent Saints and Angels, that would never have angered me, but rejoiced me: the Cherubins and Seraphins would uncessantly have praised me; I should not have prayed them to execute my will, (for they would have done it with a beck:) much less have solicited them as I do thee, to consent to save thyself. I should have but said the word to the senseless Planets, and it had been done: to thy Children (more senseless than the Planets) can I not say that word, which not only they will refuse to do, but deride. For this shall thine Enemies gather themselves about thy City, and smite thee: the Angels shall gather thee to the Lake of fire and Brimstone, thou shalt then gather thy brows together in howling and lamentation; And (as jeremy said) The carcases of thy dwellers, 
jerem. 9  shall lie as the dung in the Field, or the handful after the Mower, and none shall there be to gather them up. All this hadst thou prevented, if thou wouldst have permitted me to gather thee. I saw into thy frailty and infirmity, that thou wert not able to gather thyself, I took compassion on thee, because thou wert like sheep which had no Shepherd. I forsook all my immortal pleasures, and mind-ravishing melody, to descend and make thee mine, to come and gather thee to the glory prepared for thee, The greatest work was this purpose of thy gathering, that ever was undertaken in Heaven or Earth. Thus did I argument with myself, to salve thy imperfections of the not gathering thyself. The Horse tameth not himself: the Camel tameth not himself: the Ox tameth not himself: the Bear, the Lion, the Elephant, tame not themselves. Then why should I require, that Man should tame, recall, bridle, bring under, or gather himself? But as the Horse, the Ox, the Camel, the Bear, the Lion, the Elephant, require Man to tame them: so it is requisite that GOD should tame Man, that God alone should gather him unto him. Content I was to take upon me that unthankful office of taming or gathering, but thou wert not content to be so tamed or gathered.  
It did not irk me so much that thou wert untamed, or ungathered, as that (knowing thyself in that case,) thou wert unwilling to be tamed and gathered. Thou couldst not despair of mine ability to tame thee & gather thee; for if man tameth the beasts he never made, shall not I gather thee, alter thee, & tame thee, that made thee? easy is my yoke, and my burden is light: I would not have tamed thee, or tempted thee above thy strength; only I would have curbed or reaned thee a little to the right hand, kept thee from swallowing in sin with greediness. Suppose (as the tamer of all Wildbeasts) I had sometime used my whip or my goad; had it been so much? Your Horses which you tame and spur, and cut their mouths with raining, and finally kill, with making carry heavy burdens many years together: you will not give so much reward to (when they are dead) as burial, but cast them to the Fowls of the air, to be deformedly torn in pieces; I (having tamed thee, and gathered thee home unto me, enfeofe thee with indefinite blessedness, (being dead a space) restore to thee, not only thy flesh (in more purity,) but the just number of thy hairs, install thee in eternity with mine Angels, where thou shalt never-more need to be gathered, or tamed, where there shall be no adversity or tribulation that shall exercise or try thee, but eternal felicity to feed thee: and that without any care, forecast, or plotting on thy part, (such as in the maintenance, or earthly weal is wont.) I shall be to thee all in all, thy riches, thy strength, thine honour, thy Patron, thy provider. Yet all this hope cannot move thee to consent to be tamed or gathered unto me.  
My voice which crieth, Return, Return: Whether wanderest thou long strayer, is troublesome and hateful unto thee, thou canst by no means digest it: it is thy Adversary in the way, which since I have warned thee to agree with, and thou hast refused, it shall draw & hale thee unto judgement, the judge deliver thee to Death his Sergeant, the Sergeant to the devil, (convicted souls jailor:) thence shalt thou not escape till thou hast paid the utmost farthing. O jerusalem, jerusalem, why shouldest thou gather and entangle thyself in so many unevitable snares, when (by gathering thyself under my wing) thou mayst avoid them? What have I required of thee, but to gather thyself, & agree with my voice thy Adversary? Nothing but that thou wouldst have a care of thy health and well-doing. A thing which thou (in reason) not I, aught to exact and require of thyself: yet I, (as I were thy Guardian or Overseer, & thy Father Abraham dying had bequeathed thee wholly to my trust) follow thee, haunt thee by my Spirit, daily and hourly importune thee to remember and gather thyself. How often have I (to this effect) chidingly communed with thy soul and conscience?  
Sinful jerusalem, why deferst thou to gather thyself, & agree with my voice in the way? Yet thou mayst agree, yet thy way is not finished, yet thy Adversary walks by thee. Why dost thou prorogue till thy wretched life be at his ways end? Is there any other life, any other way, (when this way of woe is ended) wherein thou mayst agree with thine Adversary? The judge, the Sergeant, the prison, thou must then await, and despair of opportunity ever after, to agree or be gathered to grace: but look to be gathered like grass on the house top, and thrown into the fire. Promise not unto thyself too many years travailing in the way: Think not that thou shalt ever live: thy way may be cut off ere thou be aware: a thousand casualties may cut thee off in the way. But how long or how short so ere thy way be, my voice (thine Adversary) like thy shadow still haunteth thee, still treadeth on thy heels, still calls and cries out upon thee to gather up thy accounts and agree with it. Shamest thou not (vild image of carelessness) so long to be called on for so light a matter? so long to live at variance with so mighty an Adversary? It is all one as if thou shouldest owe an earthly judge money, (who hath the Law in his hand) and brave him, and deny to come to composition, saying: If I owe it you, gather it or recover it as you can. How thinkest thou, is there any earthly judge would spare thee or forbear thee as I have done? My voice, as it is my voice, is thy friend, but as thou abusest it, (turns thine ears from two, and wilt not agree with it) it is thine Adversary; It wisheth thee well, and thou wishest thyself ill; It bids thee crouch and stoop to the Prophets I send, and thou stonest them; It bids thee pity the Widow and the fatherless, and thou oppressest them; It bids thee repent thee of the evil thou hast committed, and thou doublest it; It bids thee gather and gird up thy loins close, and take the staff of Steadfastness in thy hand, that if the flesh and the devil assault thee in the way, thou mayst encounter them courageously. Instead of girding and gathering up thy loins, thou unloosest them to all licentiousness; For the staff of steadfastness, thou armest thyself with the broken Reed of inconstancy; and for incountering and contending with the flesh and the devil, most slavishly thou kissest and embracest them.  
So thou thyself (I altogether loath) makest my voice thy enemy. No friend so firm, but by oft ill usage may be made a foe. No marvel thou makest me thy foe, that art a foe to thyself. He that loveth iniquity, hateth his own soul: he that hateth his own soul, can never love his neighbour; insomuch as there is no man living, ●…hat can love another better than himself. If then his ●…est love to himself, be to hate himself, his love to his neighbour must be a degree lower, there is no remedy. The Law commandeth, Love thy neighbour as thyself: And he fulfilleth the Law by hating his neighbour as himself. I say unto you, He that hateth his neighbour, is guilty of the breach of all the commandments: whence it necessarily ariseth, that he which loves not his own soul, is guilty of the breach of all the commandments.  
Soule-hating, Apostata jerusalem, that wouldst never be gathered into any compass of good life, I here accuse thee as a Homicide of thine own life, as a transgressor of all the commandments, in hating thyself. The most unfortunatest is my fortune of any that ever loved, to love those, that not only hate me, but hate themselves.  
O jerusalem, not the Infidell-Romanes, which shall invade thee, and make thy City (now cleped a City of peace) a shambles of dead bodies, tear down thy Temple, and set up a brothel▪ house in thy sanctuary, not they (I say) shall have one drop of thy blood laid to their charge, not one stone of thy Temple or Sanctuary, testificatory against them; Thy blood shall be upon thine own head, whose transgressions, violently thrust swords into their hands. Thy Temple and thy Sanctuary shall both cry out against thy security for sacrilege. The Ark, wherein the Tables of covenant are laid, shall have the Tables taken away, and in stead of them, a black Register of thy misdemeanures laid in it: yea, my Father (if all witnesses should fail) would stand up and article against thee himself, how thou hast driven him (with thy detestable whoredoms) out of his consecrated dwelling place. O that thou knewest the time of thy visitation! O that thou wouldst have been gathered together! O that thou wouldst have had a care of thyself, had care of me! I must be slaughtered for thee, and yet work no salvation for thee. One cross alone (cruel jerusalem) is not able to sustain the weight of thine iniquities: ten times I must be crucified ere thou be cleansed.  
For sin I came to suffer, thy sin exceedeth my suffering; It is too monstrous a matter for my mercy or merits to work on. It woundeth me more with mediating on it, than all the Spears or Nails can wound ●…e, that are to pass through me. I would quite renounce and forswear mine own safety, so I might but extort from thee one thought of thine own safety. Careful am I for thee careless. Again, this reneweth my unrest, that I, which am the Lord and Author of life, must be the Author and Euidencer against thee of death. If thou hadst never seen the light, thy walking in darkness would have brought thee no waylement. Ignorantia, si non excusat a toto, saltem excusat a tanto: Ignorance excuseth the half, if not the whole. Thou hast not half an excuse, (hence is my tears) not a quarter, not the hundredth part of a quarter, not a word, not a sigh, not a syllable. Never did I look on such a manifest unmasked leprous face, on a prisoner convicted so mute. Sore am I impassioned for the storm thy tranquillity is in child with. Good jeremy, now I desire with thee, that I had a Cottage of wayfaring men in the Wilderness, where I might leave my people and live, for they be all Adulterers, and a band of Rebels.  
A Tormentor (that abiureth commiseration) when he first enters into the infancy of his occupation, would collachrimate my case, and rather choose to have been tortured himself, them torment me with ingratitude as thou dost. More and more thou addest to my unease, and acquainst mine eyes with the infirmities of anguish; Having no sin before, thou hast almost made me commit sin, in sorrowing for thy sins. Yet though I have sounded the utmost depth of dolour, and wasted mine eyeballs well-near to pinnes-heads with weeping, (as a Barber wasteth his Ball in the water,) a further depth of dolour would I sound, mine eyes more would I wast, so I might waste and wash away thy wickedness. So long have I wasted, so long have I washed and embained thy filth; in the clear streams of my brain, that now I have not a clean Tear left more, to wash or embaline any sinner that comes to me.  
The fount of my tears (troubled and mudded with the Toade-like stirring and long-breathed vexation of thy venomous enormities,) is no longer a pure silver Spring, but a miry puddle for Swine to wallow in. Black and cindry (like Smiths-water) are those excrements that source down my cheeks, and far more sluttish than the ugly oous of the channel. 'tis thou alone (ulcerous jerusalem) that hast so fouled and soiled them. In seeking to gather fruit of thee, I gather nothing but staining Berries, which imbrued my hands, and almost poisoned my heart. Never would I mention this or moon me, if thou hadst not imbrued or brawned thine own hands, (not in Berries) but in blood: and more than (almost) poisoned thine own heart.  
What talk I of poison, when it is become as familiar to thee as meat & drink. Thou hast used it so long for meat and drink, that true nourishing meat and drink thou now takest for poison. Consuetudo est altera natura: Custom hath so engrafted it in thy nature, that now, not only poison not hurts thee, but fostereth and cherisheth thee. Whatsoever thou art is poison, and none thou breathest on but thou poisonest. With Athenagoras of Argus, thou never feelest any pain when thou art stung with a Scorpion; Thou hast no sting or remorse of conscience. Thy soul is cast in a dead-sleep, and may not be awaked though Heaven & Earth should tumble together.  
For discharge of my duty, and augmentation of thine everlasting malediction, since Tears, threats, promises, nor any thing will pierce thee, here I make a solemn protestation, what my zeal and fervent inclination hath been (ever since thy first propagation) to win & wean thee from sathan, and notwithstanding, thou stonedst my Prophets, and slewest them I sent unto thee: I still assayed to revoke thee, & bring thee back again to thy first image, not once, or twice, or thrice, but I cannot tell how often, I would have gathered thee, even as a Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings, butthou wouldst not. Blame me not though I give thee over, that hast given me over: long patience hath dulled my humour of pity. No sword but will lose his edge in long striking against stones.  
My lean withered hands, (consisting of nought but bones) are all to shiverd and splinterd in their wide casos of skin, with often beating on the anvil of my bared breast. So penetrating and elevatedly have I prayed for you, that mine eyes would ta'en have broke from their anchors to have flown up to Heaven, and mine arms stretched more than the length of my body; to reach at the Stars. My heart ran full-butt against my breast to have broken it open, and my soul fluttered and beat with her ayry-winges, on every side for passage. My knees cracked and the ground fled back. Then (O jerusalem) would I have rend my body in the midst (like a grave) so I might have buried thy sins in my bowels. And had I been in heaven as I was on Earth, the Sun should have exalted from thee all thy trespasses as meteors, which the clouds his Cofferers receiving, might forthwith have conduited down into the Sea, and drowned for ever.  
Fools be they that imagine it is the Winds, that so toss and turmoil them in the deep, they are no winds but insurrective sins, which so possess the waves with the spirit of raging. I drowned all the sins of the first World in water, all the sins of the first World now welter, sauce, and beat unquietly in the Sea, whither the World of waters was withdrawn when the Deluge was ended; And as a guilty conscience can nowhere take rest, so no more can they in the Sea, but embolning the billows up to the air, with roaring and howling dart themselves on every Rock, desiring it to overwhelm them: and because they know they can never be recovered, with the same envy which is in the devils, they seek to drown and ramuerse every ship that they meet. If happily there be a calm, it is when they are weary of excruciating themselves. I that was borne to suppress & tread down sin under foot, in the night time, (when that sinne-inhabited element is wont to be most lunatic) walk on the crests of the surges as on the dry land.  
Another cause why the Sea so swelleth, & barketh of late more than ordinary, is, for when I sent the devils into the Herd of Swine, they carried them headlong into the Sea, where they drowned and perished them: and then loath to come to land to be controlled and dispossessed again by me, they entered and inhabited the Sea-monsters, such as the Whale, the Grampoys, the Wasser-man, whom they have suborned and inspired to lie in wait for Ships-wrack. Sin takes no rest but on earth, and on earth no rest in the night, but the day. The night is black like the devil, than he may boldly walk abroad like the Owl, and his eyes near be dazzled. Solus c●…m solo he may confer with his subjects, tempt, terrify, insinuate what he will. He knows that God hath therefore hid all other objects from man's sight in the night, that then he should have no occasion to gaze elsewhere, but full leisure to look into himself. In which regard, lest he should look into himself, and so repent, he will not let him see with his own eyes, but dareth him other eyes of despair or security to see withal. If of security, then either he persuades him there is no God, and that Religion is but subtle Lawgyvers policy, (to keep silly fools in awe with scarecrows:) or that if there be a God, he is a wise God, and like a wise Counsellor, troubles not himself with every vain twittle twattle, of this man, or that man, but considers wherefore we are made, and bears with us thereafter.  
Yea (which is horrible) he sootheth him up, that if God would not have had him sin, he would neverhave given him the parts or the means to sin with. If he be a whoremaster, he remembreth him how Abraham went in to his maid Hagar: How Let committed incest with his Daughters: How David lay with Berseba, and slew Urias: And how I (my self) would not let the woman that had committed adultery be stoned to death, but bid her go home to her house in peace & sin no more. If he be a drunkard, Noah was drunk, the forenamed Lot was drunk, and David (mentioned before likewise) made Urias drunk; Yet all these were 
This was long after Christ's tears over jerusalem.  men that God delighted in.  
If he be a perjured person, why Peter for-swore himself thrice, joseph swore by the life of Pharaoh, David swore, God do so and so to me, if I leave to Nab ill yet ere night, one to piss against the walls. Yet when nabals wife Abigall (unwitting to her husband) brought him a little refreshing, his humour was pacified, his oath was dispensed with. A great many more allegations hath he to this end, which here to recite, were to weapon presumption, and save the devil a labour in seducing. Murder, theft, (what not) hath his texts to authorize him. Nothing doth profit, but perverted may hurt, Scripture as it may be literally expounded, and sophistically scanned, may play the Harbinger as well for Hell as Heaven, and sooner feeds Despair then Faith. Hath not the devil his Chapel close adjoining to God's Church? Is he not the ambitious Ape of GOD'S Majesty? And as he hath his Tabernacle (O jerusalem) in thy Temple, so, hath not he his Oracle or Tripos in his Temple at Delphos, with as great (if not greater) sacrifices, oblations & offerings than are in God's Temple? Will he not take upon him to work miracles, cure diseases, & be an Angel of light, that is, preach the Gospel as I do. Speak I in thunder or visions, he speaketh in thunder and visions. Eclipse I the Sun and Moon, he will Eclipse Sun, Moon, and stars. Send I one good-Angel out, he will send out two ill. In conclusion, in any thing he will imitate me, but humility; and by humility only, my Children are known from the devils. Pride is that by which the devil holds his kingdom, he had near been a devil, if he had not been too proud to be an Angel. Envy breeds pride, and pride breeds envy: There is none can up-hold envy, but he must up-hold pride, nor can true pride live, if it hath nothing to envy at; If it have nothing so great as itself to aim at, there is no man under it hath any pride or prosperity, but it envies and aims at.  
The Sun, though it can endure no more Suns but itself, yet it can take in good part to have more Planets besides itself, but pride can endure no Superiors, no equals, no ascendants, no sprigs, no grafts, no likely beginnings. Any thing but virtue it can tolerate to thrive, and that it is tooto afraid of. Mark a Tyrant when you will, and he first extirpates the adherents to virtue. Virtue is thrice more invocating for honour then ambition. What was the devils first practice in Paradise, but to destroy virtue in Adam, and so by steps to destroy him, by destroying virtue in him? Whom slew Cain, but his just or virtuous brother Abel? He was afraid the comparison of his justness or virtue, would make him incomparably ugly in God's presence. Whom hated Esau and laid wait for, but his upright brother jacob, because by his virtue he had overreached him in the blessing of his birthright (Did not Saul persecute David, only because GOD loved him? So throughout the whole course of the Scriptures, Virtue purchaseth Envy, and her possessors never escape briery scratches.  
But as before, so once more I will assertionate, Virtue hath no enemy but pride. I myself have no enemy but Pride which is the Summun genus of sin, and may well be a convertible name with the devil, for the devil is nought but pride, and pride is an absolute devil. But for pride, jerusalem ere this had gathered itself under my wing: Forsooth she disdained to be taught & instructed by such a meane-titled man as I. But for pride of despising the preaching of Noah, the first World had not been deluged. But for pride, there had been no trans-slation of Monarchies. If Pharaoh had not been so proud that he would not let your forefathers go, (but kept them in despite of me,) I had never plagued him as I did.  
The reason I deceived you Hierosolomites & jews, (in not coming in pride unto you, in not taking the majesty and triumph of mine eternity,) was, because I would not partake with the devil, in the pomp and glory of this World, which is proper to him. Did not he (presently after the first brute of my Gospel) hoist me up unto an exceeding high mountain, and showed me all the Kingdoms of the world, and the glories of them, and said, All these will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me? When I came to Abraham in his Tent, and to Lot in Sodom, accompanied with another Angel, I took upon me no pompous shape. It is debasement and a punishment to me, to invest and enrobe myself in the dregs and dross of mortality. I would resemble the similitude of the meanest, to gather the meanest unto me.  
I came to call sinners to repentance, poor sinners, beggarly sinners, blind sinners, impotent sinners, as well as rich sinners, noble sinners, potentate sinners, to reap tance. With me there is no respect of persons, the King's blood attainted of conspiracy against me, is more base than the caitiffs or peasants. What was Abraham, (but that he honoured me,) I should out of his loins multiply a Monarchy. There is no cripple or lazar by the highway side, but would have honoured me more than the progeny of Abraham, if I had but bestowed the thousand part of the propitiousnes I have bestowed on the progeny of Abraham. Shall a man call any cripple or Beadsman unto him; to give alms to, and he will not come at him: but contemptuously cast his kind proffer behind him. I have called you (that often have been Beggars and Beadsmen unto me, for blessings,) & humbly supplicationd you, to accept of my largesse I lavished, but you cried, Avaunt hypocrite, thy proffered ware is odious, we'll have nothing to do with an Innovater.  
What hath immortality to do with muck? Had my Father no employment for me, but to send me to scrape on a dunghill for Pearl, where nothing will thrive but Toadestooles? Was thought-exceeding glorification, such a cloyance and cumber unto me, that I must leave it: as Archesilaus' over-melodied, and toomuch melowed & sugared with sweet tunes, turned them aside, and caused his ears to be new relished with harsh, sour and unsavoury sounds? O no, when I left Heaven to live on earth, I left perpetuall-springing Summer, to sleep on Beds of Ice, in the Frozen-zone, the throne of Winter. My superabundant love to men on earth, was all the solace I proposed to myself on earth. Vbi cuiusque animus est, ibi animat: where amans mind is, there his mirth is.  
Mirth was to me no mirth, whiles thou wert not gathered unto me. No more than I have gathered thee, can I gather thee: As a Hen gathereth her Chickens, so would I have gathered thy Children. The Hen clocketh her Chickens, I would have clocked and called them by my preaching; The Hen shieldeth them, and fighteth for them against the Puttock, I would have shielded them, and secured them against that sly Puttock sathan. I would have fought for them, with hell, the devil, and all infernality. The Hen; after she hath clocked & called her chickens, keepeth them warm under her soft down, walleth them in with her wings, and watcheth for them whiles they sleep. After I had called you (my children or chickens) under my wings, which is, into my Church I would have been a stronger wall unto you, than the wall of the Tower of Babel, which (as Writers affirm) 
Herodot.  was the eight part of a mile thick, I would have set an Angel (with a fiery sword) in your gate, to keep out your enemies; Still would I (with the heat and warmth of my Spirit) have cherished and increased the strength and growth of your faith, and keep it from being dead and cold; My vigilance should have sentineld for all your sleeps: neither the terror by night, nor the Arrow of temptation that flieth by day, should have frighted you. Satan (whom you now hold for such a subtle underminer) should have been your fool, and your iestingstocke, and a feare-bugge to your Babes only. All things should have prospered and gone well which you had taken in hand. Happy is that man that sitteth in the shadow of the wings of the almighty: unhappy are you, that have rather sought to dwell in the shadow of death, then under the shadow of the wings of the Almighty.  
O jerusalem, jerusalem, that killest my Prophets and stonest them I sent unto thee: How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings, but you would not. What is more tender than a Hen over her Chickens? So tender and more (O jerusalem) have I been over thy Children, yet would they never tender themselves, but tend and bend all their courses to ruin. Never could I get them to flock under my Wing, or come under my roof. Who takes charge of him, that in a Town of war will not come into the Town, but lie wilfully without the walls? No charge do I take of any that will not come within my walls, be gathered under my wing, but live out of the Church. Knew you what a fearful thing it were, to live (as Outlaws) from the wings of my Church, to let riches, promotion, or any worldly respect hinder you, from being gathered into the unity of my body, and communion of Saints, you would undoubtedly forsake all and follow me.  
All those that repaired not in time into Noah's ark, the waters overtook and drowned. Those that gathered not Manna in the morning it did them no good.  
Those that made excuses, and came not to the wedding when they were bidden, the King sent forth his Warriors, and destroyed them, and burnt up their Cities. Senseless stones are more obedient unto God's voice than you, for the stony-walls of jericho (after God had summoned them by his Priests sounding their Trumpets seven times) at the third sound they prostrated themselves flat. Not the third, or the fourth, or the fifth sound, have you with stood, but five hundred solemn summons and sounds; No judgement that (in your ears) I or any can sound, can make you fall prostrate or humble yourselves. Still you will live as runagates and banished men, from God's jurisdiction, you hadrather the devil should gather you up then he.  
I have piped, and you have not danced, I have lamented, and you have not mourned: The days will come, when I shall be taken away from you, and then you shall wish (in vain) that you had danced after my pipe, and borne a principal part in my Consort of mourning. Let all successions and Cities, be warned by you, how you neglect God's calling: let every private man be admonished by you, how he neglecteth God's calling. By benefits, by sickness, by outward crosses, signs and wonders he calleth men: To day if ye will hear my voice, harden not your hearts: That is, at this present when I call you, hearken to me. Who doth not hearken at the first, let him look to be hardened. Pharaoh, for he would not at the first voice or message let the children of Israel go, his heart was hardened.  
God when his voice will not be heard, permitteth the devil to go and try if his voice will be heard; if they hear the devils and not his, then hath he wherewithal to convince them. jerusalem hath heard the voice of God, crying out loud in her streets and high places, unto her to gather herself: Her streets, and all her high places, are filled with the echoes of God's voice. The stones of her Turrets have been so moved with it, that they have opened their ears, & received his echo into them, and that the Crier might know they attended the words which he spoke, they (echoing) repeated them again. The very echo of the walls and the stones, shall echo unto God for sharp punishment against you; And let any but read or rehearse this sentence, O jerusalem, jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as the Hen gathereth her Chickens, the echo shall reply, But they would not. They would not. Thou wouldst not indeed. And no damnation hast thou but thou wouldst not. I offered thee peace, but thou wouldst not: I offered thee to repent & be baptised, but thou wouldst not: I offered thee (if thou labourdst and wert laden) to ease thee, but thou wouldst not: I offered thee to ask and thou shouldst have, but thou wouldst not: To knock and it should be opened, but thou wouldst not. Great evils shalt thou endure, for thou wouldst not. Great evils did I say? alas little evils, compared to the evils I must endure only for these 4. words, But thou wouldst not.  
Heu melior quanto sors tua, sort mea est. My body shall find a Sepulchre, but my sorrow never any: for thou wouldst not. For ever I must mourn what thou for ever must suffer, for thou wouldst not. This will be thine utter impeachment, that the very Samaritans (whom thou accountest Infidels) received and acknowledged me, but thou wouldst not. That the unclean spirits, departing out of men, cried and confessed me to be the Son of God, but thou wouldst not. And lastly, that the Spirit of God himself, (descending on my head like a Dove) gave testimony of me, yet thou wouldst not.  
Clamour Sodomorum multiplicatus est: The cry of thee jerusalem, (the second Sodom) that thou wouldst not, in 
Gen. 19  God's ears is doubled. To what Nation shall I now preach or appeal, since my elected people (that should hearken to me) have answered me they would not? Niniveh repent at the preaching of jonas, but jerusalem at the preaching of her jesus, she would not. I offered to wash her feet with the waters of my tribulation, and heal every disease and malady she had, with them, as I healed the leprosy of Naaman with the waters of jordan: but over the waters of my Tears and tribulation, she passeth 
Psal. 65.  on drie-foote, as once they passed over jordan. The river of God is full of water, jerusalem, were thine eyes the rivers of God, they would be full of water. The Snow on thy Mountains, by the Sun is resolved to water, the Son of GOD hath sought to resolve thy snow-colde heart into water, but he could not, for thou wouldst not. Over thy principal gates, and the doors of thy Temple, let therefore this for an Emprese be engraven: A kind compassionate man, who grieving to see a serpentine Salamander fry in the fire, (so piteously as it seemed) cast water on the raging flames to quench them, and was by him stung to death for his labour. The most or word thereto, ATNOLVISTI, but thou wouldst not. As who should say, thank thyself though thou still burnest: I would have rid thee out of the fire: but thou wouldst not. By stinging me (mortally) thou disturbest me.  
On thee Salamander-like jerusalem, have I cast the cool water of my tears, to keep Hell fire (if it might be) from seeding on thee, and inwrapping thee: but thou (delighting like that chilly Worm to live in the midst of the furnace, or as the foolish Candle-flie, to blow the fire, with the beating of thy wings near unto it that must burn thee,) hast spit thy poison at me when I sought to preserve thee. More agreeing is it to thy nature, to fry in the flames of thy fleshly desires, (which is but a short blazed straw-fire, to tind or enkindle hell-fire,) then to live temperately qualefied, midst Insulae fortunatae the fortunate islands of God's favour. For this shalt thou be consumed with fire. Thy house shall be left desolate unto thee.  
Hitherto with jeschaciabus thou hast had nought but a plaster of drye-figges laid to thy bile, thou hast been chastised but with wanton whips, but lo, shortly (the time comes) thou must be scourged with Scorpions: a hook shall be cast into thy jaws, and a chain come through thy nostrils. I now but foretell a storm in a calm, but when the Leviathan shall approach, (that with his sneezings chaseth Clouds,) and you shall see lightning and thunder in the mouths of all the four Winds: When Heaven (in stead of stars) shall be made an Artillery-house of Hailstones, and no Planet revolve any thing but prostitution and vastity, then shall you know what it is, by saying you would not, to make your house unto you be left desolate.  
With the foolish builder you have founded your Palaces on the sands of your own shallow conceits: had you rested them on the true Rock they had been ruine-proof: but now the rain will rough-enter through the crannies of their wavering, the Winds will blow and batter open, wide passages for the pashing showers: With roaring, and buffeting lullabies, instead of singing and dandling by-os they will rock them clean over and over. The only commodity they shall tithe to their owners, will be (by their overturning) to afford them Tombs unasked. Great shall be the fall of thy foolish building (O jerusalem) like a Tower overtopped, it shall fall flat, and be laid low and desolate.  
In the Haven of joppa, shall arrive as many ships, as would make a Marine-cittie, in bigness no less than thyself. The Helle-spont by Xerxes, was never so surcharged as it shall be. All Galilee (from the land of Nepthali upwards) shall be but a quarter for their pioneers, and a couch for their baggage. From jerusalem to the plain of Gibeon, (which is fifty miles' distance) the infinite enemy, will depopulate and pitch his Pavilions. Man, woman, child, he shall unmortalize and mangle. Oxen Sheep, Camels, idly engore, and leave to putrefy in the open Fields, only to raise up seed to Snakes, Adders and Serpents. The Mount Tabor, (whose height is thirty furlongs, and on whose top is a plain, twentythree furlongs broad) shall have all the stargazing Towns (on it situate) justled headlong down from the height of his forehead, and breaking their backs with their stumbling rebutment, tumble in the air, like Lucifer falling out of heaven into Hell. Yea, their Firmament-propping foundation, shall be adequated with the Valley of jehosaphat: whose sublimity (whiles it is in beheading,) the Sky shall resign all his Clouds to the Earth, and light-winged dust, dignify itself by the name of a meteor. From that blind-dispersed night of dust, shall many lesser Mountains receive their lofty mounting: and part of it (being wind-wafted into the Sea) insert floating islands midst the Ocean.  
None shall there be left to fight the battles of the Lord, but those that fight the battles of their own ambition. By none shall the Sanctuary be defended, but those that would have none destitute it or deflower it but themselves. The feast of Tabernacles, the feast of sweet Bread, and the feast of Weeks, shall quite be discalendred. Your Sabaothes and New-moones, shall want a Remembrancer; Your Peace-offerings and continual Sacrifice, (a thousand, two hundred, and ninety days, as Daniel prophesied,) shall be put to silence. The abomination of desolation, shall advance itself in your 
Dan. 12.  Sanctum sanctorum. Upon your Altars (in stead of oblations) your Priests shall be slaughtered. Not so much as the High-prieste,) the under-god of your City,) but shall be hanged up (es a sign) at the door of your Temple.  
The particularity of your general forespoken woes, would work in me a Tympany of Tears, if I should portraiture it. I have pronounced it, and your House (unrepriveable) unto you shall be left desolate. The resplendent eye-out braving buildings of your Temple, (like a Drum) shall be ungirt & unbraced: the soul of it, which is the (forenamed) Sanctum Sanctorum, clean shall be strypt and unclothed. God shall have near a Tabernacle or retiring place in your City, which he shall not be undermined and desolated out of. The Sun and Moon (perplexed with the spectacle) shall fly farther upward into heaven, and be afraid, lest (when the besiegers have ended below) they next sack them out of their sieges and circuits, since they have had God (their common-Creator) so long in chase.  
jerusalem, ever after thy bloody hecatomb, or burial, the Sun (rising and setting) shall enrobe himself in scarlet, and the mayden-Moone, (in the ascension of her perfection) shall have her crimson cheeks (as they would burst) round balled out with blood. Those ruddy investuring, and scarlet habilements, from the clowde-climing slaughter-stack of thy dead carcases, shall they exhalingly quintessence, to the end thou mayst not only be culpable of gorging the Earth, but of goring the Heavens with blood: and in witness against thee, wear them they shall to the world's end, as the liveries of thy waning.  
Not Abraham's sons are you, but the sons of blood, for in nothing you imitate Abraham, but that he (having no more save one only son) would have sacrificed him: so GOD having no more but one only Son, you lyein wait to crucify and sacrifice him. For thine own destruction (disgraded daughter of Zion) thou liest in wait, in laying wait for me: that which I hunger and thirst after, is thy salvation in my destruction. I am enamoured of my Cross, because it is all age's blessing: not a nail in it but is a necessary Agent in the World's redemption.  
Holy Cross, adam's of spring, only holiness, I grieve that upon thee I can spend none of my Godhead as well as my Humanity, to glorify the more this great exploit. For the desolating and disinheriting of hell have I that reserved, none but the God of heaven may lead captivity captive, and return Conqueror from that dungeonly Kingdom. Strange it is (o jerusalem) that I should be able to conquer and forage hell, and yet cannot conquer, or bring under thee to my obedience. To speak troth, (as in my lips is no guile) thou art not worthy to be conquéred, or have the host of thine affections subdued by me, that hast admitted of a base conqueror, which is the devil, after whom I can succeed with no honour.  
The romans (not I) shall conquer thee, and leave thy house desolate unto thee: who being Heathens, and not knowing God, are a degree of indignity inferior to the devil, for he knows God, and with fear and trembling acknowledgeth him. Wouldst thou with fear and trembling have fled to me for refuge against the devil and the Romans, when I would have gathered thee, both the Devil and the Romans (at one instant) had been subdued to thine hand. But under my standard thou wouldst not, thou scornedst to gather thee, therefore shall thy house be left desolate unto thee: therefore shall God's house be left desolate unto thee. Majestical Temple, on whose Pinnacle once I was tempted, thou and I (one after another) must perish, for no fault of our own, but for the sins of this people.  
No profit but disprofit, shall the scattered ashes of thy obsequies bring unto them, nor shall they, like the ashes of me the true Phoenix, live again: never shall thy body (like mine) be raised again. Razed and defaced shalt thou be, as thou hadst never been. Haply Caves for wilde-beasts (many years together) thou mayst afford, but the Lord of Hosts shall abandon thee, the King of Israel shall abjure thee. By Herod (a man of blood) thou wert last builded, and in blood shalt thou be buried. O let me embrace thee while thou yet standest, and I am not translated: hereafter (perhaps) near may I have the opportunity to embrace thee. This present hour that is granted, I will put out to Usury. On thy Alabaster outside, with scalding sighs and dimming kisses, a greater dew will I raise, then lies upon sweaty Marble a little before rain.  
Me thinks these stones look shining and smile upon me, jerusalem frowns like a She-bear seeking her whelps. These stones start not out of their assigned places, but still retain their imposed first proportion: from me (her foundation) long ago hath jerusalem started, out of those limits and bounds I assigned her hath she started, her order she hath broken; my building she hath subverted; no form or face of my workmanship is visible in her. But yet, were nothing but her face and outside deformed, it were somewhat, her inside is worst of all: her Heart, her Lungs, her Liver, & her Gall, alare carionized and contaminated with surfeits of self-will. Her own heart she eateth, and disgesteth into the draft with riot and excess.  
Poor Temple, long mightst thou stand, and not have a stone of thee disquieted till the judgement day, if those to whom thou belongest, were not ten-times branded in the forehead for Reprobates, not with the mark of the Lamb, but the Lion, who (roaring) seeketh whom he may devour. Distressefully am I divided from thee; my soul (when it shall be divided from me) will not endrench me in so much dolour as thou dost. The zeal of thee distraughteth me, and some essential part of my life seemeth to forsake me and drop from me, when I think of thy divastation. Nothing so much doth macerate and mad me, as that all the sky-perfuming prayers, and profuse sacrificatory expenses of ful-hand oblationers, should not have force to uphold thee. Desolation, for no debt of sin shalt thou extend on this Temple, that thou hast to extend against it, extend against me, for it is my Father's habitation. It will but augment his indignation against this City, and do thee no good to drive him out of house and home, and reserve him no sanctified mansion upon earth. Let there be one peculiar Treasury of supplications and vows undestroyed and unpillaged.  
O Father, be this House more high-pryzed to thee then Paradise; More worship and adoration hast thou had in it then in Paradise. There thou setst a fiery-armed Gardant to repulse insolent invaders: set some garisonment before the gate of thy Tabernacle, to oppugn the dispossessors of thy Deity: thou canst not hear me, I pray for them whose sins sue against me. Thou hast decreed (in thy secret judgement) There house shall be left desolate unto them: Thou hast decreed I shall be left desolate on the Cross, and cry, Eloi, Eloi, lamasabachthani, unayded or unregarded. Willing am I to execute thy will, only let me not in vain give up the Ghost, but some souls of this Panther-spotted jerusalem, may be extraught to joy with me.  
O that mine arms were wide enough to engraspe the walls of jerusalem about, that in mine amorous enfoldment, (unawares) I might whirl her to Heaven with me. Why should I not drive all Israel before me to the great felicity, as a Shepherd before him driveth his flock to the fat Pastures? I shall never drive you before me, you will drive me before you (with murder and violence) to immortality, & yourselves not one foot follow after. Pol me occidistis amici, you whom I thought to bind to me as friends, have foe-like betrayed me. Because I am humble I may not please you: Because I am Christ the just, therefore you will design me to the Cross unjustly. Est mihi supplicij causa fuisse pium. Would God there were no other exclamatory crime then this to be objected again thee. Yet have I suffered of thee nothing but fear. More than fear am I (within these few days) to entertain at thy hands.  
Slay me thou shalt, because I have vouchsafed to live. with thee; and doom me an unworthy end, in leiu of my dear love. Tu mihi criminis author, no imputation of scandal shall I have, but the heavy burden of thy abuses. Thou shall be my uninocence, and whole sum of delinquishment: thy right hand of my death shall be arraigned. Hoc prohibete nefas, scelerique resistite vestro. Not the profane idolatry of the Gentles, in my sides shall delve so deep, as thy stiffnecked transgressions. Less do I deplore my death then thy life: and a thousand times have I wished and desired, that thou hadst only occasion to repent my death and not thine own other misdeeds. Repent yet, & I will repent me of the pronouncement against thee. Should I not so have pronounced and denunciated against thee, thy blood would have been 
ch. 3.  required at my hands. Therefore is my people led captive, (saith the Lord by Esay) because they know me not. Your 
●…5.  pretence of unknowledge, orignorance, is already counterpleaded: you shall not say, Woe be to me that I never tasted the milk of understanding; but (with job) ban the time that ever you sucked the breasts. At my breasts jerusalem hast thou not sucked, but bit off my breasts, when thou stonedst the Prophets: O jerusalem, jerusalem, that stonest my Prophets, and killest them I sent unto thee: How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings, but thou wouldst not? Therefore shall thy House be left desolate unto thee.  
here ebb the springtide of my Tears, Eyes from this present prepare yourselves to be recluses. I came not to shed Tears but Blood for jerusalem, Blood for jerusalem will I shed, to atone for her shedding of innocent blood; So that let her yet turn unto me, her atonement is made. I will corroborate my Cross Giantlike, to underbeare the Atlas' burden of her insolences. With my Nazarite tresses, to my Cross will I bind her crossing frowardness and contaminations. Not a nail that takes hold of me, but I will (expressly) enjoin it to take hold of her deflectings and errors. Death, (as ever thou hopest at my hands to have thy Commission enlarged,) when thou killest me, kill her iniquities also: let thy deep entering Dart oblivionize their memories.  
Of man (as of me) thou killest but the body only, kill the body and the soul both of her unbounded sinnegluttony. I will pay thee largely for thy pains. Whereas before, thou never tookst any but the subjects prisoners, now thou shalt have the King himself surrendered to thy cruelty. Thou shalt enrich thy style with this title, I Emperor Death, the Lord of all flesh, the killer of the King of all Kings, etc. Deal well by jerusalem, how ever thou dealest with me: Let not her Soul be left desolate, though her City be left desolate unto her.  
Even the high-priests that shall bind mine hands, and adjudge my body to be scourged, deal mercifully with, cut them not off suddenly, but give them a space of repentance. Let them be crowned with eternity, though they crown me with Thorns, their crowning me with thorns I take for no trespass, for they cannot prick me so ill with those briars, as they have provoked me with their sins. Nor shall the Gall and Vinegar they give me to drink, be so bitter unto me as their blasphemies. Forgive them Lord, they forget what they do.  
Further I may not proceed, except I should detract from my Passion to add to my Tears. He that can weep with more soule-martyrdome than I, let him take upon him to wash (in my steed) the earth's Ethiopian face. Every vain of me let it burst, to feed the Lake of Gehenna, before Gehenna gather springs from the heart of jerusalem. Not the least hair of my body, but may it be as a peg in a vessel, to broach blood with plucking out, so in the droppings of that blood jerusalem will bathe herself. O jerusalem, jerusalem, that stonest my Prophets, and killest them I sent unto thee, ten thousand times adieu: I would never have bid thee adieu, or been divorced from thee, but that thou thyself hast divorced thyself. Heaven no heaven hast thou made unto me, by endless performing thy obits. If my crimson Tears on the Cross, may more prevail with thee, so it is, or else in vain I descended, or else to thy pain I descended.  
Descend into the closet of thine own conscience, and inquire how oft I have come thither, and called upon thee to gather thee. Examine thy heart & thy reins if I have not secretly communed with thee by night, to convert and be turned unto me. Thou never with drewest thyself and wert solitary, but my Spirit was reproving and disputing with thee. At length shall I obtain of thee to remember and gather thyself? Though thou wilt not in respect of me, (whom thou shouldst respect) yet in respect of thine own benefit, remember and gather thyself, enter into meditation of thy lamentable estate: But hear thy Physician though thou intendest not to be ruled by him. Understand the nature of thy disease, which is the first step to recovery. Relieve my languor, by being less reckless of thy invisible aspiring infirmity. Glance but half a kind look at me, though thou canst not resolve to love me; by half a look my love may steal into thine eyes unlooked for. Thy sight is no way misspent or impaired, by casting away one askance-regard on any.  
The Sun shineth as well on the good as the bad: God from on high, beholdeth all the workers of iniquity, aswell as the upright of heart. It behoveth thee to try all spirits, let my Spirit be one of those (all) which thou bringest to the Touchstone. I do not will thee without trial, on my bare report to be directed by it, but when thou hast tried it, & sifted it to the uttermost, then as it approves itself, to entertain it. Upon uncertain experiments, (having the least protence of gain in them,) men will hazard and venture many thousands: try once an experiment to gain heaven with; venture or hazard but a few indifferent good thoughts of me. I say I am thy Messias, and am come to gather thee, condemn me not rashly, but await & see the end of my gathering whereto it sorts. Search the Scriptures & the Prophets, whether I be a liar and impostor or no. I would give thee leave to hate me, so thy hate would make thee industrious & sedulous, to hearken out & inquire whence I am. Were I notorious guilty, and un-examined, & unheard, you should sentence me, you should give to me amongst men an opinion of innocence: being not guilty, you make your judgements guilty, of knowing I am not guilty, in proceeding against me without circumstance or proof. I speak all this while to the wind, or as a disconsolate prisoner that complaineth himself to the stonewalls.  
God is moved and mollified (though he be never so incensed) with often, and un-slacked intercessions; Gold (which is the Sovereign of metals) bends soonest, only Iron (the peasant of all) is most inflexible. jerusalem with nothing is moved, therefore must her Tabernacle be removed, therefore must her House be left desolate unto her. Often, importunately, violently, eagerly have I intercessioned unto her, to gather herself unto me: I have kneeled, wept bitterly, lift up mine hands, hung upon her, and vowed never to let her go, till she consented to retire herself into my tuition, & answered pleasingly to my petition. Never did the Widow in my Parrable, so follow and tire the wicked judge with fury-haunting instancy, as I have done her. No where could she rest but I have alarumd in her ears, her pride, murder and hypocrisy, and with dismal crying, and vociferative inculcating unto her, drawn my throat so hic into the roof of my mouth, that it hath quite swallowed up and ensheathed my tongue, and threatened to turn my mouth out of his office.  
I have cracked mine eyestrings with excessive staring, and steadfast heaven-gazing, when with fast-fortified prayer, and eare-agonizing invocation, I have distressed my Father's soul for her; so that (enraged) he hath bid me out of his sight, chid me, rebuked me, & impatiently said as he said unto Moses, Let me alone, that I may wreak mine anger on her, and consume her. None of these may overcome her, the blood of my Prophets, and the hundred-voyced clamour of her multiplied mutinies against Heaven, are far louder before my Father then I, they out-throate me, and put me down I cannot be heard, even as one that howls puts down him that sings. Me would not jerusalem hear, when with sweet songs I have allured, cluckt, & wooed her to come under my wings: therefore will not my Father hear any man that once names her. When I pray for her, her sins fall a howling that I should not be heard.  
My wings, her gray-headed sturdy disobedience hath now clean unpinioned and broken, so that (though I would) I cannot gather her. Besides, she hath steeled my soft impressive heart, and mirmidonized mine eyes, that they shall never give grief a Tear more alms. Poor Hens, there is nothing so tender as you are over your Chickens, but had you as I have, none but Kites and Kistrels to your Chickens, such as fly against the wind as soon as they are borne, and gather themselves in Arms against you when you offer to gather them, you would learn of me, to leave off to be so tender.  
To desolation (jerusalem) must I leave thee, desolation that taketh his watchword from thou wouldst not: Desolation the greatest name of vengeance that is, Desolation which hath as many branches of misery as Hell belonging to it, Desolation the utmost arrow of God's indignation. I cannot in terms express the one quarter this word Desolation containeth. David in the depth of his despair of God's mercy, said; He was left as Desolate as the Pelican in the wilderness, or the Owl on the house top. This is the Desolation of the Pelican in the Wilderness, that when she hath her bowels unnaturally torn out by her young ones, (into the world tyrannously entering,) and they leave her in the extremity of her torment, and will not deign her (for all her dear travel) one comforting aspect of compassion, to herself (twixt living and dying,) herself she complaineth. Blood and tears equally she spendeth, and as her womb is rend out with ungrateful fruitfulness, so now her heart she rends out with selfe-gnawing discontentment, and dieth, not decayed by age, but destroyed by her of spring.  
The melancholy Owl, (Death's ordinary messenger,) that near weildeth his lazy leaden wings but by night, and in his huge lumpish head seemeth to have the house of sleep built, then is most solitary and desolate, when (restrained from tuning his own private disconsolations to the dark gloomy air,) he is sent to sing on a desolate house top, a doleful dreary ditty of destiny, aliis que dolens sit causa dolendi. jerusalem, even as the Pelican in the Wilderness, so (by thine own progeny) shalt thou have thy bowels torn out; by civil wars shalt thou be more wasted then outward annoyance. Those whom thou most expectest love of, shall be most unnatural to thee. Not only tears shall they constrain thee to weep, but blood, & urge thee to rend out thine own heart, in ruing their irreligiousness. As the Owl on the housetop, evermore howlingly, calls for some Corpse, and is the first Mourner that comes to any funeral, so (jerusalem) shalt thou howling, sit like the Owl on thy high-places and housetops, & tune nothing but lays of ill-luck and desolation, & funeral Elegies of thy forlorn overthrow. Thus shalt thou sing; Sodom is sunk and I must succeed.  
God promised he would never-more drown the world in water, but me he hath drowned in blood. All the Eagles of the field, feed their young ones with my youngmen's carcases. Mine old Sages and Governors strew the streets with their white hairs like straws, their withered dead bodies, serve to mend Highways with, and turn standing quagmires to firm ground, (rammed full of their Corpse's.) My Virgins, and Matrons, in steed of painting their faces ruddy, colour them with their kinsfolks gore. Happy is that wife, which may entomb her slaughtered Husband in her Well or Cistern. Happy is that Sister, that (for strewing herbs) may scatter her discheveld maidenhair, on her dead Brother's trunk.  
Even, as there be many Fowls that eat up their own Eggs, so the Children are fain to feed the Mother; The Infant which she travels with nine months in her belly, once again hunger thrusteth into her empty famished body. The Babes in conception, (being half entered out of the womb, and but with one eye beholding the miseries of their Country,) return crying back again whence they came, and choose rather to tumble forth stil-borne, then view the World in such hurly burly.  
So exceeding are mine adversities, that after successions which shall hear of them, will even be desolate and exiled from mirth with the hearing. Adam's fall never so woe-enwrapped the earth, as the relation of them shall. Christ the Son of God, (all men's Saviour but mine,) foreprophesied I should thus be left desolate, but I believed it not, therefore is my desolation unlooked for come upon me, therefore am I made a scorn to the Gentiles of confusion.  
O jerusalem, jerusalem, all this mightst thou have avoided, I never sought the death of a sinner, my death thou hast sought, for I laboured to save thee. Save thyself as well as thou mayst, for I have forsaken thee, to desolation have I resigned thee. If in this world thou endurest thy punishment patiently, (and canst purge thy soul by repentance,) in my world of joy I shall be ready to receive thee; otherwise, I have nou●…ht to do with thee, thy Soul as thy House be left desolate unto thee.  
HERE do I confine our SAVIOUR'S collachrimate Oration, and putting off his borrowed Person, restore him to the Triumphancy of his Passion. Now privately (as mortal men) let us consider, how his threats were after verified in jerusalem's over-ture.  
Should I write it to the proof, weeping would leave meno eyes: like tragic Seneca, I should tragedize myself, by bleeding to death in the depth of passion. Admirable Italian teare-eternizers, Ariosto, Tasso & the rest, near had you such a subject to roialize your Muses with, Of a late destruction of jerusalem, Tasso thou wrot'st, wherein thy Godfrey of Bulloine the destroyer, beareth the chief part of honour. A counterfeit Melpomene (in comparison of this) was thy Muse's Midwife, when that child of Fame was brought forth. Let no man think to enter into this History as he should, but a consumption of sorrow will cut him off ere he come to the end. God forbid I should be so Luciferous passionative-ambitious, to take upon me the full blast of this desolative-trumpet of jerusalem, a weak breath or two I will writhe into it, and with a hoarse sound, (such as fitteth farre-spent languorment) manifest as it were in a dead-march, her untimely interment.  
Forty years were expired after our Lords lifting up into Heaven, when the Temple-boasting jews, (elate in their own strength) began to pretend a weariness of the Roman regiment, and coveted to reign entire Lords, over the Lords that reigned over them. Eleazar, the Son of Anani the Highpriest, was the first that seminarized this hope of signiorizing and freedom amongst them. Proudly he controlled Agrippa & all the other Lieutenants, drove them from their dignities to Rome to seek succour and rescue, and swayed over the multitude, as the King and Father of their lives. In the meanwhile, the Element was over-hung with prodigies. GOD thought it not enough to have threatened them by his Son, but he emblazond the air with the tokens of his terror. No Star that appeared but seemed to sparkle fire. The Sun did shine all day, as it is wont at his Evening going down. The Moon had her pale-siluer face iron spotted with freckle-imitating bloud-sprinklings: and for her dim frosty circle, a black inky-hood embayling her bright-head.  
Over the Temple (at the solemn feast of the Passeover) was seen a Comet most coruscant, streamed & tailed forth, with glistering naked swords, which in his mouth, (as a man in his hand all at once,) he made semblance as if he shaked and vambrasht. Seven days it continued, all which time, the Temple was as clear & light in the night as it had been noonday. In the Sanctum sanctorum, was heard clashing and hewing of Armour. Whole flocks of Ravens, (with a fearful croaking cry,) beat, fluttred, and clashed against the windows. A hideous dismal Owl, (exceeding all her kind in deformity and quantity,) in the Temple-porch built her nest. From under the Altar, there issued penetrating plangorus-howling, and ghastly deadmen's groans. A goodly young Heifer, haled thither for a burnt offering, being knocked down and ready to be dressed, miraculously calved a Lamb.  
The sacrificing knives that dived into her entrails, would afterwards by no means be cleansed, but from her blood (as from man's blood) took unto them an unremovable rust. In the feast of Weeks, in the inner receipt of the Temple was heard one stately stalking up and down, and exclaiming with a terrible base hollow voice, Migremus hinc, Migremus hinc, è Templo emigremus: Let us go hence, Let us go hence, out of this Temple let us high us. What should I over-blacke mine Ink, perplex pale Paper, rumatize my Readers eyes, with the sad tedious recital, of all the prognosticating signs of their ruin. Stories have lost and tired themselves in this Story. Should I but make an Index to any one Writer of them, it would ask a Book alone. Some few abreviated alleagements I will content myself with, and so pass on-ward to more necessary matter.  
Above, and beside, the Prophetical apparitions, in, over, & about the Temple, in the City there happened no less noteworthy predictions. The East gate thereof which was all iron, and never wont to be opened under twenty men together, (the dry rusty creeking of whose hooks and gymmes as it was in the opening, might be heard a mile off,) now, of the own accord, burst wide open, and being open, was twice more hard than before to be shut. A base mechanical fellow there was, sprung out of the mud of the Communality, who for four years together before the wars begun, went crying up and down, Woe to jerusalem and the Sanctuary thereof, Woe to every living thing that breatheth therein, The wars once entered, he got him on the walls, and often re-iterating his stale-worne note, add thereunto, Woe, and thrice woe to myself, and with that, start a stone out of an Engine in the Camp and stopped his throat. Many monstrous births at this instant were brought forth: in divers places of the City sprung up founts of blood. The Element every night was embattled with Armed men, skirmishing and conflicting amongst themselves; & the Imperial Eagles of Rome, were plainly there displayed to all men's sight. A burning sword also was set forth, visibly bend against the City. The strangest and horriblest tempests of thunder and lightning had they that ever was heard of.  
The Earth left to be so friutfull as it wont. No season but it exceeded his stinted temperature. Every thing rebelled against kind, as thinking scorn to accommodate themselves to their uses, that had so rebelled against the Lord. For all this, there was no man that would gather himself, no man that would depart from the ill work he had in hand. Ambulabant ut caeci quia Domino peccaverunt. Their eyes were over-filmed or blinded, because they obeyed not their Maker.  
NOw is the time that all Rivers must run into the Sea, that whatsoever I have in wit or eloquence, must be drained to the delineament of wretchedness.  
The Romans like a drove of Wild bores, root up and forage fruitful Palestine. That which was called the Holy Land, is now unhallowed with their Heathen swords. Wherefore you Pilgrims, that spend the one half of your days in visiting the Land of Promise, and wear the plants of your feet, to the likeness of withered roots, by barelegd processioning (from a far) to the Sepulchre, ungainefully you consume good hours, for no longer was judea a Land of Promise, than her Temple stood. Vespasians invasion hath profaned it: a Mount of dead bodies over that Sepulchre is raised, which you perigrinate to adore; that Sepulchre you see, is but a thing built up by Saracens to get money with, and beguile votive Christians. They delude your superstition, and make it their tributary slave.  
No Hog-sty is now so pollutionate as the earth of Palestine and jerusalem. Our saviours steps are quite unsanctified in them, and trodden out of sent, by the irruptive over-trampling of the Romans. A new story of flesh-manured earth have they cast upon it, and made it no more the walk of Saints and Prophets, but a poisonous nursery of Beasts of prey and Serpents.  
O God, enlarge mine invention and my memory, sincerely and feelingly, to rehearse the disornamenting of this mother of Cities.  
Understand that before the arrival of Vespasian, there were in jerusalem three factions. Eleazers, which was the fundamentive and first, jehochanans' next, and Schimeons' the last. Eleazar and jehochanan, the ungodliest that ever God made, Schimeon except, (and he might well have been Schoolmaster to Cain or judas,) he was such a grand Keysar of cutthroats. From the noblest of the jews descended, but his Nobility ere he came to it, by his degenerate conditions he forfeited. A man he was that made a mockery of all Laws and Religion, and any thing which Authority forbade, most greedily would embrace: thinking, as the best Pastures are hedged in, the best Orchards walled about, the best Metals hutcht up, so there was nothing excellent but was forbidden, and whatsoever was forbidden, was excellent. For malice or hatred, he would not stab or murder men so much, as against he had just occasion to stab or murder, to keep his hand in ure. He held it as lawful for him, (since all labouring in a man's vocation is but getting,) to get wealth as well with his sword by the High way side, as the labourer with his Spade or mattock, when all are but iron; beside, as there is none hath any wealth which he getteth not from another, so deemed he it as free for him as another, to get from other men; concluding, as there no better tittle to a Kingdom then conquest, so there is no better claim unto wealth, then by the conquest of a strong hand to compass it. Adultery, Fornication, Drunkenness, no sin, but he would defend and offend in.  
For the multitude of these and other his abominations, banished he was, and longer in jerusalem might he not roost: wherefore no possibility had he to prevent beggary, or redeem his estate, but by proclaiming (in all places where he came) the trade he professed: The Tenure of his Proclamation was this. That if there were any, that had dudgen-old coughing miserly Fathers they could not endure: If there were any that had repining victual-scanting Masters, tyrrannizing nevertheless for their work: If there were any, that were Creditor-crazed, and dead and buried in debt, and knew not which way to rise out of it, let them repair to him, and till Doomsday they should have a protection. Yea, if there were ever a good fellow that loved a Harlot as his life, would have Letters-patents to take purses, had a desire to kill and not be hanged, would swear and forswear for single-money, and had not so much as a crumb of conscience to put in his pottage, let him or them what ere, resort under his standard, and their humours should be maintained.  
Twenty thousand of these dreggy lees of Libertines hived unto him in a moment, whom he cleped the Flower of Chiluary: for they feared no man, & cared neither for God nor the Devil. With them he burned the green Corn in the fields, plucked down Barns and Storehouses, stubd up Orchards and vineyards, and made desolate havoc where ever he came.  
To jerusalem (after much slaughter and spoil) with this his Outlaw Army he reached, & there enter-leagued himself with Eleazar and jehochanan. The first thing after their joining they did, was the displacing of the Sanhadrtn, which were the judges, and threescore and ten Elders, and sharing the governèment equally amongst them. Then the Sacrifice they silenced, put the Highpriest to death, and converted the Temple to an Armoury. Long could they not agree, but as Empery admitteth no mate-ship, so did they envy one another, made heads against one another, mutually skirmisht with one another. Their enemies were without, but within lurked the plague that went through stitch.  
Twenty thousand in one day, the internal civil sword eat up. The Edomites let in by jehochanan, of the wealthiest Citizens, slew eight thousand and five hundred in one night. here begins the desolation Christ prophesied, within and without vengeance bestirreth her; within it raged most, for within sin reigned most. Let me suddenly wax old and woe-wrinkle my cheeks before their time, by describing the deplored effects of their sins within. First, for the desolation of their ceremonial Religion, something I have said already, but the sum of all was this, that if any Priest approached near the Altar, the blood of him and his offering was blended together. The reverent Ephods were made the slaughter-mens' Aprons: many venerable Levites they bound to the Altar by the hair of their beards. The Vessels of the house of the Lord, they put to vile uses. Not any consectated thing but they arrested and made booty of. Young children, whom their mothers led in their hands along with them, to the Temple to offer, (inhuman to be told,) they took and merciless cast into the sacrificatory flame, and on the same Altar (after they were consumed) most sacriligeously ravished their Mothers. Some men (whom they could not otherwise draw into their danger) they would invite to treaty in the Temple, saying; There is the Tabernacle of the Lord, there is the Ark of his presence, there if we should draw our blades, it were abomination un-remissible. Why distrust you us? suppose you us to be without GOD? carry we not the covenant of our Father Abraham in our loins as well as you? By him that oweth this Temple we swear, and all mystical riches thereof, you shall depart thence unmolested. Who so on their oaths, or their words affianst them, were sure to wash the pavement with the best juice of their breasts.  
Not only those that came to offer, but those that but offered to kneel in the Temple, they ran through. The Marble flore of it they made so slippery, with their unrespited, and not so much as Saboth-ceased bloodshed, and bowel-clinging fat of them that were slain, that a man might better swim then walk on it. The place without the City where they carried their dung, and buried the entrails of Beasts, half so pestilently stunk not, as that stunk with dunghills of deadbodies. The entry of the Court of the Lord, was changed to a standing Lake of blood. The silver gates of the Temple, no more were gates for devout worshippers to enter in at, but slimy floodgates for thick iellied gore to sluice out by. Who hath seen a Vault under a Church full of dust-died skulls, and rusty deadmen's bones, might (after that gross stream of gore a little was turned aside, and the blood dried up,) rightly allude the Temple thereunto: for now it was no more a prayer-prospering House, but a pudly Vault of deadmen's bones, and cast out bodies kneaded to dirt. Her Alabaster walls were all furred & fome-painted, with the bespraying of men's brains dung out against them. Her high roof was mingle-colourd with mounting drops of blood, that se●…'d by soaking into it, to seek for passage to heaven.  
The siege growing hot, the seditious hearts somewhat quailed, and then they made show as they would correct themselves, as they would renounce their tumultuous tyrannies; And whereas lately before, they had deprived the Highpriest both of life and office, now (dissemblingly remorsed) they would needs in all haste, in his room set up another, and by lots he should be chosen. The lot fell upon a Ploughman, or Carter, one Pani the son of Peniel, and he (notwithstanding his ignorant baseness, and base rudeness) as in a mockery, was installed in that dignity.  
It is not my intent to run a right out-race, through all the accidents of their reprobation, only that which I lay down, is to show how unfallibly Christ's words were fulfilled, as touching their ten times merited desolation. judge all those that have sense of misery, ere they have occasion to use it in discerning their own miseries, whether this were not desolation or no. The Lord at one time visited their City with those four capital plagues, Fire, Famine, Pestilence, and the Sword. First for fire, thus he visited it: There were a thousand & four hundred Storehouses, filled up to the top with victual, Corn, Wine, and Oil, sufficient to maintain two hundred thousand men for twenty years, all which by the Seditious was set on fire, and consumed in one day. divers gorgeous buildings they inflamed to smoke out their rich owners, & many goodly streets end-longs to the very earth they encindred: for nothing but to have more room to bicker in.  
Every corner of jerusalem, had a voice heard in it as in Ramah, of weeping, mourning, & great lamentation. Scarce could one friend in commoning hear another, for the howling, wring of hands, sobbing and yelling of men, women, and children. here lay they half dead, baiting and bathing in their wounds, and roaring and eare-rentingly exclaiming, for some melting-hearted man, to come and rid them out of their lingering living death, and slay them outright. The sons, daughters, and servants of the Elders thus unjustly massacred, went crying up and down the City like madmen, with eyes and hands to heaven extended, justice Lord, justice Lord, justice, against the unjust deprivers of our friends and maintainers.  
This was the Seditious order, that if there were any man noted to be of more wealth than other, him they picked a quarrel against, and accused of treason to their Sanctuary, and sending letters to the Romans. False witnesses they had in pay a Camp royal. Schimeon would not see them unproudied in that case. Not only he that mourned, but he that did not seem to rejoice at the Martyrdom of those just men, was dismissed the same way. Not a few (in their minds benumbed with the massacrous monstruousness of this quick Marshal-law) made themselves graves, and went into them alive. The channel of jordan was so overburdened and charged with dead carcases, that the waters contended to wash their hands of them, and lightly leapt over their banks, as shunning to mix themselves with so many millions of murders: but after many days abstinence from their proper intercourse, (observing they must live for ever banished from their bounds, except they made some riddance of them,) they recollected their liquid forces, and putting all their wavy shoulders together, bare the whole shoal of them before them, as far as the Sea of Sodom.  
Had there been at that time a Red-sea new to be created, the blood (that like a River from a Mountain foot, flowed forth of jerusalem) would have made it rich in surges, and sufficient to wrack many ships. Even as jordan, so the Brook Cedron, and the waters of Schiloim in like sort were choked. As dead Cats and Dogs into Butts of Sack and Muscadine are thrown, (for their fiery strength to feed on,) so into Wells and Cisterns were dead Corpse's (innumerable) thrown, for their black waters to feed on. From the fury of the Sword, let me descend to Famine and the Pestilence, the two latter plagues of jerusalem.  
In giving them suitable phrase, had I the command of a thousand singular wits, I should bankroute them all in description. Pluck up a good courage mine infant pen, and wearily struggle (as well as thou mayst) through this huge word-dearthing task.  
The Storehouses burnt, the siege hard plied, the waste of victuals great, the husbanding of them none at all: there fell such an infestuous unsatiable famine amongst them, that if all the stones of jerusalem had been bread, and they should have tired on them, yet would they have been behind hand with their appetite. Their watery weasands were like to leap out of their mouths for meat, and in their crawling up to seek passage, ready to have been seized on by their jaws for sustenance. Like an over-hanging Rock eaten in with the tide, or Death that is near pictured, but with an upper chap only, so did their propendant breast-bones imminent-over-canopy their bellies.  
So many men as were in jerusalem, so many pale rawbone ghosts you would have thought you had seen. Even through their garments their rake-leane ribs appeared. Their sharp embossed Ankle bones, turned up the earth like a Ploughshare, when in going their feet swerved. The empty Air they would catch at in steed of meat, like as a Spaniel catcheth at a fly; the very dust they gnashed at as it slew, and their own arms and their legs they hardly forbore. Their teeth they would grind one against another, to a white powder like meal. The dirty moss on the pentisses of their houses, they gnawde off most greedily. Not a weed sprung up, but (ere it aspired half to his growth,) by them it was weeded and ravenously rauncht up. All the bushes and boughs, within, or round about jerusalem, were hewed down and field, for men (like briute beasts) to browse on.  
Within twelve mile compass of the City, where there were wont to be the most Elizian-like gardens, and flower-gilded fields under heaven, what for the Romans and them, was there not now left a crop of any Gourd or green thing. The Sedetious & the Soldiers would come running into the citizens houses, and taking them by the bosoms, cry aloud, Give us meat, Give us meat by the Lord we will have meat: rob, steal, run into the Tents of our enemies for meat for us, or we will make meat of you and your children. men's Cellars and Garrets for meat they searched. If there were but the blood of any thing spilled on the ground, like hungry dogs they would lick it up. Rats, Mice, Weafels, Scorpions, were no common men's iunckets.  
In the beginning of this scarcity, had any but a dish full of Corn left to send to the Mil, they were afraid to send it, for fear they should set all jerusalem together by the cares for it. Wherefore in their low under earth Vaults, they digged lower Caves, which covering with boards, and formally paving over, there they eat their Corn unground (closely,) because they would not be circumvented.  
Exceeding rich Magnificos stole victual one from another, and would lie in wait a whole week together to intercept but a chypping. The Father stole from the Son, and oftentimes tore the meat out of his mouth; the Son could scarce refrain from biting out his Father's throate-boule, when he saw him swallow down a bit that he died for. The Mother lurcht from them both, her young weaned Children (famished for want of nourishment) sastned their sharp edged gums on her fingers, and would not let them go, till she plucked the morsel out of her own maw to put into theirs. He that then had had a Kingdom, would have given it for a crust of bread.  
Not a Butterfly, Grasshopper, Worm, Nevet or Canker, but was persecuted, and sought out to satisfy emptiness. You should have seen a hundred together, fighting & scrambling about a dead Horse. Sometimes they would send their children far out of the City to gather roots and herbs, thinking that the Romans carried more honourable minds then to execute their utmost on them: but all was one, for they spared neither young nor old. Many Noblemen, eat the Leather of their Chariots as they rid. Miriam a Matron of great port, and of high lineage descended (having her receipt of digestion almost closed up with fasting) after she had sustained her life a large space, by scraping in chaff and muck-hils for beasts dung, and that means forsaking her, she had no other refuge of fosterment, she was constrained (for her lives supportance) having but one only son, to kill him and roast him.  
Mothers of London, (each one of you to yourselves) do but imagine that you were Miriam, with what heart (suppose you) could ye go about the cookery of your own children. Not hate but hunger, taught Miriam to forget mother-hood. To this purport conceit her discoursing with herself.  
It is better to make a Sepulchre for him in mine own body, then leave him to be licked up by over-goers feet in the street. The wrath of GOD is kindled in every corner of the City, Famine hath sworn to leave no breathing thing in her Walls; without the Walls, the Sword more usurpeth then Famine. Our enemies are merciless, for we have no eyes to see our own misery. Not they alone besiege us, but our sins also. Fire and Famine afflict us. We have wherewithal to feed Fire and Famine, but not wherewith to feed ourselves and our children. My son, my son, I cannot relieve thee, I have Gold and Silver to give thee, but not a pairing of any repast to preserve thee. My son, my son, why should I not kill famine by killing thee, ere Famine in excruciating thee, kill me. O my dear Babe, had I in every limb of me a several life, so many lives as I have limbs, to Death would I resign, to save thine one life. Save thee I may not though I should give my soul for thee. The greatest debt I have bound thee to me with, is by bearing thee in my womb: I'll bind thee to me again, in my womb I'll bear thee again, and there bury thee ere Famine shall confound thee: I will unswathe thy breast with my sharp knife, and break open the bone-walled prison where thy poor heart is locked up to be pined; Those Chains and Manacles of corruptive bowels (wherewith thy soul is now fettered,) will I free it from. I will lend Death a false key to enter into the closet of thy breast.  
Even as amongst the Indians, there is a certain people, that when any of their Kinsfolks are sick, save charges of Physic, and rather resolve (unnaturally) to eat them up, then day-diversifying Agues, or bloudboyling surfeits, should fit meal feed on them: so do I resolve, rather to eat thee up my son, and feed on thy flesh royally, then inward emperishing Famine should too untimely inage thee. Would God, as the men of Ephraim were not able distinctly to pronounce Shibboleth, so I could not distinctly pronoun this sweet name of My son: it is too sweet a name to come in slaughters mouth. Though David sung of mercy and judgement together, yet cannot I sing of cruelty and compassion together; remember I am a Mother, and play the murderess both at once. O therefore in my words do I strive to be tyrannous, that I may be the better able to enact with my hands. Seldom, or never, is there any that doth ill, but speaks ill first. The tongue is the encouraging Captain, that (with danger-glorifying persuasion,) animates all the other corporeal parts to be venturous. He is the judge that dooms and determines; the rest of our faculties & powers, are but the secular executioners of his sentence. Be priest mine hands (as jaile-garding officers) to see executed, whatsoever your superior tongue-slaying judge shall decree. Embrawne your soft-skined enclosure with Adamantine dust, that it may draw nothing but steel unto it. Arm yourselves against my son, not as my son, but my bed-intercepting Bastard, begotten of some strumpet. My heart shall receive an injunction imaginarily to disinherit him. No relenting thought of mine, shall retain you with repentant affectionate humours.  
I will bloodshot mine eyes, that all may seem sanguine they look on. Some dead man that is already slain, I'll anatomize & embowel, the more to flesh my fiagers in butchering. Ratified it is, (bad-fated Saturnine boy,) that thou must be Anthropophagized by thine own mother. Thou wert once the chief pillar of my posterity, and the whole reliance of my name: Well I hoped thou shouldst have revived and new grafted thy father's fame; I expected jerusalem should have had a strong prop of thee. And if at any time it were war-threatned, thy right arm should have re-tranquilized and rejoiced it: that the youngmen in their merry-running Madrigals, and sportive Base-bidding Roundelays for thee, should have honoured me: That the Virgins on their loud tinternelling Timbrils, and 
* A Balla●… French, i●… song tha●… sang dan●…  Ballad-singing dances, should have descanted on my praises.  
Mine age of thee expected all life-expedient necessaries. My sight put not on yeares-dimnesse so soon as it would have done, only trusting thou shouldst seal it up when Death had dusked it. My beauty-creasing cares, and frowne-imitating wrinkles, were wholly buried in the monumental grave, which I (misdeeming) deemed thy sword might dig me. All these my airy-bodied expectations, Famine hath dispersed. I must enter thee, thou canst not entomb me. Thy little soul to Heaven must be sent, to intelligence the calamity of jerusalem: God will have pity of thee, and (perhaps) pity jerusalem for thee. He surely will melt in remorse, and wither up the hand of his wrath, when in his ears it shall be clamoured, how the desolation he hath laid on jerusalem, hath compelled a tender-starued mother to kill and eat her only son. And yet his own only Child Christ jesus, (as dear to him as thou to me, my son) he sent into the world to be crucified.  
O sorrow conceiving Mothers, look to have all your children crucified, to have none of them remitted, since our Husbands have been so hardy, to lay harmful hands on the Lord of Life. Can GOD be more griefe-yeelding, with the loss and life-famishing of our innocent children, than he was at the giving up of his own only Son. That one deadly deed hath obdurated him, and made him a hard God to all Mothers. Famine, the Lord hath sent thee to heap a second curse upon Mothers. Never shall it be said, thou tookst from me my Son, his Father's Falchion shall send him to sleep with his Fathers. Neither shall his death be recorded as my crime in heavens judgement-booke, when I but only rid him (that is as good as dead already) out of the tedious pain of dying.  
I have no meat (my son) to bring thee up with; I have no ears to give idle passage to the plaints of thy pining. The enemies without and within, shall divide thy blouds-guilt betwixt them. Amongst the rabblement shalt thou not miscarry; I'll bear thee in my bosom to Paradise: Thy tomb shall be my stomach, with thy flesh will I feast me. This shall be all the child's tribute I will require of thee, for the six years life I have given thee, to cherish me but six days, and rather than Famine should consume me, to consume thyself in my sustenance. The foreskin of original sin shalt thou clean circumcise, by this one act of piety. Return into me, & see the mould wherein thou wert cast. As much pain in thy conception endured I for thee, as I will put thee to in thy departure. By nature we all desire to return to the soil from whence we came, wert thou of age to plead thine own desires, I know they would be accordant with mine. I am thy Mother and must desire for thee, I love thee more than thou canst thyself, therefore cannot my desires endamage thee. Into the Garden of Eden I will lead thee, but one gap broke open thy entrance is made. More shalt thou terrify the seditious by the constraintment of thy quartering, then if jehovah out of a cloud should speak to them.  
'tis not thou, but I, shall be counted opprobrious. Lo there goes the woman, shall they say, that hath sliced & eaten her own son. I am content to undergo any shame to abash and rebuke their faces. Sword, how ever I have flattered thee, look for no direction from mine eyes: for though with my hands I outrage, with mine eyes I cannot. Mine eyes are womanish, my hands are manly. Mine eyes will shed tears in steed of shedding blood: they will regard pitiful looks, the white skin, the comely proportion; the tender youth, the quiet lying like a Lamb, my hand beholdeth none of these: and yet it is my right hand, which should do every one right, much more mine own child. Right will I do thee (noble infant) in righting thee from the wrongs of Famine. Near shall the Romans have thee for their Ward. Thus, thus, (like blindfold Fortune) I right thee, mine eyes being veiled.  
At one stroke (even as these words were in speaking) she beheaded him, and when she had done, turning the Apron from of her own face on his, that the sight might not afreshly distemper her, without seeing, speaking, deliberating, or almost thinking any more of him, she sod, roast, and powdered him: and having eat as much as sufficed, set up the rest.  
The Seditious smelling the savour of a feast, (which at that time was no ordinary matter in jerusalem) roughly (in heaps) rushed and burst into the house, saying: wicked woman, thou hast meat, and traitorously concealest it from us: we'll tear thee in pieces if thou sets not part of it before us.  
With some few words of excuse before them, what she had brought, entertaning them in these, or like, terms.  
Eat I pray you, here is good meat, be not afraid, it is flesh of my flesh, I bore it, I nursed it, I suckled it. Lo; here is the head, the hands and the feet. It was mine own only son I tell you. Sweet was he to me in his life, but never so sweet as in his death. Behold his pale perboyld visage, how pretty-pitteous it looks. His pure snow-moulded soft flesh will melt of itself in your mouths: who can abstain from these two round teat-like cheeks? Be not dainty to cut them up, the rest of his body have I cut up to your hands.  
Cravens, cowards, recreants, sit you mute and amazed? Never entered you into consideration of your cruelty before? It is you that have robbed me of all my food, & so consequently robbed me of my only Son. Vengeance on your souls, & all the descending generations of the seed of your Tribes, for thus mirrouring me for the Monarch-monster of Mothers. No Chronicle that shall write of jerusalem's last captivity, but shall write of me also. Not any shall talk of God's judgement on this City, but for the cardinal judgement against it, shall recite mine enforcement to eat mine own child. I am a woman and have killed him and eat of him. My womanish stomach hath served me to that, which your manlike stomachs are dastarded with. What I have done, you have driven me to do; what you have driven me to do, now being done you are daunted with. Eat of my son one morsel yet, that it may memorise against you, ye are accessary to his dismembering. Let that morsel be his heart, if you will, that the greater may be your convictment.  
Men of war you are, who make no conscience of tearing out any man's heart for a morsel of bread. Most valiant Captains why forbear you, is not here your own diet, human blood? here is my sons breast, pierce it once again, for once you have pierced it with Famine. Are not you they that spoiled my house, and left me no kind of cherishment for me and my son? Feed on that you have slain and spare not. O my son, o mine only son, these Seditious are the devils that directed the sword against thy throat. They with their armed hands, have crammed thy flesh into my palate: Now poison them with thy flesh, for it is they that have supplanted thee. Renowned is thine end, for in jerusalem is none hath resisted Famine but thou. Me thou hast fed, thyself thou hast freed. 'Tis thou only that at the latter day shalt condemn these Seditious. Excuse me, that only what I could not choose committed. I did all for the best. The best remedy of thine unrepriveable perverse destiny was death: therefore I devoured thee that fowls of the air might not rend thee. For sauce to thy flesh, have I infused my tears, who so dippeth in them, shall taste of my sorrow.  
The Rebels hearing this, were wholly metamorphized into melancholy; yea, the Chiefetanes of them were overclouded in conceit. Was never till this ever heard from Adam, that a woman eat her own Child. Was never such a desolation as the desolatian of jerusalem.  
As touching the Pestilence, some short peroration is now to succeed. Of it there died more than a hundred thousand during the time of the siege. Out of the least gate of jerusalem, (which was that towards the Brook Cedron,) were carried forth to burial, a hundred fifteen thousand, a hundred and eight persons: all which were of the Nobles, Gentlemen, and substantialest men of the jews. Many fled to Titus, who when they came to meat, could eat none of it, but died with the very sight thereof. Of those that fled, a great number swallowed up their Gold and their jewels, which (being clearly escaped) they sought amongst their excrements. But when by the Aramites, and Arabians, (Titus mercenary Soldiers) it was perceived, they slew them outright, and ripped their bowels for their gold, and so left them to the Eagles and Ravens. Two thousand by this covetise slept their last. The Princes of the jews, (which Titus as submissioners and succour-suers had received to mercy,) he straightly examined on their allegiance and fidelity, how many were dead in the City since he first beleaguered it: & the number was given up, (namely of such as were carried forth at all gates to be buried, and were slain in battle,) seven hundred thousand, five hundred, seventy and five, besides many thousands that in the streets and Temple lay unburied, and were cast down into the Brook Cedron. The whole Bill (when the siege was concluded) came to eleven hundred thousand, all which in fourteen months misfortuned.  
Sixteen thousand Titus led prisoners to Rome, (those omitted which under Eleazers conduct perished.) The Sanctum sanctorum was set on fire, and the Priests therein smothered. All the antic buildings were burnt and beaten down. Of David, Solomon, or the old Kings of Israel, was there no Trophy remaining, no stone but discituate. jerusalem was left, not as jerusalem, but a naked plot of ground; And as it was said of Priam's Town, jam seges est, ubi Troia fuit, now is that a Cornfield, that was erst called Troy: So that is now a Mount of stones, that in years past was entitled jerusalem.  
O jerusalem, jerusalem, what shall I say to thee more but Christ foretold thy House should be left desolate unto thee: and lo, as he foretold it is fallen out.  
Of all thy gates that were plated over with silver, is there not so much as one nail remaining. Thy streets were paved with Marble, and thy houses jetted out with japhy and Cedar: that pavement, those houses, thy habitation (like dust engraven Letters) is quite abrased and ploughed up. Thine enemies on thy Sanctury took compassion, (beholding the glory of it) thou took'st none. Titus (an Infidel) understanding the multitude of thy profanations and contumacies, was afraid (having entered thee) to stay in thee, saying: Let us hence, lest their sins destroy us. Nothing thou feared'st, in Old-wives fables thou beleeued'st: with Talmudistical dreams (that thy Temple after her destruction should be built up in a day) thyself thou deludest. And whereas thou hadst a Prophecy that thy Sanctuary should not be prostituted, till out of thy quarters sprung a Monarch of the whole Earth, thou wert blinded, and wantedst the sense, in Vespasian to pick out his expletement. For he, coming into judea but as a subjecteth General to the Roman Empire, by his own Soldiers (against his will) was there consecrated Emperor: and so out of thy dominions, or quarters, departed he, leaving his son Titus behind him to sack thee.  
See with how many deceits thou art circumvented, for calling Christ a circumuenter and deceiver. For stoning him and his Prophets, and using such great injustice 
Math. 27. 25.  to S. james (his cozen according to the flesh,) josephus, & Eusehus agree all those plagues were laid upon thee. But to the imprecation ascribe I it rather, wherewith when Pilate washed his hands, thou cursedst thyself, saying: His blood be upon us, and our children. Inhuman policy another cause I conjecture. Thoulers Eleazar, a private man, take the sword of thy freedom into his hands unauthorised; Thou suffered'st him (unpunished) to resist the Roman Provincial Plorus: Ill didst thou therein, for in government, (though it be to resist public violence,) it is not safe to suffer a private man to under-take Arms as general. The reasons, hereafter, I will open in some other discourse, treating wholly of those matters.  
The chief reason of thy confusion, was the ripeness of thy sins, which were seeded for want of Gods putting his sickle into them. jerusalem, If I were to describe Hell, some part of thy desolation description would I borrow, to make it more horror-some. Eleven hundred thousand, for these few words, but thou wouldst not, most wretchedly lost their lives. If but one line (thy House shall be left desolate unto thee) included all this, what doth the whole Scripture include? Not a piece of a line in it that talks of the Lake of Fire and Brimstone, but by a hundred thousand parts more importeth. It is a quiver of short Arrows, which never show their length till they be full shot out, a ball of Wildfire round wrapped up together, which burneth not but cast forth, a close wound clue, conducting those that deal unadvisedly with it, into the Minotaurs Labyrinth of pain everlasting.  
I would wish no man to be too mild in expounding it. It hath more edges to smite with then it shows: It is not silly in operation, though it be simple in appearance. jerusalem, not all thy seventy Esdrean Cabalizers, who traditionately from Moses received the Laws interpretation, could ever rightly teach thee to divine of the crucified Messias. The Scripture thou madest a tooto compound Cabalistical substance of, by canonizing such a multifarious Genealogy of Comments.  
Hitherto stretcheth the prosecution of thy desolation. Now to London must I turn me, London that turneth from none of thy lefthand impieties. As great a desolation as jerusalem, hath London deserved. Whatsoever of jerusalem I have written, was but to lend her a Looking-glass. Now I enter into my true Tears, my Tears for London, wherein I crave pardon, though I deal more searchingly then common Soule-Surgions accustom: for in this Book, wholly have I bequeathed my pen and my Spirit, to the prosternating and enforrowing the frontiers of sin. So let it be acceptable to God and his Church what I write, as no man in this Treatise I will particularly touch, none I will semovedly allude to, but only attaint vice in general.  
Pride shall be my principal aim, which in London hath plat-formed another Sky-undersetting Tower of Babel. jonathan shot five Arrows beyond the mark, I fear I shall shoot fifteen Arrows behind the mark, 
King. 19 22.  in describing this high-towring sin.  
O Pride, of all Heaven-relapsing premunires the most fearful: thou that ere this hast disparradized our first Parent Adani, and vnrightuouzed the very Angels, how shall I arm mine elocution, to break through the ranks of thy bily stumbling blocks. After the destruction of Antwerp, thou being thrust out of house and home, and not knowing whither to betake thee) at hap hazard embarkedst for England. Where hearing rich London was the ful-streamed wel-head, unto it thou hastedst, and there hast dwelled many years, begetting sons and daughters. Thy sons names are these, Ambition, Vainglory, Atheisine, Discontent, Contention. Thy daughters, Disdain, Gorgeous-attire, and Delicacy. O had Antwerp still flourished, that thou hadst near come hither to mis-fashion us, or that there were any City would take thy children to halves with us.  
Thy first son Ambition, is waxed a great Courtier, and maketh him wings of his long Furies hair, to fly up to Heaven with: he hath a throne raised up under his heels in every startup he treads on. His back bandieth colours with the Sun. The ground he thinketh extremely honoured and beholding to him, if he bless it but with one humble look. Nothing he talks on but kentals of Pearl, the conquering of India, and fishing for Kingdoms. Fame he makes his God, and men's mouths the limit of his conscience. So many greater as there are then himself, so many griefs he hath. The devil may command all his heart and soul, if he will rid him but of one rival. He that but crosseth him in the course of his ascension, either killeth him outright, (if he be above his reach) or is sure (kill he not first) in the end to killed by him.  
Poor men he looks should part with all their goods, to have him but take knowledge of them; He seeks to get him a Majesty in his frown, and do something to seem terrible to the multitude. Even courtesy and humility he perverteth to pride, where he cannot otherwise pray. Hath no child of pride so many disciples as this tiptoe Ambition. Why call I him Ambition, when he hath changed his name unto Honour? I mean not the honour of the field, (Ambitions only enemy) which I could wish might be ever, and only, honourably, but Brokerly blown up honour, honour by antic fawning fiddled up, honour bestowed for damned deserts.  
Of this kind of honour is this Elf (we call Ambition) compacted. Yet will I not say, but even in the highest noblest birth, and honourablest glory of Arms, there may be Ambition. David was ambitious when he caused the people to be numbered. Nabuchadnezzar eat grass for his Ambition. Herod was Ambitious, when in Angelical apparel he spoke to the people. The truest image of this kind of Ambition was Absolom.  
julius Caesar amongst the Ethnics surmounted, who when he had conquered Gallia, Belgia, this our poor Albion, and the better part of Europe, and upon his return to Rome was crowned Emperor, in the height of his prosperity, he sent men skilled in Geometry, to measure the whole world, that whereas he intended to conquer it all, he might know how long he should be in overrunning it. Letters had they directed to all Precedents, Consuls, Dukes, Palatines, Tetrarches, and judges of Provinces to assist them & safe conduct them. Their Commission was not only to measure the earth, but the Waters, the Woods, the Seas, the Shores, the Valleys, the Hills, and the Mountains. In this discovery thirty years were spent, from his Consulship, to the Consulship of Saturnius, when God-wot poor man, twenty years good before they returned, he was all to be-poyniarded in the Senate house, and had the dust of his bones in a brazen urn (no bigger than a bowl) barrelled up, whom (if he had lived) all the Sea, and Earth, and Air, would have been too little for.  
Let the ambitious man stretch out his limbs never so, he taketh up no more ground (being dead) than the Beggar. London, of many ambitious busy heads, hast thou beheld the rising and down falling. In thy stately School are they first tutored in their Art. With example thou first exaltest them, and still lifts them up, till thou hast lifted up their heads on thy gates.  
What a thing is the heart of man, that it should swell so big as the whole world. Alexander was but a little man, yet if there had been a hundred Worlds to conquer, his heart would have comprised them. Did men consider whereof they were made, and that the dust was their great Grandmother, they would be more humiliate and dejected; Of a britler metal than Glass, is this we call Ambition made, and to mischances more subject. Glass with good usage may be kept and continue many ages. The days of man are numbered, threescore and ten is his term, if he live any longer, it is but labour and sorrow.  
Glass feareth not sickness, nor old age, it gathereth no wrinkles with standing. It hath not so many that scout and lie in wait for his end as Ambition: for he (as all mankind) is continually liable to a million of mischances; beside, a legion of diseases linger about him. Admit none of those meet with him, Time with his Sickle will be sure not to miss him. A man may scape a sickness, a blow, a fall, a wildbeast: he cannot escape his last destiny. External dangers (such as these be) every one is circumspect and careful to avoid; Not any one ponders in his thought, how to avoid the death that grows inward.  
From the rich to the poor (in every street in London) there is Ambition, or swelling above their states: the rich Citizen swells against the pride of the prodigal Courtier; the prodigal Courtier swells against the wealth of the Citizen. One Company swells against another, and seeks to intercept the gain of each other: nay, not any Company but is divided in itself. The ancients, they oppose themselves against the younger & suppress them and keep them down all that they may. The young men, they call them dotards, and swell & rage, and with many oaths swear on the other side, they will not bekept under by such cullions, but go good and near to out-shoulder them.  
Amongst their Wives is like war. Well did Aristotle in the second of Physics, call sins Monsters of nature, for as there is no Monster ordinarily reputed, but in a swelling or excess of form, so is there no sin but is a swelling or rebelling against God. Sin (saith Augustine) is either thought, word or deed, opposite to the eternal will of God. Then if all sins be opposing themselves against God, surely ambition (which is part of the devils sin) cannot but be the cherrishing of open enmity against God: and so immediate I conclude, that so many ambitious men as are amongst us, so many open enemies God hath.  
Ambition is any puft-up greedy humour of honour or preferment. No puffing or swelling up in any man's body but is a sore, when the soul doth swell with ambition, both soul and body (without timely physic of repentance) will smart full sore for it. Humility was so hard a virtue to beat into our heads, that Christ purposely came down from heaven in his own person to teach it us, and continued thirty years together, nothing but preaching and practising it here upon earth. The foolish things of the world, (saith Paul) God chooseth, and not the haughty or ambitious in conceit. God might 
1. Cor. 3.  have chosen Kings and Emperors, or the Scribes and pharisees to be his Disciples, but foolish Fishermen he chose.  
In worldly policy he used a foolish course to win credit to his doctrine: but foolish is the worldly policy, that only from the devil borrows his instance. Christ chose them, whom the devil scorned to look so low as to tempt, in whose hearts he had not yet laid one stone of his building. They were the only fit men to receive the impression of his Spirit. Whether it be a blessing or no, given to all Fishermen (for the Apostles sakes) I know not, but surely there is no one trade (in their vocation) lives so faithfully & painfully as Fishermen, that in their apparel or diet less exceed. He that should have told the devil. Christ would cast his nets amongst Fishermen, he would have laughed him out of his coat for a coxcomb. What reason, what likelihood was there, was he borne in a Fisher-towne? was he allied either by the Father or the Mother to Fishermen, Nay, how should he come almost in all his life to hear of a Fisherman? Tush, tush, he will be altogether in the Temple amongst the Doctors, the High-priests and the Elders: them will I ply, and waylay against him.  
To their unbelief I will lend arguments. They have the seeds of ambition rooted in their hearts already. I will put in their heads, that he cometh to destroy their Law and their Temple, and turn them all out of their stately chairs of authority: and this (I think) will tickle them thoroughly against him.  
Simple devil, Christ deceived thee, and only in this he deceived thee, that thou imaginedst his pride & ambition to be like thine, and never look'st for him amongst Netmenders. I dare swear for thee, thou wouldst have sooner sought for him amongst Carpenters. But when thou foundst how thou wert overreached, I think thou ran'st to them (from one to another) with cap in hand, to request them to betray him. And every one shaked thee off churlishly but judas, and on him hadst thou not had power, but that he carried the purse. It is a hard thing for him that carries the purse, (that hath money and gold at command) not to be moved with ambition.  
Peter, james and john, had you been any thing but beggarly Fishermen, and that you had ever lived but a hungerd and cold by the Seaside, or once come into the great Towns where Ambition sits in her Majesty, and bewitcheth all eyes, (before Christ met with you,) the devil had caught hold of you. For your sakes all other of your profession shall far the worse. Beware Fishermen, the devil owes you an old grudge, he takes you for dangerous men. Till your predecessors the Apostles so went beyond him, he never suspected you, he never tempted you: now he will sooner tempt you, and be more busy about you then Kings and Emperors.  
Those that will shun Ambition, (for which the wrath of God hangeth heavy over this our City,) must withdraw their eyes from vanities, have something still to put them in mind where of they are made, and whether they must. My young novice (what ever thou be) not yet crept out of the shell, I say unto thee as the Prophet said to the King of Israel, cave ne eas in locum illum, nam ibi insidiae sunt: Beware thou comest not in that place, for there thou art beset; So beware thou comest not to the Court, or to London, for there thou shalt be beset. Beset with ambition, beset with vanity, beset with all the sins that may be. The way to know Ambition when it invades thee, is to observe and watch thyself when thou first fallest into a self-love: if self-love hath seized on thee, she will stand on no mean terms, nor be content to live as a common drudge. None (in any case) must stand in her light, the Sun must shine on none but her. Whatsoever a man naturally desires, is Ambition. Quod habere non vis est valde bonum, quod esse non vis hoc est bonum. There is nothing is not Ambition, but that which a man would not have, or would not be. Having food and clothing, (as Paul willeth 
1. Tim. 6.  us) let us be content: what more we require to content, is Ambition. What more than the contented blessed state of an Angel the devil gaped after, was that which cast him out of Heaven. We are sent in warfare into this world, to bear arms and sight it out with the devils chief Basso, Ambition. Under Christ's standard we march, he is our Leader, small is his Army, and but a handful in comparison of the others: his outward pomp simple, his provision (in sight) slender or none at all.  
If upon these cousiderations (as distrusting his providence,) we shall grow in mislike with him, and revolt to Ambition his enemy, and betray him, shall we ever look him in the face more, or will he ever after acknowledge us? O no, not only he shall forsake us, but that rich braving Basso, Ambition: (like a wise Prince that will trust no Traitors.) As soon as ever they are come near him, down the hill they climbed up to him, shall he headlong reverse them.  
Even in this dilatement against Ambition, the devil seeks to set in a foot of affected applause, and popular fame's Ambition in my style, so as he incited a number of Philosophers (in times past,) to prosecute their ambition of glory, in writing of glories contemptibleness. I resist it and abhor it, if any thing be here penned that may pierce or profit, heavenly Christ (not I) have the praise. London look to Ambition, or it will lay thee desolate like jerusalem. Only the ambitious shaking off the yoke of the Romans, was the bane of jerusalem. The dust in the streets (being come of the same house that we are of, and seeing us so proud and ambitious,) thinks with herself, why should not she, that is descended as well as we, raise up her plumes as we do. And that's the reason she borrows the wings of the wind so oft to mount into the air: and many times she dasheth herself in our eyes, as who would say, Are you my Kinsmen and will not know me? O what is it to be Ambitious, when the dust of the street (when it pleaseth her) can be Ambitious.  
The jews ever when they mourned, rend their garments, as it were to take revenge on them for making them proud and Ambitious, and keeping them all the while from the sight of their nakedness. Then they put on Sackcloth, and that Sackcloth they sprinkled over with dust, and overwhelmed with ashes, to put God in mind, that if he should arm his displeasure against them, he should but contend with dust & ashes: and what glory or praise could they afford him? Shall the dust praise thee (saith David) or those that go down to the pit glorify thee? Besides, it signified, that whereas they had lifted themselves above their creation, and forgot by whom and of what they were made, now they repented and returned to their first image; In all prostrate humility they confessed, that the breath of the Lord, (as easy as the wind disperseth dust) might disperse them, and bring them to nothing. Did Ambition afford us any content, or were it ought but a desire of disquiet, it were somewhat.  
O Augustine, now I call to mind the tale of thy conversion, in the sixth Chapter of thy sixth book of Confessions, where describing thyself to be a young man, puffed up with the Ambition of that time, thou wert chosen to make an Oration before the Emperor, in which, (having toiled thy wirs to their highest wrist,) thou thought'st to have purchased Heaven and immortality.  
Coming to pronounce it, thy tongue (like Orpheus' strings) drew all ears unto it: the Emperor thou exceedingly pleasedst, because thou exceedingly & hyperbolically praisedst. Admiration encompassed thee, & commendation stro●…e to be as eloquent as thou in thy commendation. But what was all this to the purpose, the Bladder was burst that had so long swelled, wind thou spents, and nought but wind thou gainedst. For good words, good words were returned thee: like one that gave Augustus Greek verses, and he for his reward gave him Greek verses again. The heaven thou dreamedst of, being attained, seemed so inferior to thy hopes, that it cast thee headlong into hell; Home again (in a melancholy) with thy companions thou returnedst, where by the way in a green Meadow, thou espiedst a poor drunken Beggar (his belly being full) heighing, leaping and dancing, fetching strange youthful frisks, and taking care for nothing. With that thousighedst, and entredst into this discourse with thy companions.  
O what is Ambition, that it should not yield so much content as beggary? Miserable is that life where none is happy but the miserable. Travel & care for wealth, riches and honour, is but care & travel for travel and care. Mad and foolish are we, who watch and study how to vex ourselves, and in hunting after a vain shadow of felicity, hunt and start up more and more causes of perplexity. This Beggar hath not burnt candles all night a month together as I have done, he hath made no Oration to the Emperor to day, and yet he is merry: I that have poored out mine eyes upon books, and well-nigh spit out all my brain at my tongues end this morning, am dampish, drowsy, and wish myself dead: and yet if any man should ask me if I would willingly die, or exchange my state with the Beggar, I fear I should hardly condescend. Such is my ambition, such is my foolish delight in my unrest.  
He having but a little money, and a few dunghill rags clouted together on his back, hath true content, I (with my grievous heartbreakings and painful complots,) have laid to overtake it, and canno●…. He is jocund, I am joyless: he secure, I fearful. There is no learning or Art leading to true felicity, but the Art of beggary. Ungrateful knowledge, that for all the bodywasting industry I have used in thy compasment, hast not blest me so much as this Beggar. I having thee, he wanting thee, is preferred in heartsease before me. No delight or hearts-ease received I from thee, for I have spoke not to teach, but to please. Vild double-faced Oratory, that art good for nothing but to fatten sin with thy flattery, that callest it giving immortality, when thou magnifiest vices for virtues, and challengest great deserts of Kings and nobility for dissembling: here I renounce thee as the Parasite of Arts, the whorish painter of imperfections, and only Patroness of sin.  
To this scope (reverend Augustine) tended thy plaintive speech, though I have not expressed it in the same words: but the operation in thee it brought forth, was that from the meditation of beggarly content, thou wadedst (by degrees) into the depth of the true heavenly content. O singular work contrived by weak means. O rarely honoured beggary, to be the instrument of recalling so rich a soul. O faithless and perverse generation, (saith Christ unto us as he said to the jews,) how 
Math. 17  long shall I be with you, how long shall I suffer you, ere my miracles work in you the like meditation. All of you are ambitious of much prosperity, long life and many days for your bodies: none of you have care of the posterity of your souls.  
There is a place in the I'll of Paphos where there never fell rain: there is a place within you called your hearts, where no drops of the dew of grace can have access; Your days are as swift as a Post, yea swifter than a weavers shuttle, they fly and see no good thing: yet fly you swifter to hell then they. Veniunt anni ut eant, (saith Austin) non veniunt ut stant, years come that they may travel on, and not stand still: passing by us they spoil us, and lay us open to the tyranny of a cruel enemy, Death. O if we love so this miserable and finite life, how ought we to love that celestial and infinite life, where we shall enjoy all pleasures so plentiful, that Ambition shall have nothing overplus to work on.  
Here we labour, drudge and moil, yet for all our labouring, drudging and moiling, cannot number the things we lack. We are never long at ease, but some cross or other afflicteth us. As the earth is compassed round with waters, so are we (the inhabitants thereof) compassed round with woes. We see great men die, strong men die, witty men die, fools die, rich Merchants, poor Artificers, Plowmen, Gentlemen, high men, low men, wearish men, gross men, and the fairest complexioned men die, yet we persuade ourselves we shall never die. Or if we do not so persuade ourselves, why prepare we not to die? Why do we reign as Gods on the earth that are to be eaten with worms? Should a man with Zerxes, but enter into this conceit with himself, that as he sees one old man carried to burial, so within threescore years, not one of all our glisteting Courtiers, not one of all our fair Ladies, not one of all our stout Soldiers and Captains, not one of all this age throughout the world should be left, what a damp and deadly terror would it strike. Temples of stone and Marble decay and fall down, then think not Ambition to outface death, that art but a Temple of flesh. Dives died and was buried, Lazarus died and was buried, brasen-fore-head Ambition, thou shalt die and be buried. King or Queen whatever, thou shalt die and be buried.  
Alas, what mad harebrained sots are we, we will take up a humour of Ambition which we are not able to uphold, and know assuredly (ere many years) we must be thrown down from: yet come what will, (at all adventures) we will go thorough with it; We will be Gods and Monarches in our life, though we be devils after death. Over and over I repeat it double and treble, that the spirit of monarchizing in private men, is the spirit of Lucifer. Christ said to his Disciples, He that will be greatest amongst you, shall be the least: so say I, that he which will be the greatest in any state, or seeketh to make his posterity greatest, shall be the least; The least accounted of, the least reverenced, (for none that is getting ambitious, but is generally hated.) His posterity (though he establish them never so) shall not hold out. fools shall squander, in an hour, all the avarice of their ambitious wise Ancestors.  
Ambition, on the sands thou buildest, regard thy soul more than thy sons & daughters: let poor men glean after thy Cart, cast thy bread upon the Waters. Thy greediness of the World, teacheth the devil to be greedy of thy soul. He accuseth his spirits and upbraideth them of sloth by thee, saying: Mortal men in these and these many years, can heap together so many thousands, and what is it that they have a mind to, which they get not into their hands: but you Drones and Dormice, (that in celerity & quickness should out-start them,) lie sleeping & stretching yourselves by the hearth of hell-fire, and have no care to look about for the increase of our Kingdom. Heaven gate is no bigger than the eye of a needle, yet ambitious worldly men (having their backs like a Camels, bunched with cares, and betrapped with bribes and oppressions,) think to enter in at it.  
Ambition, Ambition hearken to me, there will be a black day when thy Ambition shall break his neck, when thou shalt lie in thy bed as on a Rack, stretching out thy joints: when thine eyes shall start out of thy head, and every part of thee be wrung as with the wind-chollick. In midst of thy fury and malady, when thou shalt laugh and trifle, folter with thy tongue, rattle in thy throat, be busy in folding and doubling the clothes, and seratching and catching whatsoever comes near thee: then (as the possessed with the Calentura,) thou shalt offer to leap, and cast thyself out of the top of thine house, thou shalt burst thy bowels and crack thy cheeks in striving to keep in thy soul; When thou shouldst look up to Heaven, thou shalt be overlooking thy Will, and altering some clause of it, when thou shouldst be commending thy spirit.  
In thy life hast thou sought more than what is needful, therefore at thy death shalt thou neglect that is needful. Ambition, (like jerusalem) thou knowest not the time of thy visitation: for thou hast sought in this world to gather great promotions unto thee, and not gather thyself under Christ's wing, Thy house shall be lest desolate unto thee.  
A special branch of this Ambition is Avarice, as riches or covetise there is nothing that so engenders Ambition. Every Tree, every Apple, every Grain, every Herb, every Fruit, every Weed hath his several worm: the worm of wealth is Ambition, the spur to Ambition is wealth. Ambition's self we have displayed sufficiently, his supporter we will now call in question. Dificile est, (saith an ancient Father) ut non sit superbus qui dives, tolle superbiam, divitiae non nocebunt: It is a very difficult thing for him not to be proud or ambitious that is rich, take away his ambition, his riches never hurt him.  
Riches have hurt a great number in England, who if their riches had not been, had still been men and not Ti●…nists. Riches as they have renowned, so they have reproached London. It is now grown a Proverb, That there is no merchandise but usury. I dare not affirm it, but questionless, Usury crieth to the children of Prodigality in the strects: All you that will take up money or commodities, on your Land or possibilities, to banquet, riot, and be drunk, come unto us and you shall be furnished: for gain we will help to damn both your souls and our own. God in his mercy never call them to their audit. God in his mercy rid them all out of London, and then it were to be hoped the plague would cease, else never.  
jeremy saith, Woe be to him that buildeth his house with unrighteousness, and his chambers without equity, whose eyes 
jere. 22  and whose heart are only for covetousness, and to shed innocent blood. The eyes and the heart of Usurers, are only for covetousness and to shed innocent blood. More Gentlemen by their entanglement and exactions, have they driven to desperate courses, and so consequently made away and murdered, then either France, the Low-countries, or any foreign siege or Sea this 40. years. Tell me (almost) what Gentleman hath been cast away at Sea, or disasterly souldiourized it by Land, but they have enforced him thereunto by their fleeeing. What is left for a man to do, being consumed to the bare bones by these greedy Horseleeches, and not having so much reserved as would buy him bread, but either to hang at Tyburn, or pillage and reprisal where he may. Huge numbers in their stinking Prisons they have starved, and made Dice of their bones, for the devil to throw at dice for their own souls.  
This is the course now a days every one taketh to be rich: being a young Trader, and having of old Mumpsimus (his avaricious Master) learned to be his Craftsmaster, for a year or two he is very thrifty, and husbandly he pays & takes as duly as the clock strikes, he seemeth very sober and precise and bringeth all men in love with him. When he thinketh he hath thoroughly wrung himself into the World's good opinion, and that his credit is as much as he will demand, he goes and tries it, and on the tenterhooks stretches it. No man he knoweth but he will scrape a little Book courtesy of, two or three thousand pound (perhaps) makes up his mouth. When he hath it all in his hands, for a month or two he revels it, and cuts it out in the whole cloth.  
He falls acquainted with Gentlemen, frequents Ordinaries and Dicing-houses daily, where when some of them (in play) have lost all their money, he is very diligent at hand, on their Chains, or Bracelets, or jewels, to lend them half the value: Now this is the nature of young Gentlemen, that where they have broke the Ice and borrowed once, they will come again the second time; and that these young foxes know, as well as the Beggar knows his dish. But at the second time of their coming, it is doubtful to say whether they shall have money or no. The world grows hard, and we all are mortal, let them make him any assurance before a judge, and they shall have some hundred pounds (per consequence) in Silks and Velvets. The third time if they come, they shall have base commodities: the fourth time Lute strings and grey Paper; And then I pray pardon me, I am not for you, pay me that you owe me and you shall have any thing.  
When thus this young Usurer hath thrust all his pedlary into the hands of novice heirs, and that he hath made of his 3. thousand, nine thousand in Bonds and Recognizances, (besides the strong faith of the forfeitures) he breaks, and cries out amongst his neighbours, that he is undone by trusting Gentlemen; his kind heart hath made him a beggar: and warns all men (by his example) to beware how they have any dealings with them. For a quarter of a year or thereabouts, he slips his neck out of the collar, and sets some grave man of his kindred, (as his Fatherinlaw or such like,) to go and report his lamentable mischance to his Creditors, and what his honest care is to pay every man his own as far as he is able. His Creditors (thinking all is Gospel he speaks, and that his state is lower ebbed than it is,) are glad to take any thing for their own: so that whereas three thousand pound is due, in his absence all is satisfied for eight hundred, (his Fatherinlaw making them believe he lays it out of his own purse.)  
All matters thus underhand discharged, my young Merchant returns, and sets up fresher than ever he did. Those Bonds and Statutes he hath, he puts in suit amain. For a hundred pound commodity, (which is not forty poand money,) he recovers by relapse, some hundred pound a year. In three Terms, of a bankrupt he waxeth a great landed man, and may compare with the best of his Company. O intolerable Usury not the jews (whose peculiar sin it is,) have ever committed the like.  
What I write is most true, and hath been practised by more than one or two. I have a whole Book of young gentlemen's cases lying by me, which if I should set forth, some grave Ancients (within the hearing of Bow-bell) would be out of charity with me. How ever I fly from particularities, this I will prove, that never in any City (since the first assembly of societies) was ever suffered such notorious cozenage and villainy, as is shrouded under this seaventie-fold usury of commodities. It is a hundred parts more hateful than Coney-catching: it is the Nurse of sins, without the which, the fire of them all would be extinguished, and want matter to feed on.  
Poets talk of enticing Sirens in the Sea, that on a sunny-day lay forth their golden trammels, their ivory necks, and their silver breasts to entice men, sing sweetly, glance piercingly, play on Lutes ravishingly; but I say, There is no such Sirens by Sea as by Land, nor women as men: those are the Sirens, that hang out their shining Silks and Velvets, and dazzle Pride's eyes with their deceitful haberdashry. They are like the Serpent that tempted Adam in Paradise, who whereas God stinted him, what trees and fruits he should eat on, and go no further, he enticed him to break the bonds of that stint, and put into his head what a number of excellent pleasures he should reap thereby; So whereas careful Fathers send their children to this City, in all gentlemanlike qualities to be trained up, and stint them to a moderate allowance, sufficient (indifferently husbanded) to maintain their credit every way, and profit them in that they are sent hither for: what do our covetous City bloodsuckers, but hire Panders, and professed parasitical Epicures, to close in with them, and (like the Serpent) to alienate them from that civil course wherein they were settled. 'tis riot and misgovernment, that must deliver them ower into their hands to be devoured.  
Those that here place their children to learn wit, and see the world, are like those that in Africa present their children (when they are first borne) before Serpents: which if the children (they so present) with their very sight scare away the Serpents, then are they legitimate, otherwise they are Bastards. A number of poor children & sucklings (in comparison) are in the Court, and Inns of Court, presented to these Serpents, and stinging Extortioners of London, who never fly from them, but with their tail wind them in, and suck out their souls without scarring their skin. Whether they be legitimate or no, that are so exposed to these Serpents, I dare not determine, for fear of envy; But sure legitimately (or as they should) they are not brought up, that are manumited from their parent's awe, as soon as they can go and speak.  
Zeuxes having artificially yainted a Boy carrying Grapes in a Hand-basket, and seeing the Birds (as they had been true Grapes) come in flocks & peck at them; was wonderfully angry with himself and his Art, saying: Had I painted the Boy (which was the chief part of my picture) as well as I have do the grapes, (which were but a by accident belonging to it,) the Birds durst never have been so bold; So if Fathers would have but as much care, to paint and form the manners of their children, (when they come to man's estate) as they have well to proportion out trifles, (to instruct and educare them in their trivial infent years,) sure these ravenous Birds, (such as Brokers and Usurers) would never fly to them, and peck at them as they do.  
O Country Gentlemen, I wonder you do not lay your heads together and put up a general supplication to the Parliament, against those privy Canker worms & Caterpillars. Which of you all but (amongst them) hath his Heir cozened, fetched in, and almost consumed past recovery; Besides, his mind is clean transposed from his original, all deadly sin he is infected with, all diseases are hanging about him.  
If one 'tice a Prentice to rob his Master, it is felony by the law; nay, it is a great penalty, if he do but relieve him and encourage him, being fled from his masters obedience and service: and shall we have no Law for him that ticeth a son to rob his Father? Nay, that shall rob a Father of his son, rob God of a soul? Every Science hath some principles in it, which must be believed, and cannot be declared. The principles and practices of usury exceed declaration, believe them to be lewder than pen can with modesty express; inquire not after them, for they are execrable. De rebus male acquisitis, non gaudebit tertius heres, Ill gotten goods never trouble the third heir. Every plant (saith Christ) my heavenly father hath not planted, shall be rooted out. Plant they never so their posterity with the revenues of oppression, since God hath not planted them, they shall be ruined and rooted out. As they have supplanted other men's posterity, so must they look to have their own posterity supplanted by others.  
Augustine in the fourth Chapter of his second Book of Confessions, pitifully complaineth how heinously he had offended when he was a young man, in leading his companions to rob a Peartree in their next neighbour's Orchard: Amavi perire O Domine, (he exclaims) amavi perire, amavi defectum turpis animae et desiliens a Firmamento: malitie me caeusa nulla esset nifimalitia: I loved to perish (O Lord,) I loved to perish, in my ungraciousness I delighted (foul of soul that I was) and quite sliding from the Firmament: of my malice there was no cause but malice. Of the stealing and beating down of a few Pears, this holy Father makes such a burdenous matter of conscience, as that he counted it his utter perrishing and backsliding from the Firmament: Usurers make no conscience of cozening and robbing men of whole Orchards, of whole fields, of whole Lordships; Of their malice and theft, there is some other cause then malice, which is Avarice.  
If the stealing of one Apple in Paradise, brought such an universal plague to the world, what a plague to one soul will the robbing of a hundred Orphans of their possessions and fruite-yards bring? In the Country the Gentleman takes in the Commons, racketh his Tennaunts, undoth the Farmer. In London the Usurer snatcheth up the Gentleman, gives him Rattles and Babies for his overracked rent, and the Commons he took in, he makes him take out in commodities. None but the Usurer is ordained for a scourge to Pride and Ambition. Therefore it is that Bees hate Sheep more than any thing, for that when they are once in their wool, they are so entangled that they can never get out. Therefore it is that Courtiers hate Merchants more than any men, for that being once in their books, they can never get out. Many of them carry the countenances of Sheep, look simple, go plain, were their hair short, but they are no Sheep, but Sheep-byters: their wool or their wealth, they make no otheruse of but to snarl and enwrap men with. The law (which was instituted to redress wrongs and oppressions,) they wrest contrarily, to oppress and to wrong with. And yet that's not so much wonder, for Law, Logic and the Switzers, may be hired to fight for any body; and so may an Usurer (for a halfpenny gain) be hired to bite any body. For as the Bear cannot drink but he must bite the water, so cannot he cool his avaricious thirst, but he must pluck and bite out his Neighbour's throat.  
Bursa Aua●…os est diaboli, the usurers purse is Hell mouth. He hath Hydropem conscientiam (as Augustine saith,) a dropsy conscience, that ever drinks and ever is dry. Like the Fox, he useth his wit and his teeth together, he never smiles but he seizeth, he never talks but he takes advantage. He cries with the ill Husbandman, (to whom the Vineyard was put out in the Gospel,) This is the heir, come let us kill him, and we shall have 
Math. 21.  his inheritance. Other men are said to go to Hell, he shall ride to Hell on the devils back, (as it is in the old Moral) and if he did not ride, he would swim thither in innocents blood whom he hath circumvented. No men so much as Usurers, coveteth the devil to be great with; He is called Mammon, the God or Prince of this World: that is, The God and Prince of Usurers and Penny-fathers'. Nay more, every Usurer of himself is a devil, since this word Daemon, signifieth nought but Sypiens, a subtle worldly Wiseman.  
When a Legion of devils (in the Land of the Gargisens') were cast forth of two men that came out of graves, they desired they might go into hogs or swine, (which are Usurers,) many of those Hogs or Swine, they tumbled into the Sea: many of our hoggish Usurers the devil tumbles for gain into the Sea. Usurers (with the draff of this world) so feed and fatten the devils, that now they almost pass not of possessing any man else. The jews were all Hogs, that is, Usurers, and therefore if there had been no divine restraint for it, yet nature itself would have dissawded them from eating Swines-flesh, that is, from feeding on one another. The Prodigall-childe in the Gospel, is reported to have fed Hogs, that is, Usurers, by letting them beguile him of his substance.  
As the Hog is still grunting, digging & wrooting in the muck, so is the Usurer still turning, tossing, digging, and wrooting in the muck of this world; like the Hog he carries his snout evermore downward, and near looks up to Heaven.  
Christ said, It was not meet the children's bread should be taken from them and given unto dogs, no more is it meet, that the children's living and substance should be taken from them and given unto Hogs. Paul saith, We must not do evil that good may come of it: there is no evil which a hoggish Usurer will not do, so that goods 
Rome, 3.  or profit may come of it. They will be sure to verify our saviours words, The poor have you always with you: for they will make all poor that they deal with. Suchunnaturall 
Math. 27.  dealing they use towards their poor brethren, as though they came not naturally into the world, but like those that were called Caesares, quasi caesi ex matris utero, they were also cut out of their Mother's womb, when they came into the world. For this O London! if (like Zaccheus) thou repentest not, and restorst ten fold, Thy house shall be left desolate unto thee. The cries of the fatherless and widow, shall break of the Angels Hosannas and Alleviahs', and pluck the stern of the world out of God's hand, till he hath acquitted them. Oppression is the price of blood, into your Treasuries you put the price of blood, which the jews that killed Christ feared to do. You having many flocks of sheep of your own, and your poor Neighbour but one silly Lamb, (which he nursed in his own bosom) that Lamb have you taken away from him, and spared far better Fatlings of your own.  
By your swearing and forswearing in bargaining, you have confiscated your souls long ago. There is no religion in you but love of money. Any doctrine is welcome to you, but that which beats on good works. The charity and duty that GOD exacts of you, you think discharged, if in speech you neither meddle nor make with him: the charity to your Neighbour, you conjecture only consisteth in bidding good-even and goodmorrowe. Beguile not yourselves, for as there is no Prince, but will have his Laws as well not broken, as not spoken against, so will God revenge himself, as well against the breakers of his Laws, as against those that speak against them.  
It is not your abrupt Graces, God be praised, Much good do it you, or saying: we are nought God amend us, Sir I drink to you, that shall stop God's mouth: but he will come and not hold his peace; He will scatter your treasure and your store, and leave you nothing of that you have laid up, save the Kingdom of heaven & the righteousness therefore. Rich Usurers, be counseled betimes, surcease to inritch yourselves with other men's loss. Hold it not enough to fall down and worship Christ, except (with the Wisemen of the East) you open your treasures, and present him with Gold, Myrrh, and Frankincense.  
Bring forth some fruits of good works in this life, that we may not altogether despair of you as barren Trees, good for nothing but to be hewn down and cast into hell-fire. Place fame morientem quisquis pascendo servare poteris: 
Ambro, de offici.  si non paun is fame accidisti: Feed him that dies for hunger: Whatsoever thou art that canst perserue and dost not, thou art guilty of famishing him. Christ (at the latter day) in his behalf, shall up bray de thee, When I was hungry, thou gavest me no meat, when I 
Math, 25.  was thirsty, thou deniedst me drink: Depart from me thou accursed. Erogando pecuniam auges iustitsam, by laying out thy money thou increasest thy righteousness. Again, Nile dives habet de divitiis, nisi quod ab illo postulat pauper. A rich man treasures up no more of his riches, than he giveth in alms.  
My Masters, I will not dissuade, but give you counsel to be Usurers: Put out your money to usury to the poor here on Earth, that you may have it a hundred fold repaid you in Heaven. As it is in the Psalms, A good man is merciful and leandeth, he giveth, he disperseth, 
Psal. 112.  he distributeth to the poor, and his righteousness remaineth for ever.  
So that we see, by that which we give we gain and not loose, and yet what do we give, but that we cannot keep? For giving but back again what was first given us, and which if we should not give, Death would take from us, we shall purchase an immortal inheritance that can near be plucked from us. With half the pains we put ourselves to in purchasing earthly wealth, we may purchase Heaven.  
Wealth many times flies from them that with greatest soilicitude & greediness seek after it. For Heaven, it is no more but seek and it is yours, knock and it shall be opened. With less sure (I assure you) is the kingdom of Heaven obtained, than a suit for a Pension or office to an earthly King, which though a man hath 20. years followed, and hath better than three parts and a half of a promise to have confirmed, yet if he have but a quarter of an enemy in the court, it is cashiered and nonsuited. God will not be corrupted, he is not partial as man is, he hath no Parasites about him, he seeth with his own eyes, and not with the eyes of those that spoke for bribes. He is not angry, or commands us to be driven back when we are importunate: but he commands us to be importunate, and is angry if we be not importunate. In the Parable of the godless judge and the importunate Widow, he teacheth that importunity may get any thing of him.  
So in the similitude of the man that came to his friend at midnight, to desire him to lend him three loaves, and his friend answered him. His door was shut, his children 
Luk. 21.  and servants in bed, and he could not rise himself to give them him: at length (he still continuing in knocking, & that for him, neither he not his might rest) to be rid of his importunity, (not for he was his friend) he rose up, and gave him as many as he needed. How much more shall our GOD give us what we ask, that asketh no other trevage at our hands for giving, but ask and thanksgiving. We must hunger and thirst after righteousness, and we shall be satisfied. Hunger and thirst makes the Lion to roar, the Wolves to howl, Oxen and Kine to bellough and bray; and Sheep (of all Beasts the most silly and timorous,) to bleat and complain; Can man then (that in spirit and audacity exceedeth all the beasts of the field) hungering & thirsting after righteousness hold his peace? Would God ever have encouraged him with a blessing to hunger and thirst, but that the extremity of hunger and thirst, might drive him to the extremity of importunity and prayer. I cried unto the Lord (saith David) and he heard me: He did not coldly, bashfully, or formally only, cry to the Lord, as not caring whether he were heard or no, but he cried unto him with his whole heart: even to the Lord he cried, and he heard him. Ezekias cried unto the Lord, and he heard him. The blood of the Saints under the Altar (as all blood) is said to cry unto the Lord for vengeance. Thy brother Abel's blood hath cried unto me, said God to Caine. The prayer of the fatherless 
Gen. 4.  and Widow, (which God heareth above all things) is called a cry.  
Usurers, you are none of these criers unto God, but those that hourly unto God are most cried out against. God hath cried out unto you by his Preachers, GOD hath cried out unto you by the poor; Prisoners on their deathbeds have cried out of you: and when they have had but one hour to intercessionate for their souls, and sue out the pardon of their numberless sins, the whole part of that hour (saving one minute, when in two words they cried for mercy,) have they spent, in crying for vengeance against you. After they were dead, their Coffins have been brought to your doors in the open face of Cheapside, and ignominious Ballads made of you, which every Boy would chant under your nose: yet will not you repent, nor with all this crying be awaked out of your dream of the Devil and Dives. Therefore look that when on your deathbeddes you shall lie, and cry out of the Stone, the Strangullion & the Gout, you shall not be heard, your pain shall be so wrestling, tearing, and intolerable, that you shall have no leisure to repent or pray: no nor so much as lift up your hands, or think one good thought. Even as others have cursed you, so shall you be ready to curse God, & desire to be swallowed quick, to excorse the agony you are in.  
As the devil in the second of job, being asked from whence he came, answered, From compassing the earth, so you being asked at the day of judgement, from whence you come, shall answer; From compassing the Earth, For Heaven you have not compassed or purchased, therefore shall hell-fire be your portion. Every man shall receive of God according to that in his body he hath wrought. If in your bodies you have done no good works, of God you shall receive no good words. The words of God are deeds, he spoke but the word, and Heaven & Earth were made. He shall speak but the word and to hell shall you be had. Good deeds derived from faith, are Rampires or Bulwarks raised up against the devil: he that hath no such Bulwark of good deeds to resist the devils battery, cannot choose but have his soules-citty soon razed.  
Good deeds are a tribute which we pay unto God for defending us from all our ghostly enemies, & planting his peace in our consciences. In stead of the ceremonial Law, burnt-offerings and Sacrifices, (which are ceased,) God hath given us a new Law, To love one another: that is, to show the fruits of love, which are good deeds to one another. The widows Oil was increased in her Cruse, and her Meal in in her tub, only for doing good deeds to the prophet of the Lord. Few be there nowadays, that will do good deeds but for good deeds, that is, for rewards. If seats of justice were to be sold for money, we have them amongst us that would buy them up by the whole sale, and make them away again by retail. He that buys must sell, shrewd Alchemists there are risen up, that will pick a merchandise out of every thing, and not spare to set up their shops of buying and selling even in the Temple: I would to God they had not sold and plucked down Church & Temple, to build them houses of stone. God shall cut them off that enrich themselves with the fat of the Altar.  
Oues pastorem non iudicent, (saith an ancient writer,) quia non est Discapulus supra Magistrun, multo minus deglubent. Let not the Sheep judge their shepherd, because the scholar is not above his master, much less are they to pluck from their master the Shepherd: to shave or to pelt him to the bare bones, to whom (for feeding them) they should offer up their fleeces. Diis parentibus et Magistris, saith Aristotle, non potest reddi equivalens: To the Gods, our Fathers, and our Schoolmasters, can never be given as they deserve. He was an Ethnic that spoke thus, we Christians (only because he hath spoke it,) will do any thing against it: From God, our Parents and our Schoolmasters, (which are our Preachers,) say we can never be plucked sufficient. To make ourselves rich we care, not if we make our church like Hell, where (as job saith) umbra mortis, et nullus ordo est, there is the shadow of death, & confusion without order.  
O Avarice, that breaketh both the Law of Moses and the Law of Nature, in taking usury or incomes for Aduousons, and not letting the land of the Priests be free from tribute: those to whom thou leavest that ill gotten usury or tribute, shall be a prey to the irreligious. 
job. 15.  Fire shall consume the house of bribes.  
No Cart that is overloden or crammed too full, but hath a tail that will scatter. Beware least Hogs come to glean after your Carts-tayle: that your heirs come not to be Wards unto Usurers, for they will put out their Lands to the best use, of seavenscore in the hundred, and make them serve out their wardship in one prison or other. The only way for a rich man to prevent robbing, is to be bountiful and liberal. None is so much the thieves mark as the Miser and the Carl. Give while you live (rich men) that those you leave behind you, may be free from Cormorants and Caterpillars. If there be in your bags, but one shilling that should have been the poors, that shilling will be the consumption of all his fellows: one rotten Apple marreth all the rest, one scabbed sheep infects a whole flock.  
Even as a Prince out of his subjects goods, hath lones, dimes, subsidies & fifteens, so God out of our goods, demandeth alone, a tenth, and a subsidy to the poor. Lo, the one half of my goods (saith Zaccheus) I give to the poor. Is not he an ill servant, that when his Master shall into his hands deliver a large sum of money, to be distributed among the needy and impotent, shall purse it up into his own Coffers, and either give them none at all, or but the hundredth part of it? Such ill servants are we. The treasure and possessions we have, are not our own, but the Lord hath given them us to give to the poor, and spend in his service: we (very obsequiously) give to the poor only the mould of our treasure, and will rather detract from God's service, then detract from our dross. No where is pity, no where is pity, our House must needs be left desolate unto us.  
The Idolatrous Gentiles shall rise up against us, that bestowed all their wealth on fanes and shrines to their gods, and presents and offerings to their Images; To the true Image of God (which are the poor,) we will scarce offer our bread-parings. The Temple of Diana at Ephesus, was two hundred years in building by all Asia. There was none that obtained any victory, but built a Temple at his return, to that god (as he thought) which assisted him. Not so much as the Fever quartan, but the Romans built a Temple to, thinking it some great God because it shook them so: and another to ill fortune, in Exquillijs, a Mountain in Rome, because it should not plague them at Cards and Dice. No Fever quartanes, ill fortune, or good fortune, may wring out of us any good works. Our devotion can away with any thing, but this pharasaical almsgiving.  
He that hath nothing to do with his money but build Churches, we count him one of God-almighties Fools, or else (if he bear the name of a wiseman) we term him a notable braggart. Tut, tut, alms-houses will make good stables, and let out in Tenaments, yield a round sum by the year. A good strong bard hutch, is a building worth twenty of those Hospitals and alms-houses; Our rich Chuffs, will rather put their helping hands to the building of a prison, than a house of prayer. Our Courtiers lay that on their backs, which should serve to build Churches & schools. Those Preachers please best, which can fit us with a cheap Religion, that preach Faith, & all Faith, and no Goodworks, but to the household of Faith.  
Ministers and Pastors (to some of you I speak, not to all,) 'tis you that have brought down the price of Religion, being covetous yourselves, you preach nothing but covetous doctrine: your followers seeing you give no alms, take example (by you) to hold in their hands to, and will give no alms. That Text is too often in your mouths, He is worse than an Infidel that provides not for his wife and family. You do not cry out of the Altar, cry out for money to maintain poor Scholars, cry out for more living for Colleges, cry out for relief for them that are sick and visited: you rather cry out against the Altar, cry out against the living the Church hath already.  
It were to be wished, that order were taken up amongst you, which was observed in S. Augustine's time: For than it was the custom, that the poor should beg of none but the Preacher or Minister, and if he had not to give them, they should exclaim and cry out of him, for not more effectually moving and crying out to the people for them. Had every one of you, all the poor of your Parishes hanging about your doors, and ready to rend your garments off your backs, and tear out your throats for bread every time you stirred abroad, you would bestir you in exhortation to charity and good works, and make yourselves hoarse, in crying out against covetise and hardness of heart.  
London, thy heart is the heart of covetousness, all charity and compassion is clean banished out of thee: except thou amendest, jerusalem, Sodom, and Thou shalt sit down and weep together.  
From Ambition and Avarice, his suborner, let me progress to the second son of Pride, which is, Vainglory. This Vainglory, is any excessive pride or delight which we take in things unnecessary; Much of the nature is it of Ambition, but it is not so dangerous, or conversant about so great matters as Ambition. It is (as I may call it) the froth & seething up of Ambition. Ambition that cannot contain itself, but it must hop and bubble above water. It is the placing of praise and renown in contemptible things. As he that takes a glory in estranging himself from the attire and fashions of his own Country. He that taketh a glory to wear a huge head of hair like Absalon. He that taketh a glory in the glistering of his apparel and his perfumes, and thinks every one that sees him, or smells to him, should be in love with him. He that taketh a glory in hearing himself talk, and stately pronouncing his words. He that taketh a glory to bring an oath out with a grace, to tell of his cosonages, his surfeting, and drunkenness, and whoredoms. He that (to be counted a Cavaleir, and a resolute brave man) cares not what mischief he do, whom he quarrels with, kills or stabs.  
Such was Pausanias that killed Philip of Macedon, only for fame or vainglory. So did Herostratus burn the Temple of Diana, (whereof I talked in the leaf before,) to get him an eternal vainglory. The Spaniards are wonderful vainglorious. Many Soldiers are most impatient vainglorious, in standing upon their honour in every trifle, & boasting more than ever they did. They are vainglorious also in commending one another for murders and brawls: which (if they weighed aright) is the most ignominy that may be. By a great oath they will swear, he is a brave, delicate, sweet man, for he killed such & such a one: as if they should say, Cain was a brave delicate sweet man, for killing his brother Abel. He was the first that invented this going into the field, and now it is grown to a common exercise every day after meat. Many puny Poets & old ill Poets, are mighty vainglorious, of whom Horace speaketh: Ridentur mala qui componunt carmina verum. Gaudent scribentes et se venerantur & ultro. Si taceas laudunt quicquid scripsere beati. They are of all men had in derision (saith he) that bungle and bodge up wicked verses: but yet they do honey and tickle at what they write, and wonderfully to themselves applaud and praise themselves; and of their own accord, (if you do not commend them) they will openly commend themselves, and count their pens blessed whatsoever they invent. Many excellent Musi●…ians are odd fantastic vainglorious. There is vainglory in building, in banqueting, in being Diogenical and dogged: in voluntary poverty and devotion. Great is their vainglory also, that will rather rear themselves monuments of Marble, than monuments of good deeds in men's mouths. In a word, as Paul saith, Non est Domine in quo gloriaripossim, sed in Cruse Domini jesu Christi: There is no true glory, all is vainglory, but in the Cross of our Lord jesus Christ. The Jews vainglory and presumptuous confidence in their Temple, was one of the chief sins that plucked on their desolation. In that Chapter where our Saviour gave judgement over jerusalem, how bitterly did he inveigh against the hypocrisy and vain glory of the Scribes and pharisees.  
Let us examine what this hypocrisy and vainglory was he inveighed so against, and see if there be any such amongst us here in London.  
First, he accuseth them, Of binding heavy burdens and too grievous to be borne, and laying them on other men's shoulders, and not moving them with one finger themselves. That is as much to say, as States of a Country should make burdenous Laws, to oppress and keep under the Communality, and look severely to the observation of them, but would keep none of them themselves, nor will not so much as deign with one finger to touch them.  
Secondly, The did all their works to be seen of men, So do they that will do no good work, but to be put in the Chronicles after their death: so do they that publicly will seem the most precise justiciaries under heaven, but privately mitigate their sentence for money & 
Exod. 23.  gifts, which blind the wise, & subvert the words of the just. The especial thing Christ in the pharisees reproveth that they did to be seen of men, was the wearing of their large Philactaries. Those Philactaries (as S. jerom 
jerom on the 23. of Matthew.  saith) were broad pieces of Parchment, whereon they wrote the ten commandments, and folding them up close together, bound them to their forehead, and so wore them always before their eyes, imagining thereby they fulfilled that which was said: they shall be always immoucable before thine eres. That which they had always vaingloriously before their eyes, that have we always vaingloriously in our mouths, but seldom or never in our hearts. Never was so much professing, & so little practising, so many good words, and so few good deeds.  
The third objection against the pharisees, was, That they loved the highest places at feasts, the chief seats in assemblies, and greeting in the Marketplace: Which is as much to say, as that they were arrogant, haughty minded, and insolent: that they had no spirit of humility or meekness in them; They were besotted with the pride of their own singularity, they thought no man worthy of any honour but themselves. By intrusion and not standing on courtesy, they got to sit highest at Feasts, and be preferred in Assemblies: which appeareth by that which followeth some few verses after: For who soever will exalt himself, shall be brought low, and whosoever will humble himself, shall be exalted. Which inferreth, that they did intrude or exalt themselves, and were not exalted otherwise: therefore they should be humbled or brought low. divers like Pharasies have we, that will proudly exalt themselves.  
After this, our Saviour breathes out many woes against them. First, For shutting up the Kingdom of heaven from before men, and neither entering themselves, nor suffering those that would to enter. Next, For devouring widows houses under pretence of long prayers. Thirdly, For compassing Sea and Land to seduce. Fourthly, For their false and fond distinction and interpretation of oaths. Fiftly For tithing mint and Anise seed and cumin, & leaving weightier matters of the law, judgement, mercy, and fidelity, foreslowed: for straining at a Gnat, and swallowing a Camel. Sixthly For making clean the outside of the cup or the platter, when within they were full of bribery and excess. seventhly For they were like unto whited tombs, which appear beautiful outward, but within are full of dead men's bones, and all filthiness. Eightly, For they built the Tombs of the Prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous, whose doctrine they refused to be ruled by. Which of all these eight woes but we have incurred.  
Peculiarly apply them I will not, for fear their reference might be offensive: but let every one that is guilty in any of them, apply them privately to himself, lest every child in the street apply them openly to his reproof.  
London look to thyself, for the woes that were pronounced to jerusalem, are pronounced to thee. Thou transgressing as grievously as she, shalt be punished as grievously. Fly from sin, take no pride nor vainglory in it: for pride or vainglory in sin, is a horrible sin, though it be without purpose to sin. Ah what is sin that we should glory in it? To glory in it is to glory that the devil is our father. Doth the Peacock glory in his foul feet? Doth he not hang down the tail when he looks on them? Doth the Buck (having be filtht himself with the female,) lift up his horns and walk proudly to the lawns? O no, he so hateth himself) by reason of the stinch of his commixture,) that all drooping and languishing into some solitary Ditch he withdraws himself, and takes soil, and batheth till suck time as there fall a great shower of rain, when being thoroughly washed & cleansed, he posteth back to his food.  
Of the Peacock, of the Buck, nor any other bruit beast can we be taught to loathe our filth, but (contrary to nature,) far worse than brute beasts, we are enamoured 
Aug. lib 3. de lib. arbit.  of the favour of it. Omne vitium eo ipso quod vitium est, contra naturam est. Every vice as it is a vice is contrary to nature. Takes the devil a vainglory or pride that he is exiled out of heaven? No, he ruth, he curseth, he envies God, men and Angels, that they should live in the kingdom of light, and he in the valley of darkness.  
What coward is there that will brag or glory he was beaten and disarmed. If we had the wit to conceive the baseness of sin, or from what abject Parentage it is sprung, we would hate it as a Toad, and fly from it as an Adder. Not without reason have many learned Writers, called it Bestial, for it is all derived & borrowed from Beasts. Pride and inflammation of heart, we borrow from the Lion, avarice from the Hedgehog, luxury, riot, and sensuality from the Hog: and therefore we call a leatcherous person, a boarish companion. Envy from the Dog, Ire or wrath from the Wolf, gluttony or gormandize from the Bear, and lastly sloth from the Ass. So that as we apparraile ourselves in Beasts skins, in self same sort we cloth our souls in their skins. But if we did imitate aught but the imperfections of Beasts, (or of the best Beasts, but the worst Beasts,) it were somewhat: if we had any spark or taste of their perfections, we were not so to be condemned. We have no spark, no taste, we are nothing but a compound of uncleanness.  
Let us not glory that we are men, who have put on the shapes of Beasts. Thrice blessed are Beasts that die soon, and after this life feel nohell; Woe unto us, we shall, if we appear to God in the image of beasts, and soon redeem not from sathan the image of our creation he hath stolen from us. O singular subtlety of our enemy, so to sweeten the poison of our perdition, that it should be more relishsome and pleasant unto us, than the nectarized Aquacaelestis of water-mingled blood, sluced from Christ's side. We glory, in that we are in the highway to be thrown from glory: We will not hear our Folders or Sheepehearps, that would gather us to glory. Our Lord road upon at Ass when he governed the laws, under the Law (in comparison of us,) we are the unbroken-colt, (including the Gentiles,) which he commanded (with the Ass) to be brought unto him. This thousand and odd hundred years hath he been breaking us to his hand, and now, (when he had thought to have found us fit for the saddle,) we are wilder and further of then ever we were. We kick and winch, and will by no means endure his managing. Wherefore (though utterly wearied with both) better he esteemeth of his old obstinate slow Ass, the jews, (which therefore he cast off, for they had tired him with continual beating,) then of the untoward Colt, (us the Gentiles) that will not be bridled.  
Ambition and vainglory, make us bear up our necks stiffly, and bend our heads backward from the rain, but age will make us stoop thrice more forward, and warp our backs in such a round bundle, that with declining, our snouts shall dig our graves.  
England thou needst not be ambitious, thou needst not be vainglorious, for ere this thou hast been bowed and burdened till thy back cracked. As the Israelites were ten times led into captivity, so seven times hast thou been overrun and conquered. In thy strength thou boasts, God with the weak confoundeth the strong. The least lifting up of his hand, makes thy men of war fall backward. Say thou art walled with Seas, how easy are thy walls overcome? Who shall defend thy walls if the civil sword waste thee? With more enemies is not India beset than thou art. Ungratefully hath God given thee long peace and plenty, since whereas war can but breed vices, thy peace and plenty hath begot more sins, than war over heard of, or the Sun hath Atoms.  
Yet learn to leave of thy vainglory, that God may glory in thee. Learn to despise the world, despise vanity, despise thyself, to despise despising, and lastly, to despise no man. If you be of the world, you will affect the vainglory of the world: if you be not of the world, look for no glory but contempt from the world. It lies in your election to draw lots, whither you will be heirs of the glory eternal, or enjoy the short breath of vainglory amongst men.  
The third son of Pride, is Atheism, which is when a man is so timpanized with prosperity, and entranced from himself, with Wealth, Ambition, and Vainglory, that he forgets he had a Maker, or that there is a Heaven above him which controls him. Too much joy of this world hath made him drunk. I have read of many, whom extreme joy & extreme grief hath forced to run mad; so with extreme joy runs he mad, he waxeth a Fool and an Idiot, and then he says in his heart, There is no God. Others there be of these soulebenummed Atheists, who (having so far entered in bold blasphemies, and Scripture-scorning ironies against God, that they think, if God be a God of any justice and omnipotence, it cannot stand with that his justice & omnipotence, to suffer such despite unpunished,) for their only refuge, persuade themselves there is no God, and with their profane wits innent reasons, why there should be no God.  
In our saviours time there were Saducees, that denied the Resurrection; what are these Atheists but Saducaean sectaries that deny the resurrection? They believe they must die, though they believe not the Deity. By un means may they avoid what they will not admit. Io the very hour of death, shall appear to them a God and a devil. In the very hour of death, to Atheistical julian, (who mockingly called all Christians galileans,) appeared a grizzly shaggy-bodied devil, who for all (at his sight) he recantingly cried out, Vicisti, Galilaee, vicisti. Thine is the day, thineis the victory o man of Galilee, yet would it not forbear him or give him over, till it had stripped his soul forth of his fleshy rind, and took it away with him.  
Those that never heard of God or the devil in their life before, at that instant of their transmutation, shall give testimony of them.  
This I assure myself, that however in pride of mind, (because they would be different in paradoxisme from all the world,) some there be that fantasy philosophical probabilities, of the Trinities unexistence, yet in the inmost recourse of their consciences, they subscribe to him, and confess him.  
Most of them, because they cannot grossly palpabrize or feel God with their bodily fingers, confidently and grossly discard him. Those that come to God, must believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek him. They coming against God, believe that he is not, and that those prosper best, and are best rewarded that set him at nought. The heavens declare the glory of God, & the Firmament showeth his handy work, one generation telleth another of the wonders he hath done: yet will not these faithless contradictours, suffer any glory to be ascribed to him. Stoutly they refragate and withstand, that the Firmament is not his handiwork, nor, will they credit one generation telling another of his wonders. They follow the Pironiks, whose position and opinion it is, that there is not hell or misery but opinion. Impudently they persist in it, that the late discovered Indians, are able to show antiquities, thousands before Adam.  
With Cornelius Tacitus, they make Moses a wise provident man, well seen in the Egyptian learning, but deny he had any divine assistance in the greatest of his miracles. The water (they say) which he struck out of a Rock in the Wilderness, was not by any supernatural work of GOD, but by watching to what part the Wild-asses repaired for drink.  
With Albumazar, they hold that his leading the Children of Israel over the Red-sea, was no more but observing the influence of Stars, and waning season of the Moon that withdraweth the Tides. They seek not to know God in his works, or in his Son Christ jesus, but by his substance, his form, or the place wherein he doth exist. Because some late Writers of our side, have sought to discredit the story of judith, of Susanna and Daniel, and of Bell and the Dragon, they think they may thrust all the rest of the Bible (in like manner) into the jewish Thalmud, and tax it for a fabulous Legend.  
This place serveth not to stand upon proofs, or by confutation to confirm principles: neither dare I with the weak drop of my wit, offer, to uphold the high Throne of the Godhead, since he that but stretched out his hand to underprop the Ark falling, was presently stricken dead O Lord, thou hast ten thousand stronger pillars than I am. I am the unworthiest of all wormereserued wretches, once to speak of thee, or name thee. My sins are alway before me. Prince's will not let those come before them with whom they are displeased. I am afraid the congealed clouds of my sin, will not let my prayers come near thee. O favour thy glory though I have displeased thee with folly. I will not be so unweaponed-ieopardous, to overthrow both thy cause and my credit at once, by over-atlassing mine invention. That which I undertake, shall be only to throw one light Dart at their faces from a far, and exhort all able pens to arm themselves, against thine Atheistical maledictours.  
Of Atheists this age affordeth two sorts, the inward and the outward; The inward Atheist is he, that devours widows houses under pretence of long prayers, that (like the Panther) hideth his face in a hood of Religion, when he goeth about his prey. He would profess himself an Atheist openly but that (like the pharisees) he feareth the multitude. Because the multitude favours Religion, he runs with the stream, and favours Religion: because he would be Captain of a multitude. To be the God of gold, he cares not how many gods he entertains. Church rites he supposeth not amiss to busy the Common-peoples' heads with, that they should not fall aboard with Prince's matters. And as Numa Pompilius in Rome, and Minos in Athens, kept the people in awe, & thrust what tyrannous laws they list upon them, (the one, under pretence he did nothing without conference of the Nymph Egeria, the other, under colour he was inspired in a certain hollow Cave by jupiter,) so he makes conscience and the spirit of God, a long side-cloake, for all his oppressions and policies. A holy look he will put on when he meaneth to do mischief, and have Scripture in his mouth, even whiles he is in cutting his neighbour's throat.  
The propagation of the Gospel, (good Saintlike man) he only shoots at, when under suppressing of Popery, he strives to overthrow all Church-livings. So that even as the Gospel is the power of God, to salvation, to every one that believeth, so is it in him the devils power of beguiling and undoing, to every one that believes him. He it is that turneth the truth of God to alley, and buildeth his house by hypocrisy, that hath his mouth swept and garnished, but in his heart a whole legion of devils.  
The outward Atheist, (chose) with those things that proceed from his mouth, defileth his heart; He establisheth reason as his God, and will not be persuaded that God (the true God) is, except he make him privy to all the secrecies of his beginning and government. Straightly he will examine him where he was, what he did before he created Heaven and Earth; how it is possible he should have his being from before all beginnings? Every circumstance of his providence he will run through, & question why he did not this thing, and that thing, and the other thing, according to their humours?  
Being earthly bodies, (unapt to ascend,) in their ambitious cogitation, they will break open and ransack his Closet: and if (conveniently) they may not come to i●…, than they will derogate and deprave him all they can. Little do they consider, that as the light which shined before Paul, made him blind, so the light of God's invisible mysteries, (if ever it shine in our hearts,) will confound and blind our carnal reason.  
Philosophies chief fullness, wisdoms adopted Father next unto Solomon, unsatiable Art-searching Aristotle, that in the round-compendiate bladder of thy brain, conglobedst these three great bodies, (Heaven, Earth, and the wide world of Waters,) thine Icariansoaring comprehension, tossed & turmoiled but about the bounds and beginning of Nilus, in Nilus drowned itself, being to silly and feeble to plunge thorough it.  
If knowledges second Solomon, had not knowledge enough to engraspe one River, and allege probability of his beginning and bounding, who shall engraspe or bond the heavens body? Nay, what soul is so metaphusicall subtle, that can humorously sirenize heavens soul, JEHOVAH, out of the concealments of his Godhead? He that is familiar with all earthly states, must not think to be familiar with the state of heaven. The very Angels know not the day nor hour of the last judgement: if they know not the day nor hour of the judgement, (which is such a general thing,) more private circumstances of the Godhead (determinately) they are not acquainted with; And if not Angels, (his sanctified attendants) much less are they revealed to sinners. Idle-headed Atheist, ill wouldst thou (as the Romans) acknowledge and offer sacrifice to many gods, that wilt not grant one God. From thy birth to this moment of thine unbelief, revolve the diary of thy memory, and try if thou hast near prayed and been heard, if thou hast been heard and thy prayer accomplished, who hath heard thee, who hath accomplished it? Wilt thou ratifidely affirm, that God is no God, because (like a Noun substantive) thou canst not essentially see him, feel him, or hear him.  
Is a Monarch no Monarch, because he reareth not his resiant throne amongst his utmost subjects? We (of all earthlings) are Gods utmost subjects, the last (in a manner) that he brought to his obedience: shall we then forget that we are any subjects of his, because (as a 'mongst his Angels) he is not visibly conversant amongst us? Suppose our Monarch were as far distanced from us as Constantinople, yet still he is a Monarch, and his power undiminished. Indeed so did our Father's rebel, and forgot they had a King; when Richard cuer de Lion was warring in the Holy-land, his own brother king john, forgot that he had a brother, & crowned himself King. But God is not absent, but present continually amongst us, though not in sight, yet as a Spirit at our elbows every where, (and so delight many Kings to walk disguised amongst their subjects.) He treads in all our steps, he plucketh in and letteth out our breath as he pleaseth, our eyes he openeth and shutteth, our feet he guideth as he listeth.  
'tis nothing but plenty and abundance that maketh men Atheists. Even as the Snake which the Husbandman took out of the cold and cherished in his bosom, once attained to her lively heat again, and grown fat and lusty, singled him out at the first, whom she might (ungratefully) enuenome with her forked sting; So God having took a number of poor outcasts, (far poorer than poor frostbitten Snakes,) forth of the cold of scarcity and contempt, and put them in his bosom, cherished and prospered them with all the blessings he could, they (having once plentifully picked up their crumbs, and that they imagine (without his help) they can stand of themselves,) now fall to darting their stings of derision at his face, and finding themselves to be as great as they can well be amongst men, grow to envy and extenuate their Maker.  
A servant that (of nothing) is waxed great under his Master, if his Master look not to him, proves the greatest enemy he hath; Ef●…soones he will draw all men from him, and underhand disgrace him, to engross all in his own hand. None are so great enemies to God, as those that (of small likelihoods) have waxed greatest under him, and have most tasted the gracious springs of his providence. Oft have we seen a Beggar promoted, forget and renounce his own natural Parents: no marvel then, if these mounted Beggars forget, and will not acknowledge God, their common Parent, and foster-Father.  
I cannot be persuaded any poor man, or man in misery, (be he not altogether desperate of his estate,) is an Atheist. Misery (maugre their hearts) will make them confess God. Who heareth the thunder, that thinks not of God? I would know who is more fearful to die, or dies with more terror and affrightment, than an Atheist. Discourse over the ends of all Atheists, and their deaths, for the most part, have been drunken, violent, and secluded from repentance. The black swttie visage of the night, and the shady fancies thereof, assertaines every guilty soul there is a sinne-hating God.  
How can bellows blow, except there be one that binds and first imprisons wind in them? How can fire burn if none first kindle it? How can man breath, except God puts first the breath of life into him? Who leadeth the Sun out of his Chamber, or the Moon forth her cloudy Pavilion but God? Why doth not the Sea swallow up the Earth, (when as it over-peeres it, and is greater than it,) but that there is a God that snaffles and curbs it.  
There is a path which no Fowl hath known, neither 
job. 28.  the Kites eyes seen: the Lion himself hath not walked in it, nor the lions whelps passed thereby. Who then knows it, who is there to trace it? Hath the vast azur'd Canopy nothing above it, whereunto it is perpendicular knit, then why do not all things wheel and serve topsy-turvy? Why break not thunder bolts through the Clouds in stead of thirds of rain? Why are noy Frost and Snow uncessantly in Arms against the Summer?  
The excellent compacture of man's body, is an argument of force enough to confirm the Deity.  
O why should I but squintingly glance at these matters, when they are so admirably expiated by ancient Writers? In the Resolution most notably is this tractate enlarged. He which peruseth that, and yet is Diagorized, will never be Christianized. University men that are called 
Diagoras primus De. 〈◊〉 ●…gans.  to preach at the Cross and the Court, arm yourselves against nothing but Atheism, meddle not so much with Sects & foreign opinions, but let Atheism be the only string you beat on: for there is no Sect now in England so scattered as Atheism. In vain do you preach, in vain do you teach, if the root that nourisheth all the branches of security, be not thoroughly digged up from the bottom. You are not half so well acquainted, as them that live continually about the Court and City, hom many followers this damnable paradox hath: how many high wits it hath bewitched. Where are they▪ that count a little smattering in liberal Arts, and the reading over the Bible with a late Comment, sufficient to make a Father of Divines? What will their 
a Disallowed by Atheists.  disallowed Bible, or late Comments help them, if they have no other reading to resist Atheists? Atheists if ever they be confuted with their own profane Authors they must be confuted.  
I am at my wits end when I view how coldly, in comparison of other Countrymen, our Englishmen write. How in their books of confutation, they show no wit or courage, as well as learning. In all other things Englishmen are the stoutest of all others, but being Scholars, and living in their own native soil, their brains are so pestered with full platters, that they have no room to bestir them. Fie, fie, shall we because we have Lead and Tin Mynes in England, have Lead and Tin Muses? For shame bury not your spirits in Biefe-pots. Let not the Italians call you dulheaded Tramontani. So many Dunces in Cambridge and Oxford, are entertained chief members into societies, under pretence, though they have no great learning, yet there is in them zeal and Religion, that scarce the least hope is left us, we should have any hereafter but blocks and Images, to confute blocks and Images. That of Terence is oraculized, Patres aequum censere nos adolesentulos, ilico a pueris fieri senes. Our Fathers are now grown to such austerity, as they would have us strait of children to become old-men. They will allow no time for a grey beard to grow in. If at the first peeping out of the shell, a young Student sets not a grave face on it, or seems not mortifiedly religious, (have he never so good a wit, be he never so fine a Scholar,) he is cast off and discouraged. They set not before their eyes, how all were not called at the first hour of the day, for than had none of us ever been called. That not the first son that promised his Father to go into the Vineyard went, but he that refused and said he would not, went. That those blossoms which peep forth in the beginning of the Spring, are frostbitten and die, ere they can come to be fruit. That religion which is soon ripe, is soon rotten.  
Too abortive, reverend Academians, do you make your young plants. Your preferment (following the outward appearance,) occasioneth a number of young hypocrites, who else had never known any such sin as dissimulation, and had been more known to the Commonwealth. It is only ridiculous dull Preachers, (who leap out of a Library of Catechisms, into the loftiest pulpits) that have revived this scornful Sect of Atheists. What Kings embassage would be made account of, if it should be delivered by a meacock and an ignorant? Or if percase he send variety of Ambassadors, and not two of them agree in one tale, but be divided amongst themselves, who will hearken to them? Such is the division of God's Ambassadors here amongst us, so many cow-baby-bawlers, and heavy-gated lu●…berers, into the Ministry are stumbled, under this College, or that Hall's commendation, that a great number had rather hear a jarring blacke-sant, than one of their bald Sermons.  
They boldly will usurp Moses chair, without any study or preparation. They would have their mouths reverenced as the mouths of the Sibyls, who spoke nothing but was registered; Yet nothing comes from their mouths, but gross full-stomackt tautology. They sweat they blunder, they bounce and plunge in the Pulpit, but all is voice but no substance: they deaf men's ears but not edify. Scripture peradventure they come off thick and three-folde with, but it is so ugly daubed, plastered and patched on, so peevishly speckt and applied, as if a Butcher (with a number of Satin & Velvet shreds should clout and mend leather doublets and Clothbreeches.  
Get you some wit in your great heads, my hottespurd Divines, discredit not the Gospel: if you have none dam up the Oven of your utterance, make not such a big sound with your empty vessels. At least, love men of wit, and not hate them so as you do, for they have what you want. By loving them, and accompanying with them you shall both do them good and yourselves good; They of you shall learn sobriety and good life, you of them, shall learn to utter your learning and speak moovingly.  
If you count it profane to arte-enamel your speech to empeirce, and make a conscience to sweeten your tunes to catch souls, Religion (through you) shall reap infamy. Men are men, and with those things must be moved, that men wont to be moved. They must have a little Sugar mixed with their sour Pills of reproof, the hooks must be pleasantly baited that they bite at. Those that hang forth their hooks and no bait, may well enough entangle them in the weeds, (enwrap themselves in contentions) but never win one soul. Turn over the ancient Fathers, and mark how sweet and honisome they are in the mouth, and how musical and melodious in the ear. No Orator was ever more pleasingly persw●…siue,, then humble Saint Augustine. These Athists with whom you are to encounter, are special men of wit. The Romish Seminaries, have not alured unto them so m●…ny good wits as Athis●…. It is the superaboundance of wit that makes Atheists: will you then hope to beat them down with fus●…y brown-bread dorbellisme? No, no either you must strain your wits an Ela above theirs, and so entice them to your preachings, and overturn them, or else with disordered hayleshotte of Scriptures, shall you never scar them.  
Skirmishing with Atheists, you must behave yourselves as you were converting the Gentiles. All antic histories you must have at your fingers-end. No Philosophers confession or opinion of God: that you are to be ignorant in. Ethnics, with their own Ethnic weapons you must assail. Infinite labyrinths of books he must run through, that will be a complete Champion in Christ's Church. Let not sloth-favoring innovation abuse you. Christ when he said you must forsake all and follow him, meant not you should forsake all arts and follow him.  
Luke was a Physician and followed him. Physicians are the only upholders of human Artes. Paul was a Pharisie and brought up in all the knowledge of the Gentiles, and yet he was an Apostle of jesus Christ. Though it pleased our loving crucified Lord, during his residence here upon earth, miraculously to inspire poor Fishermen, and disgregate his gifts from the ordinary means, yet since his ascension into heaven, meanlesse miracles are ceased. Certain means he hath assigned us, which he hath promised to bless, but without means no blessing hath he warantized.  
When the devil would have had him of stones to make bread, he would in no kind consent: no more will he consent of blocks and stones in these days to make distributers of the bread of life. What are Asses that will take upon them to preach without gifts but bread made of stones? Even as God said unto Adam, He should get or earn his bread with the sweat of his brows, so they that will have heavenly bread enough to feed themselves and a family (which is a congregation or flock,) must earn it, and get it, with the sweat of their brows, with long labour, study, and industry, toil and search after it.  
No one Art is there that hath not some dependence upon another, or to whose top or perfection we may climb, without steps or degrees of the other. Human arts are the steps and degrees Christ hath prescribed and assigned us, to climb up to heaven of Arts by, which is Divinity. He can never climb to the top of it, which refuseth to climb by these steps. No knowledge but is of God. Unworthy are we of heavenly knowledge, if we keep from her any one of her handmaids. Logic Rhetoric, History, Philosophy, Music, Poetry, all are the handmaids of Divinity. She can never be curiously dressed, or exquisitely accomplished, if any one of these be wanting.  
God delighteth to be magnified in all his Creatures, especially, in all the excellentest of his creatures. Arts are the excellentest of his creatures, not one of them 
Psal. 148.  but descended from his Throne. What saith David? Praise the Lord Sun & Moon, praise him ye bright stars, praise him heaven of heavens, & waters that be above the heavens. That is praise the Lord Metaphusicall Philosophy, which art conversant in all these matters: Into the majesty and glory of the Sun and Moon, thou seest, the bright Stars predominance and moving, thou knowest the heaven of heavens, and waters that be above the heavens (in part though not at large) thou comprehendest: therefore praise him in all these. Take occasion (preachers in your sermons) from the wonders and secrets these to include, to extol his magnificent name, and by humane arts abstracts to glorify him. Praise ye the Lord (thus David proceeds) ye Dragons and all deeps, Fire, Hail, Snow and vapours, stormy winds and tempests execute his word. Mountains & hills, fruitful trees and all Cedars, Beasts and cattle: creeping things and feathered fowls, Princes and judges of the world, young men and Maidens, old men and Children, praise ye the name of the Lord.  
So that it is lawful to execute his word, that is in preaching of his word by similitudes and comparisons, drawn from the nature & property of all these, to laud and amplify the eternity of his name. Christ he drew comparisons from the hairs of a man's head, from Vineyards, from Figtrees, from Sparrows, from Lilies and a hundred such like. We (in this age) count him a Heathen Divine, that allegeth any illustration out of humane Authors, & makes not all his sermons concloutments of scripture.  
Scripture we hodge-podge together, and do not place like pearl and Goldlace on a garment, here and there to adorn, but pile it, and dung it up on heaps, without use or edification. We care not how we misspeak it so we have it to speak. Out it flies East and West; though we lose it all it is nothing, for more have we of it, than we can well tell what to do withal. Violent are the most of our packhorse Pulpit-men in vomiting, their duncery. Their preachings seem rather pestilential frenzies than any thing else. They writhe Texts like wax, and where they envy, Scripture is their Champion to scold, and though a whole month together so they should scold they would not want allegations to cast in one another's teeth. Non fuit sic a principio, I wis it was not so in the Primitive Church but in our Church every man willbe a primate, every man will be Lord and King over the flock that he feeds, or else he will famish it: This is erring from my scope of the true use of scripture I am to talk.  
Scripture if it be used otherwise then as the last seal to confirm any thing, if it be trivially, or without necessity, called unto witness, it is a flat taking of the name of God in vain. The phrase of Sermons as it ought to agree with the scripture, so heed must be taken that their whole Sermons seem not a banquet of broken fragments of scripture: that it be not used but as the corner stone to close up any building; That they gather fruit and not leaves, proofs and not phrases only out of the Bible. As in battle we use the weapons & Engines of all Nations so embattelling ourselves against sin, we must use the weapons & arts of all Nations. Scripture must be reserved as the last volley of the victory. It is the great Ordnance which must play upon our enemies, in the end and chief hazard of the fight. If we refuse with Demosthenes to reserve alour weighy arguments till the latter end, like the Frenchmen, we shall fight valiantly at the first, but quail in the midst.  
Scripture is the chief power of GOD to salvation. Generals in a pitched field, will not thrust forth their chief power first. By little, and little, they will train, their enemy out of order with light onsets. He that will ascend, must from the low valleys creep up. higher and higher; with one caper or jump, is not the Mountain of Theology to be sealed. This is it I contend, that Stars have their thrones of illumination allotted them in the Firmament, as well as the Sun & Moon: that human writers have their use of reproving vices, as well as the Scriptures. It is an easy matter to praise God, in that wherein he hath placed the especial statehouse of his praises. He which out of the barrainest, and barest parts of his Lord's dominion, shall accumulate and levy to his Treasury, a greater tribute than he hath out of his richest Provinces, shall he not (of all other) do him the most remunerablest service? Malicious and malevolent are they, that will exclude any one Art, or Athenian or Roman Author, any one creeping worm or contemptible creature, from bearing witness of God.  
Paul alleged divers verses out of Heathen Poets, as out of Epemenides, Aratus, Menander, Theocritus: nay, what place is it in the Scripture, where the holy Ghost doth not stoop himself to our capacities, by human Metaphors & similitudes. Our Atheist we have in hand, with nothing but human reasons will be rebutted. Vaunt you ye speak from the holy Ghost never so, if you speak not in compass of his five senses, he will despise you, and flout you. He hearing every one (that in the Pulpit talks affectedly, coldly, crabbedly or absurdly,) say, He talks from the mouth of God, makes both am obloquy of God's mouth and the Ministry. But ill shall his scoffs prosper with him; When he thinks he hath won the greatest prize to his wit, in putting down God, God in judgement shall arise and reprove him. At the day of death, and at the day of judgement, he shall reprove him, sight-killingly with his clustered brows, and clowde-begetting srownes, he shall teach him, both that he is, and what he is.  
Reverend Ecclesiastical Fathers, and other specialltitled Church substitutes, you it concerneth, your kingdom (by these Atheists) is called in question, in calling God's kingdom in question. Prosecute with all your authority, these Prophirtan deriders. Imitate the Athenians, who committed Anaxagoras to prison, and but for Pericles, had put him to death, for writing but a book of the moons eclipses, after by them she was received for a Goddess. If they so far pursued the disgrace of a feigned Goddess, be you twice as zealous, in revenging the disparagement of the true & everliving God.  
Proclaim disputations, threaten punishments, be vehement in your Sermons: whatsoever you write or speak, intent it against Atheism. Atheism hath oover-spread us, our overthrow, your overthrow it will be, except (in time) you prevent it. Fall England, farewell peace, woe-worth our Weal and tranquillity, if Religion bids us farewell. Our house shall be left desolate unto us, for Christ of us is left desolate and forsaken.  
The fourth son of Pride, is Discontent, which whomsoever it thoroughly enhabiteth, it carrieth clean away to extremes. If it light on a poor man that hath no means to prosecute it, it cutteth him off presently. If on a man of puissance, (be he not more than motherwitted circumspect,) to him and his family it is no less fatal. Generally it is grounded on pride, as when a man taketh unto him a mind above his birth or fortune, and is not able to go through with it. When he hath resolved to prise himself thus great, and so great, & some man (as proud as himself) comes and under-bids him, and outbraves him. And thirdly when on just demerrits hec hath builded but mean hopes, and those not only die in the dust, but his iustdemerits, indignly, draw unto him unjust hatred. For such is great men's manner, any one that is troublesome to them, or that they were indebted to, and cannot well recompense, they come to hate deadly.  
There is a discontent proceeding from a natural melancholy humour, or caused by surfeit or misdiet. Some by over-studdying come to be discontent and dogged. I have known many, whom shrewd or light housewives to their wives, unthrift obstinate children, suits in Law overruled by letters from above, have caused to languish and droop away in discontent. The fruits of discontent are ban, cursings, secret murmurrings, outrage, murder, injustice, all which are high treasonous trespasses against God.  
The devil is the father of Discontent, One of the greatest miseries of the damned, shall be discontent. No thing so much provoketh God to judgement as discontent. He destroyed the children of Israel whiles the meat was in their mouths, in the Wilderness, for murmuring or being discontent: their discontent was said to afflict him. Many a time and oft have they afflicted me even from my youth up, saith David, in God's person, speaking of their repining at the waters of strife. Therefore whosoever is discontent with any cross or calamity the Lord layeth upon him aflicteth God, and must look for speedy confusion. Nothing in this life revengeth he so much as it. Hence it is so many stab, hang, and drown themselves, and thereby endanger their own souls beyond mercy. It is the grievousest sentence God can pronounce against man, as to be his own Executioner: whereby it appeareth, that Discontent is the grievousest sin that man can commit.  
When did you ever hear of any but the discontented man, that offered violence to himself? What is the sin against the holy Ghost, (which Augustine concludeth to be nothing, but Desperatio morientis, to give up a man's soul in despair,) but a special branch of discontent. Wherefote did our saviour thunder forth such a terrible woe against the causers of offence, or discontent, but that it was the most heinous scourge-procuring transgression of all others?  
jonas the Lords anointed Prophet, for he was discontent, and grudged when he should have been sent unto Ninivi, had a torment like hell (for the time) inflicted upon him. In the Whale's belly, full of horror, despair, stinch and darkness, three days and three nights he was shut. Hardly can God abstain from throwing any man down into Hell, that is vpbraidingly discontent. As the merry man (of all other,) best thriveth in that he goes about, so the discontented man (of all other,) is most forespoken, and unlucky in his enterprises. Few discontented men shall you observe, that give up the ghost in their beds.  
There is a Discontent contrary to Pride, which is most pleasing to God: which is, when a man grieves, & is discontent, because he cannot choose but sin & rebel against God. Also when he is wearied, and discontent with the vanities of the world. So was the Preacher, when he cried, Vanity of vanities, & all thing is vanity.  
There is a tolerable Discontent likewise, which David and job had, when they complained that the Tabernacles of Robbers did prosper, and they were in safety that provoked God. But so little of this true discontent is there in London, that (almost) there is no content in it, but in robbing and provoking God. Sin is no sin, (saith an ancient Father,) except it be voluntary, and we take a content in committing it. Who is there that oppresseth, committeth adultery, is prodigal, sweareth or forsweareth, but taketh a content in committing it? There we place content, where we should take up discontent, and there are we discontent, were we should repose our whole gladness and felicity. We are discontent, if we hear our sins ripped up sharply. We are discontent, if we be detained in the service of God, but half an hour extraordinary. We are discontent, if we be constrained to give to the poor. Every man here in London, is discontent with the state wherein he lives. Every one seeketh to undermine another. No two of one trade, but as they are of one trade, envy one another. Not two conjoined in one office, but overthwart & emulate one another, and one of them undoes what the other hath done.  
The Court is the true kingdom of discontent. There Pride reigning most, Discontent cannot choose but be a hanger on. No conspiracy, or war (civil or outward) but first springeth from discontent. What makes a number of our wanton wives in London, conspire the deaths of their old doting husbands, but the discontent of a death-cold bed? Discontent makes Heretics. Discontent is the cause of all the Traitors beyond Sea. Discontent, caused jerusalem's house to be left desolate unto her. Discontent (O London,) will be thy destitution, if thou takest not the better heed.  
The fifth Son of Pride, is Contention, which being the youngest son he hath, is harder to be yoked or kept in, than any of the other four. It is ever in Arms, never out of brabblements. Look what Ambition, Vainglory, Atheism, Discontent, shall consult or devise, it enacteth, and goes thorough with. It is the Lawyers living, the Heretics food, the Switzers house and Land. No Crown but he challengeth a share in. No Church but he will be of. On words, amphibologies, equivocations, quiddities and quantities, he stands. He hunteth not after truth, but strife. He coveteth not so much to overcome, as contend.  
These two little words, Ex and Per, (as Cornelius Agrippa hath observed,) held the Greek & Latin Churches play, many years together; they litigiously debating, whether the holy Ghost proceeded of the Father and the Son, or not of the Son, but of the Father by the Son. So this word Nisi in this sentence, Nisi manducaveritis carnem, set all the Counsel of Basil in an uproar. This word Donec, as, joseph non agnovit uxorem suam donec, joseph knew not his wife until, caused the Antidicomariatans', and Eludians, to deny the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary. With a thousand such errors, Contention raiseth his Kingdom.  
Our Divines in these days, (though they yet retain many contentions of the old Churches,) have found out certain new ones of their own. They contend about standing and sitting, about forms and substances, about prescription and confusion of prayers. They argue, An after sit contrarius albo, whether it be better to wear a white Surplice, or a black gown, in ministering the Sacraments? Which is like the conflict in Rome, betwixt the Augustine Friars and the vulgar Canons, whether Augustine did wear a black Weed upon a white Coat, or a white Weed upon a black Coat. Like the Geometritians, they square about points and lines, and the utter show of things. As, this point is too-long, this point is too-short, this figure is toomuch affected, this line runs not smooth, this syllogism limpeth. As Preachers, they labour not to speak properly, but intricately. In stead of Bread, they give the children of their Ministry, stones to throw at one another: and in stead of Fish, Serpents to sting one another. In the 13. of Matthew, the Sour that went forth to sow, scattered some seed by the highway side, which the Fowls of the air pecked up: not unlike to them, whose Hawks and Field-sports, peck up all the seeds of Christianity that should be sown in their hearts; and a million of others, whose eyes the Fowls of the valley peck out, before the seed of salvation can have any rooting in their souls.  
Other seed the Sour scattered amongst stones, and the Sun e arising, it withered for want of earth, resembling these stony streets of London, where nothing will spring up but oppression, avarice, and infidelity. Other seed he dispersed amongst thorns, and the thorns crept aloft and choked it. To those thorns I compare these thorny Contentioners, that choke the Word of God, with foolish controversies, and frivolous questions. Even as the spirit led our Saviour aside into the Wilderness to be tempted, so are there wicked spirits of Contention amongst us, that lead men aside into the woods and solitary places, to be tempted. Let any (be he the veriest blockhead under heaven,) raise up a faction, and he shall be followed and supported. Englishmen are all for innovation, they are clean spoiled if once in twenty years, they have not a new fashion of religion. Sometimes Vitia sunt ad virtutem occasio, Contention is the occasion of seeking out the truth: but our Contentions (for the most part) are the seeking to prove truth, no truth, after she is once found out: and preferring probability before manifest verity. We will not try her by her Peers, (which are the best expositors,) and ancient Fathers, but by the literal Law, either not expounded, or new expounded, without any Quest of Church, decretals or Cannons.  
Were it not that in reproving Contention, I might haply seem contentious, I would wade a little farther in this subject. Yet it were to no end, since fire the more it is stirred up, the more it burneth: and heresy, the more it is stirred & strove with, the more untoward it is. Nought but sharp discipline is a fit disputant with snarling schismatic. The Israelites, for they rooted not out the remnant of the Gen●…ile Nations from amongst them, they were as goads in their sides, and thorns in their nostrils: so if we root not out these remnants of schismatic from amongst us, they will be as goads in our sides, and thorns in our nostrils. Melius est ut pereat unus, quam ut pereat unitas: It is better that some few perish, than unity perish.  
London, beware of Contention, thou art counted the nursing-mother of Contention. No Sect or Schism but thou afford Disciples to. If thou be'st too greedy of innovation and contention, the sword of invasion and civil debate, shall leave thy house desolate unto thee.  
Now come I to the Daughters of Pride, whereof Disdain is the eldest.  
Disdain is a vice, in comparison of which, Ambition is a virtue. It is the extreme of Ambition. It is a kind of scorn, that scorneth to be compared to any other thing. None are more subject unto it then fair women, for they disdain any one should be held as fair as they. They disdain any should go before them, or sit above them. They disdain any should be braver than they, or have more absolute pens entertained in their praises than they. This woman disdains any but she, should carry the credit of wit: another, that any should sing so sweet as she; a third, that any should set forth the port and majesty, in gate and behaviour like unto her. Only for disdain and pre-eminence, their Husbands and their Loves, they draw sundry times into never-dated quarrels.  
Such disdain and scorn was betwixt the wives of jacob, Rachel and Leah, because the one had children, and the other none. Such disdain was betwixt Sarah and Hagar. There was a disdain of shouldering amongst the Disciples, who should be greatest. Joseph's Brethren, disdained their Father should love him better than he did them. Dives disdained Lazarus. In London, the rich disdain the poor. The Courtier the Citizen. The Citizen the Countryman. One Occupation disdaineth another. The Merchant the retailer. The retailer the Craftsman. The better sort of Craftsmen the base. The Shoemaker the Cobbler. The Cobbler the Carman. One nice Dame, disdains her next neighbour should have that furniture to her house, or dainty dish or devise, which she wants. She will not go to Church, because she disdains to mix herself with base company, and cannot have her close Pew by herself. She disdains to wear that every one wears, to hear that Preacher which every one hears. So did jerusalem disdain God's Prophets, because they came in the likeness of poor men. She disdained Amos, because he was a keeper of 
Amos. 1.  Oxen, as also the rest, for they were of the dregs of the people; But their disdain prospered not with them, their house for their disdain, was left desolate unto them.  
London, thy house (except thou reputes) for thy disdain, shall be left desolate unto thee.  
The second Daughter of Pride, is Gorgeous attire. Both the Sons and Daughters of Pride, delight to go gorgeously. As Democritus set up his brazen shield against the Sun, to the intent that (continually gazing on it,) he might with the bright reflection of his beamy radiation, fear out his eyes, and see no more vanities, so set they their rich embroidered suits against the Sun, to dazzle, daunt and spoil poor men's eyes that look upon them. Like Idols, not men, they apparel themselves. Blocks and stones by the paynim and Infidels, are over-gilded, to be honoured and worshipped: so over-gilde they themselves, to be more honoured and worshipped.  
The women would seem Angels here upon earth, for which (it is to be feared) they will scarce live with the Angels in heaven. The end of Gorgeous attire, (both in men and women,) is but more fully to enkindle fleshly concupiscence, to assist the devil in lustful temptations. Men think that women (seeing them so sumptuously pearled & bespangled,) cannot choose but offer to tender their tender souls at their feet. The women, they think, that (having naturally clear beauty, scorchingly blazing, which enkindles any soul that comes near it, & adding more Bavines unto it of lascivious embolstrings,) men should even flash their hearts, (at first sight,) into the purified flames of their fair faces.  
Ever since Eva was tempted, and the Serpent prevailed with her, women have took upon them, both the person of the tempted, and the tempter. They tempt to be tempted, & not one of them, except she be tempted, but thinks herself contemptible. Unto the greatness of their great Grandmother Eva, they seek to aspire, in being tempted and tempting. If not to tempt, and be thought worthy to be tempted, why die they and diet they their face with so many drugs as they do, as it were to correct Gods workmanship, and reprove him as a bungler, & one that is not his craft's Master? Why ensparkle they their eyes with spiritualized distillations? Why tip they their tongues with Aurum potabile? Why fill they up ages frets with fresh colours? Even as Roses and flowers in Winter, are preserved in close houses under earth, so preserve they their beauties, by continual lying in bed.  
Just to Dinner they will arise, and after Dinner, go to bed again, and lie until Supper. Yea, sometimes (by no sickness occasioned) they will lie in bed three days together: provided every morning before four a clock, they have their broths, and their culliss, with Pearl and Gold sodden in them. If haply they break their hours, and rise more early to go a banqueting they stand practising half a day with their Looking-glasses, how to pierce and to glance, and look alluringly amiable. Their feet are not so well framed to the Measures, as are their eyes to move and bewitch. Even as Angels are painted in Church-windowes, with glorious golden fronts, beset with Sunbeams, so beset they their foreheads on either side, with glorious borrowed gleamy bushes; which rightly interpreted, should signify beauty to sell, since a bush is not else hanged forth, but to invite men to buy. And in Italy, when they set any Beast to sale, they crown his head with Garlands, and be-deck it with gaudy blossoms, as full as ever it may stick.  
Their heads, with their top and top gallant Lawnebaby caps, and Snow-resembled silver curl, they make a plain Puppet stage of. Their breasts they embuske up on high, and their round Roseate buds immodestly lay forth, to show at their hands there is fruit to be hoped. In their curious Antick-woven garments, they imitate and mock, the Worms and Adders that must eat them. They show the swellings of their mind, in the swellings and plumping out of their apparrayle. Gorgeous Ladies of Court, never was I admitted so near any of you, as to see how you torture poor old Time with spunging, pynning and pounsing: but they say his sickle you have burst in twain, to make your Periwigs more elevated arches of.  
I dare not meddle with ye, since the Philosopher that too intentively gazed on the stars, stumbled and fell into a ditch: and many gazing too immoderately on our earthly stars, fall in the end into the ditch of all uncleanness. Only this humble caveat let me give you by the way, that thou look the devil come not to you, in the likeness of a Tailor or Painter; that how ever you disguise your bodies, you lay not on your colours so thick, that they sink into your souls. That your skins being too white without, your souls be not all black within.  
It is not your pinches, your purls, your floury iagging, superfluous enterlacing, and puffings up, that can any way offend God, but the puffing up of your souls, which therein you express. For as the biting of a bullet, is not that which poisons the bullet, but the lying of the Gunpowder in the dint of the biting: so it is not the wearing of costly burnished apparel, that shall be objected unto you for sin, but the pride of your hearts, which (like the Moth) lies closely shrouded amongst the thirds of that apparel. Nothing else is garish apparel, but Pride's ulcer broken forth. How will you attire yourselves, what gown, what head-tire will you put on, when you shall live in Hell amongst hags and devils?  
As many jags, blisters and scars, shall Toads, Cankers and Serpents, make on your pure skins in the grave, as now you have cuts, jags or raisings, upon your garments. In the marrow of your bones snakes shall breed. Your morne-like crystal countenances, shall be netted over, and (Masker-like) cawle-visarded, with crawling venomous worms. Your orient teeth, Toads shall steal into their heads for pearl; Of the jelly of your decayed eyes, shall they engender them young. In their hollow Caves, (their transplendent juice so pollutionately employed,) shelly Snails shall keep house.  
O what is beauty more than a wind-blowne bladder, that it should forget whereto it is borne. It is the food of cloying-concupiscence living, and the substance of the most noisome infection being dead. The Mothers of the justest men are not freed from corruption, the Mothers of Kings & Emperors are not freed from corruption. No gorgeous attire (man or woman) hast thou in this world, but the wedding garment of faith. Thy winding-sheete shall see thee in none of thy silks or shining robes; To show they are not of God, when thou goest to God, thou shalt lay them all of. Then shalt thou restore to every creature, what thou hast robbed him of. All the Leases which dust let out to life, at the day of death shall be returned again into his hands. In skins of beasts Adam and Eve were clothed, in nought but thine own skin, at the day of judgement shalt thou be clothed. If thou be'st more deformed, than the age wherein thou diedst should make thee, the devil shall stand up and certify, that with painting & physicking thy visage, thou so deformedst it; Whereto God shall reply, What have I to do with thee, thou painted sepulchre? Thou hast so differenced & divorced thyself from thy creation, that I know not thee for my creature.  
The print of my finger thou hast defaced, and with Arts-vanishing varnishment, made thyself a changeling from the form I first cast thee in; Satan take her to thee, with black boiling Pitch, rough cast over her counterfeit red and white: and whereas she was wont, in Ass' milk to bathe her, to engraine her skin more gentle, pliant, delicate and supple, in bubbling scalding Lead, and fatty flame-feeding Brimstone, see thou uncessantly bathe her. With glowing hot irons, singe and suck up that adulterized sinful beauty, wherewith she hath branded herself to infelicity.  
O female pride, this is but the dalliance of thy doom but the intermissive recreation of thy torments. Th' greatness of thy pains I want portentous words t●… portray. Wherein soever thou hast took extreme the light and glory, therein shalt thou be plagued with extreme & despiteous malady. For thy flaring frounzed Periwigs, low dangled down with love locks, shalt thou have thy head side, dangled down with more Snakes than ever it had hairs. In the mould of thy brain, shall they clasp their mouths, and gnawing through every part of thy skull, ensnarle their teeth amongst thy brains, as an Angler ensnarleth his hook amongst weeds.  
For thy rich borders, shalt thou have a number of discoloured Scorpions rolled up together, and Cockatrices that kill with their very sight, shall continually stand spirting fiery poison in thine eyes. In the hollow Cave of thy mouth, Basilisks shall keep house, and supply thy talk with hissing when thou strivest to speak. At thy breasts (as at Cleopatra's) Aspisses shall be put out to nurse. For thy Carcanets of pearl, shalt thou have Carcanets of Spiders, or the green venomous flies Cantharideses. Hell's torments were no torments, if invention might conceit them. As no eye hath seen, no ear hath heard, no tongue can express, no thought comprehend, the joys prepared for the Elect, so no eye hath seen, no ear hath heard, no thought can comprehend, the pains prepared for the rejected.  
Women, as the pains of the devils shall be doubled, that go about hourly tempting, and seeking whom they may denoure, so except you soon lay hold on g●…ce, your pains in hell (above men's) shall be doubled, for millions have you tempted, million of men (both in soul and substance) have you devoured. To you, half your husband's damnation (as to Eva) will be imputed. Pride is your natural sin, that woman you account as common, which is not coy & proud. Womanhood, you deem nothing else, but a disdainful majestical carriage. Being but a rib of man, you will think to overrule him you ought to be subject too. Watch over your paths, look to your ways, lest the Serpent (long since) having overmastered one of you, overmaister all of you, one after another. Banish Pride from your Bours, and the lineal descents of your other sins are cut off, you will seem Saints and not women. But for you, men would near be so proud, near care to go so gorgeously. Near fetch so many newfangles from other Countries, you have corrupted them, you have tempted them, half of your pride you have divided with them. No Nation hath any excess, but they have made it theirs. Certain glasses there are, wherein a man seeth the image of another, and not his own: those glasses are their eyes, for in them they see the image of other Countries. and not their own. Other Countries fashions they see, but never look back to the attire of their forefathers, or consider what shape their own Country should give them.  
Themistocles put all his felicity, in being descended from a noble lineage. Simonides, to be well-beloved of his people or Citizens. Antif●…ines, in renown after his death. Englishmen put all their felicity in going pompously and garishly: they care not how they impoverish their substance, to seem rich to the outward appearance. What wise man is there, that makes the cas●… or cover of any thing, richer than the thing itself which it containeth or covereth? Our garments, (which are cases and covers for our bodies,) we compact of Pearl and gold, our bodies themselves are nought but clay and putrefaction.  
If (as the case or cover of any thing, keeps it from dust or from soiling,) so our costly skinne-cases, could keep us from consuming to dust, or being sin-soiled, it were somewhat: but they (chose) resolve into dust, they are no Armours against old age, but such as are harmed by old age. They wear away with continuance, even as Time doth wear and fore-walke us; Our souls they keep not from sin-soyling, but are the only instruments, so to soil and sin-eclipse them. They are a second flesh-asisting prison, and further corrupting weight of corruption, cast on our souls, to keep them from soaring to heaven.  
Deck ourselves how we will, in all our royalty, we cannot equalize one of the Lilies of the field, as they whither, so shall we wanze and decay, and our place no more be found. Though our span-long youthly prime, blossoms forth eye-banqueting flowers, though our delicious gleaming features, make us seem the Sons and Daughters of the Graces, though we glister it never so in our worme-spunne robes, and gold-florisht garments, yet in the grave shall we rot: from our redolentest refined compositions, air pestilenzing stinks, and breath-choking poisonous vapours shall issue.  
England, the Player's stage of gorgeous attire, the Ape of all Nations superfluities, the continual S in outlandish habilements, great plenty scanting calamities, art thou to await for wanton disguising thyself against kind, and digressing from the plainness of thine Ancestors. Scandalous & shameful is it, that not any in thee, (Fishermen and Husbandmen set aside) but live above their ability and birth; that the outward habit, (which in other Countries is the only distinction of honour) should yield in thee no difference of persons: that all ancient Nobility, (almost,) with this gorgeous prodigality, should be devoured and eaten up, and up starts inhabit their stately Palaces, who from far have fetched inthiss variety of pride to entrap & to spoil them. Those of thy people, that in all other things are miserable, in their apparel will be prodigal. No Land can so unfallibly experience this Proverb, The hood makes not the Monk, as thou: for Tailors, serving-men, Makeshifts and Gentlemen, in thee are confounded. For the compasment of bravery, we have them will rob, steal, cozen, cheat, betray their own Fathers, swear and forswear, or do any thing. Take away bravery, you kill the heart of lust and incontinency. Wherefore do men make themselves brave, but to riot and to revel? Look after what state their apparel is, that state they take to them and carry, and after a little accustoming to that carriage, persuade themselves they are such indeed.  
Apparel, more than any thing, bewrayeth his wearers mind. All sorts covet in it to exceed. Old age I exclude, for that covets nought but gold covetise. None (in a manner) forecast for their souls, they suffer them to go naked, with no good deeds will they clothe them. They let them freeze to death for want of the garment offaith: they famish and starve them, in not supplying them with ghostly cherishment. O soul, of all human parts the most divinest & soveraignest, of all the rest art thou the most despicable and wretched? Not any part of the body but thou consultest and carest for. To every part is thy care more available than thyself. Impart but the tenths of it on thyself, be not more curious of a wimple or spot in thy vesture, than thou art of spotting and thorow-stayning thy deere-bought Spirit, with ten thousand abominations. Whiles the good Angel of mercy, stirs about the blood-springing Pool of expiation, hast thou to bathe in it. Thou canst not bathe in it effectually, unless thou strip thyself clean out of the attire of sin. All gorgeous attire, is the attire of sin.  
The frail flesh wherein thou art invested, is nothing but a sin-battred Armour, with many strokes of temptations assaulted & bruised, to break into thee and surprise thee. Watch & pray, that thou be not surprised. In vain is thy prayer against sin, except thou watchest also to prevent sin. We here in London, what for dressing ourselves, following our worldly affairs, dining, supping and keeping company, have no leisure, not only not to watch against sin, but not so much as once to think of sin. In bed, wives must question their husbands about housekeeping, and providing for their children and famile. No service must God expect of us, but a little in Lent, and in sickness & adversity. Our gorgeous attire, we make not to serve him, but to serve the flesh. If he were pleased with it, why did they ever in the old Law, (when they presented themselves before him, in fasting and prayer,) rentit off their backs, & put on course Sackcloth and ashes? No lifting up a man's self that God likes, but the lifting up of the Spirit in prayer.  
One thing it is for a man to lift up himself to God, another thing to lift up himself against God. In pranking up our carcases too proudly, we lift up our flesh against God. In lifting up our flesh, we depress our spirits. London, lay off thy gorgeous attire, and cast down thyself before God in contrition and prayer, lest he cast thee down in his indignation into hell-fire.  
grievously hast thou offended, and transgressed against his divine majesty, in turning that to pride, which was allotted thee for a punishment. His workmanship thou hast scorned, and counted imperfect without thine own additions put to it. Thou hast contended, to be a more beautiful Creator and repolisher of thyself, than he. His own workmanship thou hast made him out of love with,, by altering and deforming it at thy pleasure. There is no workman, that regardeth or esteemeth his own workmanship, after it is translated and transposed by others. Except thou quickly undost and withdrawest all thy over-working, he will (in wreakful recompense that thou hast so disgraced him,) alter thee, deform thee, translate thee, transpose thee, and leave thy house desolate unto thee.  
The last Daughter of Pride, is Delicacy, under which is contained, Gluttony, Luxury, Sloth, & Security. But properly, Delicacy is the sin of our London Dames. So delicate are they in their diet, so dainty and puling fine in their speech, so tiptoe-nice in treading on the earth, as though they walked upon Snakes, and feared to tread hard, lest they should turn again. Their houses, so pickedly and neatly must be tricked up and tapistred, as if (like Abraham or Lot,) they were to receive Angels. The floor under foot, glisteringly rubbed and glazed, that a jew (if he should behold it,) would suspect it for Holy ground.  
Nothing about them, but is wealth-boastingly, and elaborately beautified: only their souls they keep poor & beggarly. job scrapped his sores with a potshard, if they have any sore, or noisome malady about them, they will over-gilde it, and make it seem more amiable than any other part of the body. Their habitations they make so resplendent and pleasurable on earth, that they have no mind to go to heaven. Into heavens pleasures they cannot see, for their eyes are dazzled with terrestial delights. Those that will have their hearts thoroughly inflamed, with the joys of the world to come, must place no joy in this world, nor frame to themselves any object that may too much content. They must have something evermore to amate and check their felicity, and with Macedon Philip, to remember them of mortality.  
Delicacy is nought but the art of security, and forgetting mortality. It is a kind of Alchimical quintessensing a heaven out of earth. It is the exchanging of an eternal heaven, for a short momentary, imperfect heaven. Blessed are they, that by pining and excruciating their bodies, live in hell here on earth, to avoid the hell never ending. Many of the Saints and Martyrs of the Primitive Church, when they might have spent their days in all affluence and delicacy, and lived out of gun-shot of misery, have notwithstanding, took unto them the contemptiblest poverty that might be.  
They have abandoned all their goods and possessions, and in the Wilderness conversed with penury and scarcity, to beat down and keep under their rebellious flesh. Some of them have drunk puddle water, & fed on the lothsomest things that might be, to bring their affection out of love with this transitory infelicity: Some of them have grated & rawed their smooth tender skins, with hair shirts and rough garments, that they might live in uncessant smart, & take no ease or rest in this life, where no rest or ease is to be taken up but only a watchman's lodge, to sojourn in for a night: or such a house as the Moth buildeth in a garment.  
Others all naked, on sharp shreds of broken flint, and fragments of of potsherds, have spread their weary limbs, that lust in their sleep might not assail them. Holy S. Jerome, in the Desert thou builts thee a Cell, to live out of the haunts of concupiscence, where parched and broiled in Summer, with the raging beams of the Sun, and quivering and quaking in Winter, all riveled and weatherbeaten, with the sharp driving showers, and freezing Northern-winde, thou drunkest no kind of liquor, but the Ice-chilled water from the cold Fountain, nor eats any meat but tough dried roots. On the bare ground thou lodgedst, and with abstinence and want of sleep, lookedst pale and wan. This didst thou to mortify thy insurrective mass of corruption. This didst thou to teach mortification and sobriety, to these licentious times of ours.  
No course do we take to mortify the Law of our members: all mortification, we censure by the name of superstition, our fasts are no fasts, but preparatives to Evening feasts: our mourning is like the mourning of an Heir, who then laughs inward, when he weeps most outward. It is not prayer alone may kill the old man in us, either it must be sanctified and assisted with fasting & abstinence, or it cannot cast out a spirit of such might. It is heavenly policy as well as human policy, to weaken our enemy before we fight with him. We must weaken our enemy & God's enemy, the flesh, with abstinence and fasting, before we fight with him, or else he will be too strong for us.  
Physicians minister Purgations before they apply any Medicine. surgeons lay Corrosives to any wound, to eat out the dead-flesh ere they can cure it. Abstinence and fasting, are as Corasives to eat out the dead-flesh of gluttony, drunkenness, & concupiscence in our loins, which so projected and eaten out, Christ is that kind Samaritan that will come and bind up our wounds, & carry us home with him, to his house or Kingdom everlasting. Thus much of Delecacy in general, now more particularly of his first branch, Gluttony: which if any Country under heaven be culpable of England is.  
All our friendship & courtesy, is nothing but gluttony. Great men show their state & magnificence in nothing so much as gluttony. The birth day of our Saviour, his Resurrection and Ascension, we honour only with gluttony. How many Cooks, Apothecaries, Confectioners; and Vintners in London, grow pursy by gluttony? Under Gluttony, I shroud not only excess in meat, but in drink also. Our full platters and our plentiful cups, unapt us to any exercise of Christianity or prayer. We do nothing but fatten our souls to hell-fire. Our bodies we bombast and balist with engorging diseases. Diseases shorten our days, therefore whosoever englutteth himself, is guilty of his own death and damnation.  
Qui diligit epulas (saith Solomon) in egestate erit. 
Prou. 21 jerom. ad Eustoch.  He that loveth dainty fare, shall feel scarcity. Venture maero aestuans dispumat libidinem. The belly abounding with wine and good cheer, vomiteth forth lust. Gluttony were no sin, or not so heinous as it is, did it not pluck on a number of other heinous sins with it: or that we so engorging ourselves, infinite of our poor brethren, hungerd & starved not in the streets, for want of the least dish on our Tables. Very largely have I inveighed against this vice elsewhere, wherefore here I will truss it up more succinct; Text upon Text I could heap, to show the inconvenience of it. In London I could exemplify it by many noteworthy specialties, but in so doing, I should but lay down what every one knows, and purchase no thank for my labour.  
To my journeys end I haste, & descend to the second continent of Delicacy, which is Lust, or Luxury. In complaining of it, I am afraid I shall defile good words, and too-long detain my Readers. It is a sin that now serveth in London, in stead of an afternoon's recreation It is a trade, that heretofore thrived in huggermugger, but of late days, walketh openly by daylight, like a substantial grave Merchant. Of his name or profession, he is not ashamed: at the first being asked of it, he will confess it. Into the heart of the City is uncleanness crept. Great Patrons it hath got: almost none are punished for it that have a good purse. Every Quean vaunts herself of some or other man of Nobility.  
London what are thy Suburbs but licenced Stews. Can it be so many brothelhouses, of salary sensuality, and sixpenny whoredom, (the next door to the Magistrates) should be set up and maintained, if bribes did not bestir them? I accuse none, but certainly justice somewhere is corrupted. Whole Hospitals of ten times a day dishonested strumpets, have we cloistered together. Night & day the entrance unto them, is as free as to a Tavern. Not one of them but hath a hundred retainers. Prentices and poor servants, they encourage to rob their Masters. gentlemen's purses and pockets, they will dive into and pick, even whiles they are dallying with them.  
No Smithfield ruffianly Swashbuckler, will come off with such harsh hell-raking oaths as they. Every one of them is a Gentlewoman, and either the wife of two husbands, or a bedde-wedded Bride before she was ten years old. The speech-shunning sores, and sightircking botches of their unsatiate intemperance, they will unblushingly lay forth, and jestingly brag of, where ever they haunt. To Church they never repair. Not in all their whole life would they hear of God, if it were not for their huge swearing and forswearing by him.  
I am half of belief it is not a reasonable soul, which effecteth motion and speech in them, but a soul imitating the devil, who (the more to despite God,) goes and enliueth such licentious shapes, and (in them) enacteth more abomination and villainy, than he could in the evillest of evil functions, which is, in divelling it simply. I wonder there is any of these sher etayling bodietraffiquers, which when a man cometh to try them, will easily credit him to be a man, and not rather suspect him to be a forme-shifting devil, disguised in man's likeness. Utterly are they given over to the devil, and he is their God, since they serve him and not God. With many of their mercenary predecessors, in the proportion of men, have devils had carnal copulation. A guilty conscience hath occasion to distrust every thing.  
Satan would think it a dishonour to him, if he should not tempt and win unto him, those whom weak-witted man can tempt and win unto him. Never will they resist Satan's temptations, that cannot resist the temptations of a fleshly tongue. In a damnable state are you, Oye excremental vessels of lust. In selling your bodies to sin, you sell them to the devil, and with a little money he buys them at your hands from Christ, that paid so dear a price for them. Half a Crown or little more, (or sometimes less,) is the set price of a strumpet's soul. The devil needeth never to tempt her, when for so small a value he may have her. We hate and cry out against them, that like Turks and Moors sell their Christian brethren as slaves: how much more ought we to hate & cry out against them, that sell themselves and their souls unto sin as slaves? Those skinplaistring Painters, (of whom in the ●…reaty of gorgeous attire we dilated) do not so much alter God's image, (by artificial over-beautifying their bodies,) as these do, by debasing themselves to every one that brings coin.  
Ere they come to forty, you shall see them worn to the bare bone. At twenty their lively colour is lost, their faces are sodden & perboyld with French surfeits. That colour on their cheeks you behold superficialized, is but sir john whites, or sir john Redcap's livery. The Alchemist of quicksilver, makes gold. These (our openers to all comers,) with quickening & conceiving, get gold. The souls they bring forth, at the latter day shall stand up and give evidence against them. The devil to enfranchise them of hell, shall do no more but produce the misbegotten of their loins. Those that have been daily fornicatresses and yet are unfruitful, he shall accuse of ten thousand murders, by confusion of seeds, and barrayning their wombs by drugs. There is no such murder on the face of the earth as a whore. Not only shall she be arraigned & impeached, of defeating an infinite number of God's images: but of defacing and destroying the mould, wherein he hath appointed them to be cast.  
To whom much is given, of them shall much be required. God having given them excellent gifts of beauty & wit, requireth at their hands excellent increase of them, which when he shall find contrary, he will convert the excess of his graces and gifts, to the excess of scourges & curses. Tell me you dissolute harlots, what increase do you render to God of your wits, or your beauties, but wantonness? The unworthiest are you of life, of any that live. All your life time you do nothing but spoil others, and spoil yourselves. You mar your minds and your beauties both at once, by putting them out to bad uses. What are you but sinks and privies to swallow in men's filth?  
If God (as in Esay) should ask our watch man the devil, 
Esay 21.  Custos, quid de nocte? Watchman what seest thou? what seest thou in London by night? He would answer, I see a number of whores making men drunk, to cozen them of their money. I see others of them, sharing half with the Bawds their Hostesses, & laughing at the Punies they have lurched. Others meeting with their cuturse Paramours in the dark, to whom they deliver what they have been getting all day from a dozen. I see reveling, dancing, and banqueting till midnight. I see a number of wives cockolding their husbands, under pretence of going to their next neighbour's labour. I see Gentlewomen, baking in their painting on their faces, by the fire, and burning out many pounds of Candle in pinning their treble rebaters, when they will not bestow the snuff of a light in looking on any good Book. I see theft, murder and conspiracy, following their business very closely. What would you have more? Those whom the Sun sees not in a month together, I now see in their cups and their jollity.  
Well conceited was the Italian, who writ the Supplication to candlelight, earnestly desiring her by writing, to disclose unto him, the rare secrets she saw in her Empery.  
One judgement day is scarce enough for God, to take the confession alone of candlelight. He had need of a night judgement as well as a day, to indite the sinners of the night.  
Provident justices, to whom these abuses redress appertaineth, take a little pains to visit these houses of hospitality by night, and you shall see what Courts of good fellowship they keep. Hoist up Bawds in the Subsidy book, for the plenty they live in, is princely. A great office is not so gainful, as the principalship of a College of Courtesans. No Merchant in riches, may compare with those Merchants of maidenheads, if their female Inmates were not so fleeting & uncertain. This is a trick amongst all Bawds, they will feign themselves to be zealous Catholics: and whereas they dare not come to Church, or into any open assembly, for wonring and howting at, they pretend scrupulosity of conscience, and that they refrain only for religion. So if they be imprisoned or carried to Bridewell for their bawdry, they give out they suffer for the Church.  
Great cunning do they ascribe to their Art, as the discerning (by the very countenance) a man that hath Crowns in his purse: the fine closing in with the next justice, or Alderman's deputy of the ward: the winning love of neighbours round about, to repel violence, if haply their houses should be environed, or any in them prove unruly, (being peeled and pould too unconscionably.) They forecast for backdoors, to come in and out by undiscovered, Sliding windows also, and trapboords in floars, to hide whores behind and under, with false counterfeit panes in walls, to be opened & shut like a wicket. Some one Gentleman generally acquainted, they give his admission unto, fans fee, & free privilege thence forward in their Nunnery, to procure them frequentance. Awake your wits, grave authorized Lawe-distributers, and show yourselves as insinuative subtle, in smoking this Citty-sodoming trade out of his startingholes, as the professors of it are in underpropping it. Either you do not, or will not descend into their deep juggling legerdemain. Any excuse or unlikely pretext goes for payment. Set up a shop of incontinency who so will, let him have but one letter of an honest name to grace it. In such a place dwells a wise woman that tells fortunes, and she (under that shadow,) hath her house never empty of forlorn unfortunate Dames, married to old husbands.  
In another corner, enhabiteth a Physician and a conjuror, who hath corners and spare Chambers to hide cation in, and can conjure up an unphysical drab at all times. In a third place, is there a gross pencild Painter, who works all in oyle-colours, & under colour of drawing of pictures, draws more to his shady Pavilion, then depart thence pure vestals. Lodge these Bawds any suspicious Gentlewoman, and being asked what she is, (be she young and brave,) they will answer, that she is an Esquires or Knights daughter, sent up to be placed with I wot not what Lady or Countess. Be she of middle years, she is a widow that hath suits in Law here at the Term, and hath been a long Counsaile-table petitioner. Be she but civility plain, and in her apparel cittizinizd, she is the goodwives Niece, or near kinswoman.  
Thus have they evasions for all objections, and are never (lightly) brought in question, but when they break and jar with their neighbours. Monstrous creatures are they, marvel is it fire from heaven consumes not London, as long as they are in it. A thousand parts better were it to have public Stews, then to let them keep private Stews as they do. The world would count me the most licentiat loose straier under heaven, if I should unrip but half so much of their venerial machavielisme, as I have looked into. We have not English words enough to unfold it Positions & instructions have they, to make their whores a hundred times more whorish and treacherous, than their own wicked affects (resigned to the devils disposing,) can make them. Waters and receipts have they to enable a man to the act after he is spent, dormative potions to procure deadly sleep, that when the hackney he hath paid for lies by him, he may have no power to deal with her but she may steal from him, whiles he is in his deep memento, and make her gain of three or four other.  
I am weary of recapitulating their roguery. I would those that should reform it, would take but half the pains in supplanting it, that I have done in disclosing it. Repent, repent, you ruins of intemperance, recover your souls though you have sudded your bodies. Let not your feet be fast locked in the mire of pollution. Meditate but what a brutish thing it is, how short lasting, and but a minute contentive. If you should lend it (from the beginning to the ending,) but suitable descriptionate politure, or if with your eyes, you could but view the meeting of venoms, I know it would work in some of you an abjuring dislike.  
Consider but what loathsome things are engendered of the excess of it, and how the soul (which was made to mount upward,) in the heat of it descends downward. Sin enough of yourselves (woman) have you, you need have no sin put into you. Your flesh of the own accord, will corrupt faster than you would, though you corrupt it not before his time, with inordinate carnal sluttishness. Make not your bodies stinking dungeons for diseases to dwell in: imprison not your souls in a sink.  
To you men, this admonition I will give, be prodigal any way, rather than give a whore an earnest penny of her perdition. Solomon saith, Qui nutrit scortum perdit substantiam, He that keepeth a harlot, squandreth his 
Prou. 29  substance. Paul saith, Qui fornicatur in corpus suum peccat, 
1. Cor. 6  He which committeth fornication, sinneth against his own flesh. In the Acts it is said, Abstinete vos a fornication, Abstain from fornication, In the Epistle to the 
Acts 15  Galathians, The works of the flesh, are adultery, fornications, etc. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, No whoremonger, 
Ephes. 5  adulterer, or covetous person, shall enter into the Kingdom of heaven. Hebrues the 13. Adulterers God will judge. Deuteronomy the 23. There shall not be a harlot of the Daughters of Israel. Matthew the tenth, Whom God hath joined, let no man separate. An adulterer goes betwixt, or separates whom God hath joined. Cum cetera possit Deus, 
jerom super A●…os.  etc. When God can do all things else he cannot restore a Virgin after she is deflowered. Laesa pudicitia, saith Ovid, deperit illa semel, Chastity being once scared, is never salved.  
Agamemnon defiling Brisis, his wife Clytaemnestra played false with Aegisthus in the mean time. On the other side, Ulysses shunning the enchantments of Circe's, the sweet descant of the Sirens, & immortality of Calypso, to live with his constant wife Penelope, she (notwithstanding all the gallant troops of Grecian wooers enticements, that in her house kept a standing court a long time,) kept herself chaste for him 20. years. Solon ordained that the adulterer should be put to death. The tale of Selcucus and is son his stale, I have made my book too great already, only in displaying the sins of London. Whosoever they be that have souls, and would in no means have them miscarry, let them remember that of S. Augustine, In pollutione anima fit tota caro, In adultery or fornication, the soul is made all flesh, & is wholly employed in impoverishing and debilitating the flesh. Quidam dixit olim, dives eram dudum, sed tria me fecerunt nudum, alea, vina, venus, tribus his factus sum egenus. There was a man said late, he was in rich estate, but 3. things have undone him, froward Dice, Wine, and Women: only from these three things, all his confusion springs.  
The third derivative of Delicacy is sloth, of which I will say a word or two, and so shake hands with all the Sons and Daughters of Pride. Security the last devident of Delicacy, it includeth in it: for Security is nothing but the effect of sloth, therefore will I handle both under one. It is a sin which is good for nothing, but to be Dame Lecheries Keeper when she lies in. He or she that is possessed with sloth, is slow in good works, slow in coming to Sermons, slow in looking after thrift, slow in resisting temptations, slow in defending any good cause. And of these fore-slowers it is said, Those that be neither hot nor cold, I will spew them out of my mouth. Reu. the 3.  
There is a certain kind of good sloth, as to be slow to anger, slow to judgement, slow to revenge. But there is a sloth unto judgement, which is also an ill sloth. As when a poor man's cause hangs so long in Court ere it can be decided, that through the judges sloth he is undone with following of it. There is a sloth also in punishing sin, as when Magistrates will have their eyes put out with gifts, and will not see it, but wink at it, till they be broad waked with the general cry of the Commonwealth. There is a sloth of Souldioury, as of those that come from the wars, and will not fall to any thing afterward, but cozen, beg and rob. There is a sloth of the Ministry, as of those that after they be Beneficed, will never preach. Doth the wild Ass bray, saith job, when 
job. 6  he hath grass, or loweth the Ox when he hath fodder? No more do a great sort of our Divines after they have living. They have learned to spare their tongue against they are to plead for greater preferment. So have a number of Lawyers learned to spare their ears, against golden Advocates come to plead to them. They cannot hear except their ears be rubbed with the oil of Angels: they must have a spur to prick on an old dog, a few Spurrials to remedy deafness.  
Others there are (though not of the same order) that can never hear, but when they are flattered, and they cry continually to their Preachers, Loquere nobis placentia, Loquere nobis placentia. Speak to us nothing but pleasing 
Esay 30  things, and even as Archabius the Trumpeter, had more given him to cease them to sound, (the noise that he made was so harsh,) so will they give them more to cease then to sound, to corrupt them then to make them sound feed their sores then to launch them. The noise of judgement which they pronounce, soundeth too harsh in their ears. They must have Orpheus' melody, whom the Ciconian women tore in pieces, because with his music, he corrupted and effeminated their men. Guide saith, There are certain devils that can abide no 
Guide in musics.  music, these are contrary devils, for they delight in nothing but the music of flattery. Moving words please them, but they hear them but as passion in a play, which maketh them ravishtly melancholy, and near renteth the heart. The delicacy both of men & women in London, will enforce the Lord to turn all their plenty to scarcity, their tunes of wantonness to the alarms of war, and to leave their house desolate unto them.  
How the Lord hath begun to leave our house desolate unto us, let us enter into the consideration thereof with ourselves. At this instant is a general plague dispersed throughout our Land. No voice is heard in our streets, but that of jeremy, Call for the mourning women, 
jerem. 9  that they may come and take up a lamentation for us, for death is come into our windows, and entered into our Palaces. God hath stricken us but we have not sorrowed, of 
jerem. 5  his heaviest correction we make a jest. We are not moved with that which he hath sent to amaze us: As it is in Ezechiel, They will not hear thee, for they will not hear 
Ezech. 3  mei So they will not, nor cannot hear God in his visitation, which have refused to hear him in his Preachers. For your contempt and neglect of hearing God's Preachers, even as S. john Baptist said, There was one come into the world more mighty than he, that carried his fan in his hand, So say I, there is one come into the world, more mighty than the word preached, which is, the Lord in this present visitation: He carrieth his fan in his hand to purge his Floor. All the chaff of carnal Gospelers, that are blown from him with every wind of vanity or adu●…sity, he shall purge from amongst you.  
A time of springing and growing have we had, now is our merciful Father come to demand fruit of us. The fruit of faith, the fruit of good works, the fruit of patience and long suffering. If he find no fruit on us, he will say to us as he said to the Figtree, on which he found nothing but leaves, Never fruit grow on thee henceforward. And incontinent it withered, and incontinent 
Mat. 21. 19  Death shall seize on us. From the mouth of the Lord I speak it, Except in time you convert, and bring forth the fruits of good life, the Kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a Nation bringing 
Mat. 20. 19  forth worthy fruits thereof. With the two blind men that sat by the Highway side, when Christ came from jericho, we have cried a long time, Lord have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us, O Son of David, have mercy upon us: and lo, our eyes have been opened, the light of the Gospel hath appeared unto us; But (like those blinde-men) after our eyes were opened, after the light of the Gospel hath appeared unto us, we have refused to follow Christ.  
You Usurers and Engrossers of Corn by your hoarding up of gold and grain, till it is mould, rusty, Moth-eaten, and almost infects the air with the stinch, you have taught God to hoard up your iniquities and transgressions, till mouldiness, putrefaction and mustiness, enforceth him to open them, and being opened, they so poison the air with their ill savour, that from them proceedeth this perilsome contagion. The Land is full of adulteries, & for this cause the Land mourneth. The 
jerem. 23.  Land is full of Extortions, full of proud men, full of hypocrites, full of murderers. This is the cause why the 
Esay 24  Sword devoureth abroad, and the Pestilence at home. Wicked deeds have prevailed against us. How long (saith jeremy) shall the Land mourn, and the herbs of every 
jerem. 12  field wither, for the wickedness of the Inhabitants that dwell therein? Our Land mourns for the sickness, the herbs of the field have withered for want of rain, yet will no man depart from his wickedness. Post over the Plague to what natural cause you will, I Positively affirm it is for sin. For sin (said the Lord by the forenamed jeremy,) I will smite the inhabitants of jerusalem, 
jerem. 21  and man and beast shall die of a great pestilence. I will bring a Plague upon you, that whosoever heareth of it, his ears 
jerem. 19  shall tingle. Either take away the cause, or there is no removing of the effect.  
London, thou art the seeded Garden of sin, the Seathat sucks in all the scummy channels of the Realm. The honestest in thee, (for the most,) are either Lawyers or Usurers. Deceit is that which advanceth the greater sort of thy chiefest; Let them look that their riches shall rust and canker, being wet & dewed with Orphan's tears. The Lord thinketh, it were as good for him to kill with the Plague, as to let them kill with oppression. He beholdeth from on high all subtle conveyances, and recognizances. He beholdeth how they pervert foundations, and will not bestow the Bequeathers free alms, but for bribes, or for friendship. I pray God they take not the like course, in preferring poor men's children into their Hospitals, and converting the impotents money to their private usury.  
God likewise beholdeth how to beguile a silly young Gentleman of his Land, they will crouch cap in hand, play the Brokers, Bawds, Apron-squires, Panders, or anything. Let us leave of the Proverb which we use to a cruel dealer, saying: Go thy ways, thou art a jew: and say, Go thy ways, thou art a Londoner. For then Londoners, are none more heard-hearted and cruel. Is it not a common proverb amongst us, when any man hath cozened or gone beyond us, to say, He hath played the Merchant with us? But Merchants, they turn it another way, and say, He hath played the Gentleman with them. The Snake eateth the Toad, and the Toad the Snail. The Merchant eats up the Gentleman, the Gentleman eats up the Yeoman, and all three do nothing but exclaim one upon another.  
The head of daniel's Image was of beaten gold, but 
Dan, 2. 23  his feet iron. Our head or our Sovereign is all gold, golden in her looks, golden in her thoughts, in her words and deeds golden. We her feet or her subjects, all iron. Though for her vertuee sake, and the prayers of his dispersed Congregation, God prorogeth our desolation for a while, yet we must not think, but at one time or other, he will smite us and plague us. He shall not take away our sin, because we will not confess with David, that we have sinned: or if we do so confess, we hold it full satisfaction for it, without any reformation or amendment. In this time of infection, we purge our houses, our bodies and our streets, and look to all but our souls.  
The Psalmist was of another mind, for he said, O Lord I have purged and cleansed my spirit. Blessed are they that 
Psa. 76. Math. 8.  are clean in heart, how ever their houses be infected. There were then in the heat of the sickness, that thought to purge and cleanse their houses, by conveying their infected servants forth by night into the fields, which there starved and died, for want of relife and warmekeeping. Such merciless Cannibals, (in stead of purging their spirits and their houses,) have thereby doubled the Plague on them and their houses. In Grays-inn, Clarkenwell, Finsbury, and Moorefieldes, with mine own eyes have I seen half a dozen of such lamentable outcasts. Their brethren and their Kinsfolks, have offered large sums of money, to get them conveyed into any outhouse, and no man would earn it, no man would receive them. Cursing and raving by the Highway side, have they expired, and their Masters never sent to them, nor succoured them. The fear of God is come amongst us, and the love of God gone from us.  
If Christ were now naked and visited, naked and visited should he be, for none would come near him. They would rather forswear him and defy him, then come within forty foot of him. In other Lands, they have Hospitals, whether their infected are transported, presently after they are strooken. They have one Hospital, for those that have been in the houses with the infected, and are not yet tainted: another for those that are tainted, and have the sores risen on them, but not broken out. A third, for those that both have the sores, & have them broken out on them. We have no provision but mixing hand over head, the sick with the whole. A halfpenny a month to the poor man's box, we count our utter impoverishing. I have heard travailers of credit avouch, that in London, is not given the tenth part of that alms in a week, which in the poorest besieged City of France is given in a day. What is our religion, all avarice and no good works? because we may not build Monasteries, or have Masses, Dirges, or Trentals sung for our souls, are there no deeds of mercy that God hath enjoined us?  
Our dogs are fed with the crumbs that fall from our Tables. Our Christian brethren are famished, for want of the crumbs that fall from our Tables. Take it of me richmen expressly, that it is not your own which you have purchased with your industry: it is part of it the poors, part your Princes, part your Preachers. You ought to possess no more, then will moderately sustain your house and your family. Christ gave all the victual he had, to those that flocked to hear his Sermons. We have no such promise-founded plea at the day of all flesh as that in Christ's name we have done almsdeeds. How would we with our charity sustain so many mendicant orders of Religion, as we heretofore have, and as now at this very hour beyond Sea are, if we cannot keep and cherish the casual poor amongst us? Never was there a simple liberal reliever of the poor, but prospered in most things he went about. The cause that some of you cannot prosper, is, for you put out so little to interest to the poor.  
No thanksworthy exhibitions, or reasonable pensions, will you contribute to maimed Soldiers, or poor Scholars, as other Nations do, but suffer other Nations with your discontented poor, to Arm themselves against you. Not half the Priests that have been sent from them into England, had hither been sent, or ever fled hence, if the Cramp had not held close your purse strings. The livings of Colleges, by you are not increased, but diminished: because those that first raised them, had a superstitious intent, none of us ever after, will have any Christian charitable intent.  
In the days of Solomon, gold and silver bore no price. In these our days, (which are the days of sathan,) nought but they bear any price. God is despised in comparison of them. Demas forsook Christ for the world: in this our deceasing covetous world, Demas hath more followers then Christ. An old Usurer that hath not an heir, rakes up thirty or forty thousand pounds together in a hutch, will not part with a penny, fares miserably, dies suddenly, and leaves those the fruits of niggardize to them that never thank him.  
He that bestoweth any thing on a College or Hospital, to the world's end shall have his name remembered, in daily thanksgiving to God for him: otherwise he perrisheth as the Pellitory on the wall, or the weed on the house top, that groweth only to wither; Of all his wealth no good man reaping any benefit, none but Cankers, prisons, and bard Chests, live to report he was rich. Those great bard Chests he carries on his back to Heaven gates, and none so burdened, is permitted to enter.  
There is no Male of any kind, hath appearance of breasts but man, and he having them, gives no suck with them at all. Such dry-nurses are our English Cormogeons, they have breasts, but give no suck with them. They have treasure innumerable, but do no good with it. All the Abbey-lands that were the abstracts from impertinent alms, now scarce afford a meals meat of alms. A penny bestowed on the poor, is abridged out of housekeeping. All must be for their children that spend more than all. More prosperous children should they have, were they more open handed. The Plague of God threatens, to shorten both them and their children, because they shorten their hands from the poor. To no cause refer I this present mortality but to covetise.  
Let covetise be enlarged out of durance, the infected air will uncongeale, and the wombs of the contagious Clouds will be cleansed. Pray and distribute you gorbellied Mammonists: without prayer and distribution, or almost thinking of God, have you congested those refulgent masses of substance. With the destribution of them, (if you look for salvation,) your souls must you ransom from Belial. And fortunate are you, if with long intercessions and prayers, you may get your ransom accepted of. Nothing of all your dross (going down into the earth) shall you take with you: you shall carry no more hence Nisi parva quod urna capit, but a Coffin and a winding-sheete.  
They have slept their sleep, saith David, and all the men of riches, have found none of their treasure in their 
Psalm. 75  own hands after their sleep was ended Poor men, to you I speak, (for rich men have their Country Granges to fly to from contagion,) humble your souls with fasting and prayer. Elias and Moses, by their fasting and prayer, were filled with the familiarity of God. Entreat the Lord that he would pass over your houses, as in Egypt he passed over the houses of the Israelites first-born: Beseech him, with the Gergazens, (into whose Herds of Swine the devils were sent,) to depart (with his heavy judgements) out of your quarters. Though he seemeth a little to sleep, (as when he was on the Sea with his Disciples, and the tempest arose,) yet if you awake him with your out crying prayers, as the Apostles did, saying: Lord save us. Lord save us, or we perish, he will command the winds and the Sea, control the contagion & the sickness, and make a calm ensue, heal every disease and languor amongst you.  
In the day of my trouble, (saith the forenamed prophetical King,) I sought unto the Lord, my sore ran & ceased 
Plalm. 77.  not in the night, my soul refused comfort. I did think upon God, and was troubled, I prayed, and my spirit was full of anguish. Let us seek unto the Lord in like sort, let our souls refuse comfort, let us think upon him & be troubled, let us pray, and fill our spirits full of anguish, till such time as he turneth our affliction from us. If we be not thus troubled, if our spirits be not possessed with anguish, but we make a sport and flea-biting of his fearful visitation, and think (without our prayers) the season of the year will cease it, he will send a rougher stringed scourge amongst us, a desolation that shall furrow deeper in our sides, and root out the memorial of us.  
If (saith the Apostle to the Hebrues,) they escaped not which refused him that spoke on earth, much more shall they 
Heb. 12  not escape, that turn away from him that speaketh to them from heaven. Now it is that God speaketh to us from heaven, now if we turn away from him, or will not turn to him there shall not one of us escape.  
In the time of Gregory Nasianzene, (if we may credit Ecclesiastical records) there sprung up the direfullest mortality in Rome, that mankind hath been acquainted with: scarce able were the living to bury the dead, and not so much but their streets were digged up for graves; Which this holy Father (with no little commiserate hart-bleeding) beholding, commanded all the Clergy (for he was at that time their chief Bishop) to assemble in prayer & supplications, and deal forcingly beseeching with God, to intermit his fury and forgive them. For all this not any whit is abated, he took no pity on them. Therewith that reverend Pastor, (entranced to hell in his thoughts for the distress of his people,) caused all the Citizens, young and old, to be called forth their houses, and attend him in a howling procession. Up and down the streets, from one end of the City to the other he led them, and Preachers (as Captains over multitudes) were set to direct and encourage them in their Invocations and Orisons. Four days together in this fervent exercise he detained them. In those places where the mortality raged most, a stand would he make half a day, and with reiterated solicit, and prostrate voyce-crazing vehemency, break open a broad clowde-dispersing passage, to the throne of mercy.  
The four days concluded, and that with their bellowing clamours, and breast-embolning sighs, they had enforced a sufficient breach in the Firmament, there appeared a bright sunne-arraied Angel, standing with a reeking bloody sword in his hand, in the chief gate of their City, which (they coming near) in all their sights, on his arm he wiped and put up: and (in that very instant) throughout the City, the plague ceased. Some (peradventure) may take exceptions against the certainty hereof, but if we will authorize any thing in the Roman or Ecclesiastical histories, we must ascribe truth as well unto this. I would see him that could give me any other reason but this, of the building of the yet extant gate and Castle of S. Angelos, on both which, the Angel with his sword drawn is artificially engraven. True, or not true, the example can do no harm: We will not be too hasty to imitate it.  
In stead of humbling ourselves after this manner, and wearying God with our cries and lamentations, we fall a drinking and bousing, & making jests of his frowning castigation. As Babes smile and laugh in their sleep, so we (surprised with a lethargy of sin,) do nothing but laugh and jest in the midst of our sleepy security. We scoff and are jocund, when the sword is ready to go through us. On our wine-benches we bid a Fico for ten thousand Plagues.  
Him as a timorous milksop we deride, that takes any antidote against it. Upon the point of God's sword we will run as he is in striking: rush into houses that are infected, as it were to outface him. My son (saith the Apostle,) despise not the chastisement of the Lord. The 
●…eb. 12, 5.  Lords chastising we think to escape, by despising it. Quod in communi possidetur ab omnibus negligitur. That which is dispersed, of all is despised. Est tentatio adducens peccatum, et tentatio probans fidem. There is a temptation leading to sin, and a temptation trying our faith. The temptation of this our visitation, hath both led us to sin, and tried our faith. It hath led us to sin, in that it hath hardened our hearts, & we have not humbled ourselves under it as we should. It hath tried our faith to be a presumptuous and rash faith, and that it is built on no firm foundation. Blessed is the man, saith job, whom God correcteth. Cursed are we, for God correcteth us, and we regard it not. 
jeb, 5, 17.   
As the holy Ghost willeth us, not to despise the chastising of God, so he would have us not to faint when we are rebuked of him, and therefore he giveth a reason, For whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth, and he scourgeth every son he receiveth. As there be drunken despisers of Gods present chastisement, so are there them that faint too much under it: that think it lies not in the lords power to restore them: that no prayers or repentance may reprieve them; that imagine, (since GOD in this world hath forsook them;) he will for ever forsake them. Thus they argument against themselves, He that denieth us a small request, of the prolongment of a few earthly days, he will surely stop his ears, when in a greater suit (for the life eternal) we shall importune him.  
O no, foolish men you err, though long life on earth be a blessing, yet it follows not by contradiction, that GOD curseth all those whose days he shortens. Many except their days were shortened, would never be saved. Many in their prime and best years, are reached hence, because the world is unworthy of them, and they are more worthy of heaven, than the world. The good King josias, was taken away in his youth. Our Saviour was taken up in his best youthly age. Others fortheir sins, the Lord by untimely death punishethin this world, that they may be absolved in the world to come. A large account of them shall he demand, to whom he dareth long life. Whom God chastiseth or cutteth off, he loveth, half his account he cuts off. Every son he scourgeth that he receiveth.  
Hath GOD chastised or scourged such a man by the sickness, he is not a greater sinner than thou whom he hath not chastised, but he loveth him better than thee, for in his chastising, he hath showed more care over him than he hath over thee. Few men defamed with any notorious vice, can I hear of, that have died of this sickness. God chastiseth his Sons and not bastards. No Sons of God are we, but bastards, until we be chastened. The 
Herald 12, 8, 〈◊〉  Fathers of our earthly bodies, for a few days chastise us at their pleasure, but God chastiseth us for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. The Fathers of our earthly bodies, though they beat us and chastise us, yet cannot (for all the pain they put us to,) enfeofe us in glory perpetual: for how should they do that for us, which they cannot do for themselves? Only because they are to benefit us with a little transitory chaff, they tyrannize and reign over us: and therefore more austere are they to keep us in obedience, for we should not (after their death) lavishly misspend the labours of their parsimony.  
The guerdon they give us, (for all their inflicted sorrow and smart,) is that which they must leave in spite of their hearts, and cannot themselves keep any longer. They give us place, that in self-same sort we may give place to others. But God our Redeemer, Chastiser and Father, corrects us, that we may receive no corruptive inheritance, (such as in this life we receive, by the waning of our earthly Fathers,) but a never failing inheritance, where we shall have our Father himself for our inheritance.  
O what a blessed thing is it to be chastised of the Lord! Is it not better (O London) that God correct thee, and love thee, then forbear thee, and forsake thee? He is a just God, and must punish either in this life, or in the life to come. Though thou considerest only the things before thee, yet he being a loving foreseeing father for thee, and knowing the intollerablenesse of the never-quenched Furnace (which for sin he hath prepared,) will not consent to thine own childish wishes, of winking at thee here on earth, (where though he did spare thee, thou shouldst have no perfect tranquillity,) but with a short light punishment, acquitteth thee from the punishment eternal, & eternally incomprehensible tortorors'.  
When Preachers threaten us for sin, with this adjunct eternal, as pains eternal, eternal damnation, eternal horror and vexation, we hear them as words of course, but never dive right down into the bottomless sense. A confused model and misty figure of Hell have we conglomorate in our brains, drowsily dreaming that it is a place under earth, uncessantly vomiting flames like Aetna, or Mongibell, and fraughtfull of fire & Brimstone, but we never follow the meditation of it so far, (were it nothing else,) as to think what a thing it is to live in it perpetually.  
It is a thousand thousand times worse, then to be staked on the top of Aetna or Mongibell. A hundred thousand thousand times more than thought can attract, or supposition apprehend. But eternally to live in it, that makes it the hell, though the torment were but trifling. Signified this word eternal, but some six thousand years, (which is about the distance from Adam,) in our comprehension it were a thing beyond mind, inso much as we deem it an impatient spectacle, to see a Traitor but half an hour groaning under the Hangman's hands. What then is it, to live in threescore times more grinding discruciament of dying, a year, a hundred year, a thousand year, six thousand year, sixty thousand year, more thousands than can be numbered in a thousand years; so much importeth this word eternal, or for ever.  
Though all the men that ever God made, were hundred handed like Briareus, and should all at once take pens in their hundred hands, and do nothing in a whole age together, but set down in figures & characters, as many millions or thousands as they could, so many millions or thousands could they never set down, as this word of three syllables Eternal, includeth, an Ocoan of ink would it draw dry to describe it. Hell is a circle which hath no break of, or discontinuing. Hence blasphemous Witches and Conjurers, when they raise up the devil, draw a ringed circle allabout him, that he should not rush out and oppress them: as also to humble & debase him, in putting him in mind by that circle, of the eternal circle of damnation, wherein God hath confined and shut him. What dullards and blocke-heads are we, that hearing these terms of hell and eternal, so often souned in our ears, sound them so shallowly, or if we sound them as we should, are no more confounded with them? It should seem we are not too much terrified with them, when for an hours pleasure, (which hath no taste of true pleasure in it,) we will dare them both to their utmost.  
Fowls of the air, though never so empty stomached, fly not for food into open Pitfalls. Quae nimis apparent retia vitat a●…is, Too open snares, even simple birds do shun. No Beast of the Forest, spying a gin or a trap laid for him, but eschews it. We spy and foresee the Pyt-fal, the Net, the Gin, the Trap, that sathan (our old entrapper) lays for us, yet wilfully we (without any flattering hope of food, without any excellent allurement to entice us, or hunger to constrain us,) with full race, will dart ourselves into them. Yea though Christ, from the skies, hold out never so moving lures unto us, all of them (Haggardlike) we will turn tail to, and hast to the iron fist, that holds out nought but a knife to enthrill us.  
O if there were no heaven, me thinks (having that understanding we ought,) we should forbear to sin, if it were but for fear of hell. Our Laws, with nothing but proposed penalty, from offending cohibite us, they allow no reward to their temperate observants: Gods Laws, (proposing both exceeding reward and exceeding penalty,) are every day violated and infringed. Either we suppose him, not able to execute his Laws, or that (like one of Rome's Epicure Emperors,) he more favoureth their breakers then obeyers: advancing men sooner for oppugning then observing them. far is he from that madbrain fondness, of his Laws he is not only not careless, but jealous and zealous, and to the fourth generation pursueth their neglecters.  
None of them he pardons, though for a space he may respite. If he delayeth or respiteth, his delaying or respyting, is but to fetch up his hand higher, that he may let it fall on them heavier. His deferring, is the more to infer. Of no ill payment shall he complain, that hath the wages of his wickedness held from him in this world, to receive them by the whole sum in Hell. Could the least and sencelessest of our senses, into the quietest corner of hell, be transported in a vision but three minutes, it would breed in us such an agasting terror, and shyvering mislike of it, that to make us more wary of sinne-meriting it, we would have it painted in our Gardens, our banqueting houses, on our gates, in our Galleries, our Closets; our bedchambers.  
Again were there no hell but the accusing of a man's own conscience, it were hell, and the profundity of hell to any sharp transpercing soul, that had never so little inkling of the joys of heaven, to be separate from them; to hear and see triumphing and melody, and Tantalus like, not be suffered to come near them, or partake them; to think when all else were entered, he should be excluded. Our best method to prevent this excluding, or separating from God's presence, is here on earth (what so ever we go about,) to think we see him present. Let us fancy the firmament as his face, the allseeing Sun to be his right eye, and the Moon his left, (although his eyes, are far more fiery pointed and subtle,) that the Stars are but the congemmed twincklings of those his clear eyes, that the winds are the breath of his nostrils, and the lightning & tempests the troubled action of his ire: that his frowns bring forth frost & snow, and his smiles fair weather: that the Winter is the image of the first world, wherein Adam was unparadized, & the fruitfostering Summer, the representation of the seed of woman's satis-fying, for the unfortunate fruit of life which he plucked. Who is there entertaining these divine allusive cogitations, that hath not God unremovable in his memory. He that hath God in his memory, and advanceth him before his eyes evermore, will be bridled and plucked back, from much abusion and bestialnesse. Many sins be there, which if none but man should over-eye us offending in, we would never exceed, or offend in. In the presence of his Prince, the dissolutest misliver that lives, will not offend or misgoverne himself: how much more ought we, (abiding always in God's presence,) precisely to straighten our paths? Hard is it when we shall have our judge an eye-witness against us. There is no demurring, or exceptioning against his testimony.  
Purblind London, neither canst thou see that God sees thee, nor see into thyself. How long wilt thou cloud his earthly prospect, with the misty night of thy mounting iniquities. Therefore hath he smitten thee and struck thee, because thou wouldst not believe he was present with thee. He thought if nothing else might move thee to look back, at least thou wouldst look back to thy striker. Had it not been, so to cause thee to look back and repent, with no cross or plague would he have visited, or sought to call thee. He could have been revenged on thee superaboundantly at the day of thy dissolution, and souls general Law-day, though none of thy children or allies, by his hand had been sepulchred. His hand I may well term it, for on many that are arrested with the Plague, is the print of a hand seen, and in the very moment it first takes them, they feel a sensible blow given them, as it were with the hand of some slander by. As God's hand we will not take it, but the hand of fortune, the hand of hot weather the hand of close smouldry air. The Astronomers, they assign it to the regiment and operation of Planets. They say, Venus, Mars, Saturn, are motives thereof, and never mention our sins, which are his chief procreatours. The vulgar menialty conclude, therefore it is like to increase, because a Heronshaw (a whole afternoon together,) sat on the top of Saint Peter's Church in Cornhill. They talk of an Ox that told the bell at Wolwitch, and how from an Ox, he transformed himself to an old man, and from an old man to an infant, and from an infant to a young man. Strange Prophetical reports (as touching the sickness,) they murter he gave out, when in truth, they are nought else but cleanly coined lies, which some pleasant sportive wits have devised, to gull them most grossly. Under Master Dees name, the like fabulous divinations have they bruited, when (good reverend old man) he is as far from any such arrogant preciseness, as the superstitious spreaders of it, are from true peace of conscience.  
If we would hunt after signs and tokens, we should ominate from our hardness of heart, and want of charity amongst brethren, that God's justice is hard entering. No certainer conjecture is there of the ruin of any kingdom, than their revolting from God. Certain conjectures have we had, that we are revolted from God, and that our ruin is not far of. In divers places of our Land, it hath reigned blood, the ground hath been removed, and horrible deformed births conceived. Did the Romans take it for an ill sign, when their Capitol was strooken with lightning, how much more ought London, to take it for an ill sign, when her chief steeple is strooken with lightning? They with thunder from an enterprise were disanimated, we nothing are amated. The blazing star, the Earthquake, the dearth and famine some few years since, may nothing affright us. Let us look for the sword next to remembrance and warn us. As there is a time of peace, so is there a time of war. No prosperity lasteth always. The Lord by a solemn oath bound himself to the jews, yet when they were oblivious of him, it pleased him to forget the covenant he made with their forefathers; and left their City desolate unto them. Shall he not then (we starting from him, to whom by no bond he is tie,) leave our house desolate unto us? Shall we receive of God (a long time) all good, and shall we not look in the end, to receive of him some ill? O ye disobedient children return, and the Lord shall heal your infirmities. Lie down in your confusion, and cover your faces with shame. From your youth to this day, have you sinned, and not obeyed the voice of the Lord your God. Now in the age of your obstinacy, and ungrateful abandonments, repent and be converted. With one united intercessionment, thus reconcile yourselves unto him.  

O Lord our refuge from one generation to another, whither from thy sight shall we go, or whether but to thee, shall we fly from thee? Just is thy wrath, it sendeth no man to hell unjustly. Rebuke us not in thine anger, neither chastise us in thy displeasure. We have sinned we confess, and for our sins thou hast plagued us, with the sorrows of death thou hast compassed us, and thy snares have overtook us: out of Nature's hand, hast thou wrested the sword of Fate, and now slayest every one in thy way. Ah thou preserver of men, why hast thou set us up as a mark against thee? Why wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro with the wind, and pursue the dry stubble? Return & show thyself marvelous upon us. None have we like Moses to stand betwixt life and death for us. None to offer himself to die for the people, that the Plague may cease. O dear Lord, for jerusalem didst thou die, yet couldst not drive back the plagues destinate to jerusalem. No image or likeness of thy jerusalem, on earth is there left but London. Spare London, for London is like the City that thou lovedst. Rage's not so far against jerusalem, as not only to desolate her, but to wreak thyself on her likeness also, all the honour of thy miracles thou losest, which thou hast showed so many & sundry times, in rescuing us with a strong hand from our enemies, if now thou becomest our enemy. Let not worldlings judge thee inconstant, or undeliberate in thy choice, in so soon rejecting the Nation thou hast chosen. In thee we hope beyond hope, We have no reason to pray to thee to spare us, and yet have we no reason to spare from prayer, since thou hast wild us. Thy will be done, which willeth not the death of any sinner. Death let it kill sin in us, and reserve us to praise thee. Though thou kill'st us, we will praise thee: but more praise shalt thou reap by preserving then killing, since it is the only praise to preserve where thou mayst kill. With the Leper we cry out, O Lord if thou wilt, thou canst make us clean. We claim thy promise, That those which mourn shall be comforted.  
Comfort us Lord, we mourn, our bread is mingled with ashes, and our drink with tears. With so many Funerals are we oppressed, that we have no leisure to weep for our sins, for howling for our Sons and daughters. O hear the voice of our howling, withdraw thy hand from us, and we will draw near unto thee.  
Come Lord jesus, come, for as thou art jesus, thou art pitiful. Challenge some part of our sin-procured scourge to thy Crosse. Let it not be said, That thou but half satisfiedst for sin. We believe thee to be an absolute satisfier for sin. As we believe, so for thy merits sake, we beseech thee let it happen unto us.  
Thus ought every Christian in London, from the highest to the lowest, to pray. From God's justice we must appeal to his mercy. As the French King, Francis the first, a woman kneeling to him for justice, said unto her: Stand up woman, for justice I owe thee, if thou beg'st any thing, beg for mercy. So if we beg of God for any thing, let us beg for mercy, for justice he owes us. Mercy, mercy, O grant us heavenly Father for thy mercy.  
Luctus monument a manebunt.  
FINIS.