A SERMON Preached before the KING ON The 30th of January, 1684/5.  
Being the FAST for the Martyrdom of King CHARLES the First of Blessed Memory.  
By FRANCIS Lord Bishop of Ely, and Almoner to His MAJESTY.  
Published by His Majesty's special Command.  
LONDON, Printed for Robert Clavell at the Peacock at the West-end of St. Paul's Churchyard 1685.   
ACTS V 28. later part. 
— And intent to bring this Man's Blood upon us.  
TO direct and determine our Choice what parts of the Holy Writ are fittest to be dwelled upon by us in our Pulpits, by you in your Closets on this Day (the Anniversary Memorial of a most horrid Murder, but also of a most glorious Martyrdom) Whose Judgement is so fit to be followed, as His, whom we do now Commemorate, the Blessed and Royal Martyr, escaped from his Murderers, and out of the reach of those hands that were deeply died in his Blood? When his Soul was almost upon the Wing, ready to take its flight, and the Angels stood waiting to conduct it to the Place of Blifs, whither Christ was gone before; Then He did with strong Consolation reflect, and with intense Devotion did He meditate on the Story of the Passion, as the Lesson appointed of old by the Church for this day of the Month, but then the most Seasonable, and now the most proper Lesson for this His Day.  
The Words I have chosen are in the Continuation of that Story, relating the Consequences of the Passion, the heavy Consequences that were like to fall upon the Betrayers and Murderers of that Just One, Titles which St. Stephen, the next Martyr after Him, gave Them and Him. Yet I do not intent to draw any studied Parallels between the Passion of our Lord, the Lord from Heaven, and the Sufferings of an Earthly Prince, though as Sovereign a Prince, and as Sacred as any of those whom the Holy Ghost has called the Christ's, or Anointed of God: For, although the Royal Prophet has said to all other Kings, Ye are Gods, yet our Solemn Mourning at this time is enough to put us in mind of what he subjoins immediately, but ye shall die like men; of which this bloody Day gave the most fatal Instance, and the most amazing one that was ever given. But infinitely more astonishing was the fall of him whom the Prophet Daniel styles Messiah the Prince, though he loved to style himself the Son of Man; yet in all his Life and Death there was so much of a God, that we may ask concerning that King of Kings, such a Question as himself asks concerning the Kingdom of God, by what Comparison shall we compare him? Most Parallels are hard and stiff, and come up lamely, but in this case they would look too bold and swelling: They would offend the tender Piety of that most Christian King, if he in Heaven could hear them: 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as St. Gregory Nazianzen speaks, where he speaks in his Rhetorical way, to the Soul of the dead Emperor, If in those Regions of Bliss be knew what was doing here below. Therefore I shall not strain the Circumstances of one Tragic story to make it resemble the other; yet safely I may say in General, our most devout Prince made it his Prayer, made it the Labour of his Life, as the Apostle had done, That he might know Christ, and the Fellowship of his Sufferings, being made conformable to his Death: And this Prayer of his was so favourably heard, that he might have said with an humble Confidence after that same blessed Apostle St. Paul (who also was beheaded for the Testimony of Jesus) I fill up that which is behind of the Afflictions of Christ in my Flesh: And again, The Sufferings of Christ abound in me.  
To let myself into my own most proper Business and Task at this time, I must open the matter of Fact, as it stood in that Conjuncture when these words of my Text were spoken, by some of the Chief Leaders among the Jews. They had shed the blood of their God, their King, their Messiah; yet they would fain have shifted off the Gild from themselves; but still the Apostles thought it their part to put it extremely home upon them. A cursed prevailing Party among the Jews, the Pharisees and Sadducees, had Conspired, or in plain terms, a Race of abominable Hypocrites, had combined with a Crew of detestable and damnable Atheists (such a Junto, as the like never was before, nor ever since has been, except our late Regicides) These men had at length gained the People from Christ, and gotten them, or enough of them on their side, to be instant with loud Clamours, Crucify him, Crucify him. When they had done the Deed, than they would have silenced the Cry of his Blood against them. They Menaced, Imprisoned, and Harased all those who had the Courage to charge them with the Gild, though at the same time these Preachers of the Gospel had the Charity to show them how they might sue out their Pardon. But how ungrateful and unwelcome a thing is Truth where it shows ill men to themselves! Though Pilate had the hardiness to ask our Lord Christ, What is Truth? yet he durst not stay for his Answer.  
And now what would not these Miscreants give for an Act of Oblivion; that they might forget the thing they had done, and the very Name of the Person might be forgotten! Ye intent, say they, to bring this Man's blood upon us, but it was grievous to them to say the Blood of Jesus. That there was such a Man put to Death, they must needs acknowledge, that They had been the Accusers, They the Solicitors, They the Petitioners for Justice and Execution upon him, they could not deny. Pilate indeed would gladly have been but Passive: But for Them, so Active were They, that no body needed to bring this Man's Blood upon them: For, to ease that tame Wretch, the Governor, who ought to have drawn his Sword instead of washing his Hands, they had called this Blood upon themselves, and upon all their Posterity, His Blood be upon us, and upon our Children.  
Their meaning then in my Text was this; You intent to bring this Man's Blood upon us, as if it were Innocent Blood, nay, as if it were the Blood of our Messiah; you would make us Guilty, not only of Homicide, but of Regicide, nay even of Deicide, as if we had shed the Blood of God, whereas He whom ye style your King was delivered up as a Malefactor, was Tried as a Subject, and Condemned as a Traitor to the Government, so that it was no Murder, but an Execution. But ye have filled Jerusalem with your Doctrines, there was the galling Point, that these great Preachers regained the People apace; and then, those proud Demagogues that were lately so very governing, must lose their dear Popularity, and fall from their Empire to be marked and pointed out for the Men of Blood.  
The words being thus explained, do naturally offer and afford us these Observations. And, 

1. First, How backward are the most bloody Zealots to Confess the guilt of Blood? How forward to acquit themselves from so just a Charge?  
2. How necessary it is, how absolutely necessary, to lay them open, to show men of Blood their own guilt?  
3. Upon whom should we intent to bring the guilt of Blood? Upon none but those that have brought it upon themselves. And Who are those?  
4. Fourthly, In all this we should mainly intent, that which the Apostles intended, to bring even the most Guilty to true Repentance.    
1. How backward are the most bloody Zealots to Confess the Gild of Blood? How forward to acquit themselves from so just a Charge?  
Exactly at this pass are our English Regicides; They killed and took possession, as Eliah charges Ahab in the Case of Naboth. Yet was their Case worse by far than that between Ahab and Naboth, a King and one Innocent Subject; for this the Regicides did to a great number of their Innocent fellow Subjects; and this they did to a King as Eminent for all manner of Goodness, as Ahab was remarkable for Extreme Wickedness. Yet if the Prophet Eliah should come again (as some are of Opinion he shall come at the end of the World, but if he should come) at this time to deliver his Master's Errand to any of these, he must expect no better Reception than Ahab gave Him, Hast thou found me, O mine Enemy? for he becomes their Enemy that tells them the Truth. Yet for all That, Eliah like a Prophet from God immediately goes on, I have found thee.  
How gladly would they part with this odious Business out of their own Memories? And how do they abhor us only for doing our Duty, as the Apostles did here, Calling their Sins to Remembrance? They apply to this matter that saying of the Wiseman, The Repetition of a matter separateth very Friends. They would be Friends with us, if we could find in our hearts to be their Flatterers. They Complain as if it were ill-natured, as if it were Uncharitable and Unchristian to mention their murdering of the King, as if it were high time the Act for observing the Thirtieth of January were Repealed, as if it were almost as great a Grievance as the 35th of the Queen.  
To show I do this sort of men no wrong, How very few, if any of those who took upon them to act as the King's Judges, would take the Christian shame upon themselves, when they came to suffer, or profess the least regret for what they had acted? Preach Repentance to them! (as was done to Several of them before their Deaths) they would have us to know their names were enrolled in the Book of Life, their Calling and Election was sure. And some of the last words which the Arch-traitor was heard to utter were such as These, I am sure I was once in Christ, therefore ever in Christ. I have kept it ever since for a Reply upon some well-meaning, but ill-instructed People, who are ready to Despair if they do not satisfy themselves of their being in the State of Certainty when they are dying; that some of These, whose hands were so full of blood, yet were as full of this false Security, as the most glorious Martyrs were of the true One.  
If it were needful to give any more Instances, I might show by later Examples of the same Party, to what a Reprobate Sense men may be given up, that have once Seared their Consciences to stop their own bleeding at heart while they are shedding innocent Blood with their own hands, while they break into Houses, massacre Innocent men in their Beds, mangle them with such Cruelty as the like was scarce ever heard of since Dolabella performed his Barbarous Exploit in the dead of Night, upon Trebonius: But that was for his being one of Caesar's Murderers: Whereas these poor Sufferers were Guilty of no Crime, but their being of his Majesty's Guards. And yet these same Monsters do in their Declarations solemnly protest they hold no Cruel Principles, they would by no means be mistaken for men of Blood.  
But the more Confident they are of their own Innocence, and the more they turn away their Impudent eyes from seeing their own Gild; the more absolutely necessary it is for us to lay it before them, which leads to my Second Part.  
2. In this we do but follow the great Examples before us, we do as was done by the Apostles: And this aught to be done not barely for the sake of those that are guilty, but also for the securing and preserving our own Innocence; for He that hates his Brother is a Murderer, says the Apostle, and he that Suffers Sin upon him, or does not reprove him for it, is, in another place of Scripture, supposed to hate him. Nor could St. Paul have entered this Protestation, I take you to Record this Day that I am pure from the blood of all men; but that he was able to add, for I have not shunned to declare unto you, all the Counsel of God.  
Besides, we are well ware that the voice of the meanest Blood, much more of the Royalest, if it still cries from the Earth, will pluck down more Judgements from Heaven: and that the most Innocent private man, the most unspotted from Blood, may yet be involved in those public Calamities. We turn the Case upon ourselves, the Case in the Second of Samuel, that there was a Famine in the days of David three years, year after year, and David enquired of the Lord, and the Lord answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody House, because he slew the Gibeonites, for the Children of Israel had sworn unto them, and Saul sought to slay them.  
I do very well remember how pressingly this Case of the Gibeonites was urged in favour of those Murderers of the King, that had rendered themselves. But I must needs say it had been more pertinently urged, if instead of Saul's putting to Death the Gibeonites after they had made a Covenant with Israel, the Gibeonites had put King Saul to Death by virtue of a Covenant made among themselves, without their King, and against Him. Now suppose those Gibeonites, that were no better than Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water to Israel, had Constituted some of their Draymen a High-Court of Justice to Murder King Saul, with a show of Authority on their Side; Then had a Famine ensued, had a War followed upon That, had a Pestilence began where the War had ended, had the Capital City, in which such a Tragedy was acted, been reduced to Ashes, and after all That had the Famine begun again; David would scarce have needed to Consult the Oracle of God to Discover one great Cause of so many Judgements.  
Since than Almighty God, when he makes Inquisition for Blood, he remembers them, and forgets not the Cry of the humble, as David (the Party concerned in the former Case) has set it down, Psal. 9 12. We had best make strict Enquiry, and consider well, (as the Apostles did here before they would charge any with the Blood of Christ,) upon whom we intent and aught to bring this fearful Gild of Royal Christian Bloodshed. Upon none but Those, that in a higher or lower Degree, in a greater or less proportion, have brought it upon themselves. And who are those? which must be my third Consideration.  
3. Since Actions full of Horror and Astonishment, if they are long deliberated, and done with Form (as was the Deed of this day) are never done without that which the Stoics call a Prolepsis, that is a deep and firm persuasion of mind that such Actions are both lawful and necessary to be done; they that establish the Principle by which the minds of men are set and fixed on Such Actions, must be Responsible for the next immediate visible and unavoidable consequence of their own Principle.  
When the Principle is once Riveted in the heart, there is nothing so desperate or so damnable, but men will go through it without fear. Women among the Barbarians will ascend the Funeral Piles of their dead Husbands, and smile as they give their own Bodies to be burnt to Ashes. Yea, very Children have suffered Torments, not only patiently, but joyfully, for a false Religion strongly impressed upon them, instead of the true one. Whoever therefore confirm and harden others in King-killing Principles must bear a share in the Gild, though not they, but others shed the Blood of Kings, because such Principles strike at all Kings, for they strike at the Kingly Office itself, and they do it once for all: As the Son of Zerviah offered to Smite King Saul, and so as he should not need to Smite him a second time.  
Now upon this Supposition, as I shall show anon, that some who came into the World since our present Gracious Sovereign began to Reign, have brought upon themselves the blood of his Royal Father by defending the Regicide; so others that lived some Ages before that dismal Period of time, did as it were antedate the Gild by introducing odious Precedents, or laying down wicked Premises long ago, from whence these late Great Offenders followed their footsteps, or drew their abhorred Conclusions.  
Out of the many Instances of this kind, which I could easily produce, I shall mention but a very few against two Parties. Those of the one Party do pass in the Church of Rome for true Catholics. Those of the other Party would fain pass among Us for the true Protestants. Both Parties are as opposite each to the other, as they are to Us and the Truth, yet both of them agreed in the main Design to Confound Monarchy.  
Pope Zachary was (I think) the first, who pretended to exercise a power of Absolving Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance, whereupon a King of France, Childeric the Third, was deposed as unfit for Government, the ancient Royal Family was laid aside till it was at last extinguished, the Crown of France was set on another Head, and settled on another Family.  
Now I may truly say, That Bishop of Rome laid a Foundation for many a following Rebellion, even That Rebellion arising so long after from the Holy League. And Gregory the Seventh, the first who avowed openly that pestilent Heresy, called by his Name, the Hildebrandian Heresy of the Deposing, and if need were, the King-killing-power, made way for the Clements, the Ravillacs, and the Powder-Traytors. And T. Aquin. himself, for all he is Sainted, and stands as the Pillar of their Schools; yet delivered this for good School-Divinity, That, as soon as any Prince is denounced Excommunicate for Apostasy from the Faith, his Subjects are ipso facto free from his Dominion over them, and from the Oath of Fidelity by which they were bound to him. I must needs say, whoever they are that bring such Principles as these for Christian Doctrine into the Church, they attempt to give the State, and the Kingly Office itself, a mortal wound; They do their best to set up the Court of Rome as a standing High-Court of Justice over all Kings.  
And then for the other Party, Knox and Buchanan, with the rest of those old Leaders to Rebellion, as well as Milton, and several later Patrons of the Good Old Cause, they shall one day be stared in the face by all that precious Blood which their Writings encouraged others to shed so prodigally. And Calvin himself is inexcusable, who clearly enough discovers his ill-meaning, though he thinks fit to show it but in half-lights, to disguise it with Ifs or Ands, with a perhaps, or it may be. If there be now, says he, any popular Officers ordained to moderate the Licentiousness of Kings (such as were the Ephori set up of old against the Kings of Sparta, the Tribunes of the People, against the Roman Consuls, and the Demarchi against the Athenian Senate, and with which power, says he, perhaps, as the world now goes, the Three Estates are seized in each several Kingdom, when they are Solemnly Assembled;) so far am I, says he, from hindering them to put restraints upon the exorbitant Power of Kings, as their Office binds them; that I conceive them, says he, rather to be guilty of a perfidious Dissimulation, if they connive at Kings when they play the Tyrants, or wantonly insult on the Common People, in that, says he, they treacherously betray the Subjects Liberties.  
This was, as a certain Learned Author justly terms it, a Stumbling-block of Disobedience and Rebellion, cunningly laid by Calvin in the Subjects way. And so it proved; for this Doctrine was quickly improved into Application and Use; As the same Author tells us from another, that the Commissioners from Scotland endeavoured to justify their proceed before Q. Elizabeth against their unfortunate Sovereign Q. Marry, by those very words of Calvin which I have repeated, from whence they inferred, That it was lawful for them to put evil Princes into Prison, and also to deprive them of their Kingdoms.  
Nor is it any great wonder, after this Determination from Him who was an Oracle with them of Switzerland and Geneva, That (in spite of all that honest Deodati had declared against our Rebellion) they afforded a friendly Reception, and gave the right hand of Fellowship to some of those whom they knew to have been at the Top of that bloody Cabal, which past the Sentence upon the King.  
Indeed this Principle leads directly to the Trial of a King by his Subjects; it exposes the Majesty of Princes to be made a Cruel Pageant to their People, as one of our Republican Assassins' is reported to have urged, that the King whom they promised to make a glorious King, might be arrayed in his Robes, and brought to the Scaffold with the Crown on his Head, to show, that together with the Monarch they would cut off the Monarchy itself. This Principle (one of Calvin's Institutions) in it's own natural and necessary tendency would set up a High Court of the Three Estates in each Kingdom, as another standing High Court of Justice over each King.  
But to come nearer home to our own times, Upon whom now do we intent, and upon whom ought we to bring the guilt of this Day?  
Intending to bring the guilt of any man's blood, but especially the blood of a King, upon any that are not guilty, and so to murder their good Name, which is as it were a man's other Life; such a Calumny would be a Crime little less than killing the Body of a Fellow-Subject. But on the other side to acquit the guilty, is of equal abomination as to condemn the Innocent.  
This place in the Proverbs was notoriously misapplyed and abused by One, of ever cursed Memory, whom they styled the Precedent of their Court, when he brought this place to justify that Diabolical Sentence he was about to pass on an Innocent Person, and an Imperial Prince, a Crowned Head accountable to none but God. But now the place is justly applied, when it is thus retorted upon Him and Them, who sat in that Hellish Court of Mock Justice, who all expressed their assent by standing up, as was before agreed and ordered. They gloried in the Act at their Deaths, as they made it the pride of their Lives. Their Ghosts would be offended, and think their names affronted, if they should not for ever stand in red Letters, as they have written their own Characters in Royal Blood.  
For those that fought against him, those that betrayed and delivered him into the hands of his Murderers; Those that made Treaties with him ineffectual, by clogging them with such hard Conditions, as neither his Honour nor his Conscience might Comply withal; Those that bred Parliamentary Delays till the Army had gained their point, and were come up to the City; such must be put in mind, at least once a year, that they may apply to themselves the Case of the Jews, who did but deliver up Christ to the Romans, and yet St. Peter tells them, Ye have crucified him. Nay, they may apply the Case of Judas, who, it appears by the Story, did not imagine the Jews would have gone so far against his Lord and Master, as to press the Sentence of Death against him; for when he saw that he was Condemned, Judas repent himself, and brought again the Thirty pieces of Silver, a farther Step than ever I heard was made by any of these Traitors, to make a voluntary Restitution, as he did, of the price of blood. Very few of them would make such a Confession as he did, I have sinned in that I have betrayed Innocent Blood.  
But as that furious Crisis, that woeful Conjuncture is over; as most of those execrable Wretches have born their own Judgement; so I would to God the Gild of that Sacred Blood might fall on no more Heads than such as those that stand as Monuments of their own Barbarity. But, good God what shall we think when men unborn in that fatal year of Forty eight, shall act at so high a rate of almost incredible, yet most demonstrable Villainy, as to derive that horrible Regicide upon themselves? As the Apostle supposes that some had Crucify'd Christ over afresh; So Christ himself supposes, that all the Blood shed from the time of righteous Abel, should be required of that Generation. And so it may be of This. And Some that had no Being in the Reign of the late good King, and others that were none of his Subjects, may involve themselves in the same guilt by Owning, Justifying and Glorifying (as much as they can) some others that bore a part in it. Old Voet that abominable Divinity Professor at Vtrecht, whom Honourable Witnesses have heard Catechising his Scholars, and explaining the the Sixth Commandment, Thou shalt do no Murder, but putting this Answer into their Mouths, That putting our King to Death was no Murder at all; He, though a Foreigner, one that lived so far off, yet he brought this Blood upon himself. And 'tis to be feared he left also Sanguinary stains upon the Minds of some his too easy Disciples.  
So Those that set up Fanatic Schools, and their Country Academies here at home, on purpose to breed up their Children so as to make them Rebels, if occasion shows; if ever they have another Day for it (as they use to speak) such Parents go far towards the making Regicides both of themselves and their Children. The wise Ulysses is brought upon the Stage by the Tragedian expressing an impatience to think that the Trojans should steal away young Astyanax the Son of Hector, as if, after an end was put to the long Trojan War, they lived still in hopes that he might one day Head them to retrieve their Cause: Bella Telemacho parant; They are contriving, says he, to bring the Calamity of another War upon my Son Telemachus. So such as Spirit away our Youth into the Disaffected Commonwealth-Party, are studying to bring New Miseries upon our children's Children: They go the way to entail the Parricide Committed on the Father of their Country, to bring it upon the Postnatis, the Children born after the Crime was acted: They communicate Sin and Mischief from one Generation to another, as a wise Patriot said concerning the Accomplices of Catiline, who had taken exquisite Care to Corrupt the Gentry of Rome, that although Catiline were gone, yet if such as were of his breeding continued among them, they would prove a Catilinarian Seminary in the Commonwealth. Nay such among us take an effectual Course, not only to propagate, but to perpetuate the Gild of the Blood that was shed this day: for at this rate it will run on in Infinitum, and till the end of the World there will be no end of blood touching Blood, as the Prophet Hoseah speaks: and they bring it upon themselves, all they that are in the same Association, the same Bond of Iniquity with the mad Zealots, though they are not so far gone into the Gall of Bitterness: Yea, they draw on their own heads the blood of those also whom the hand of Authority strikes with the Sword of Justice; of those, upon whom they would fain shift off from themselves the name of the Fanatic or Frantic Party.  
And now if we have brought the guilt of Blood upon many who hitherto perhaps thought themselves perfectly guiltless; how can we help it? How can they avoid it? 'Tis their burden, and they must bear it. And yet, for those Guilty men who are still in the Land of the Living, we intent to lay it upon those, only to make them feel it as a Burden too heavy for them to bear, that they may give a mighty Spring from under so great a Load. For,  
4. In the fourth and last place (of which very briefly). We mainly intent, as the Apostles intended, to bring even the most guilty to true Repentance.  
One that was justly reputed a great Statesman, as well as a good Citizen of Rome, and the noblest Orator, made this Complaint: Either our Foreign Enemies, says he, are overcome in fight, and then they Serve us; or, if they are taken into our Friendship, they are obliged to us in generosity. But if any of our own Countrymen are once debauched into so high a degree of Frenzy, as to declare themselves Enemies to their Country; These, says he, when you have repressed them from destroying the Commonwealth, yet you can hardly restrain them by any Force, or reconcile them by any Favour.  
By a long sad Experience we find this Observation is too true. Most of the Shimei's that have once lift up their Voice in Curses against the King, and lift up their Hand to sling Stones at his Sacred Head, though they be hearty forgiven, yet they will keep no bounds, but transgress again the most easy Conditions given them. They that have brought the Royal Blood upon themselves, can scarce be prevailed withal to make any stop, till by some new Treasonable Attempt, they bring their own Blood also on their own Heads: and so did these in the Text, these whom the Apostles do thus Accuse for shedding the Blood of Jesus: (whom ye slew and hanged on à Tree) although they were told in the very next words, that he was ready to impart that Grace, which no earthly Prince can bestow, to give Repentance as well as forgiveness of Sins; yet it follows, When they heard this they were cut to the heart, and took Counsel to slay them.  
And yet but two Chapters before, a great number, whom St. Peter charges Ye have Crucify'd him, when they heard this, were pricked to the heart, and said unto Peter, and to the rest of the Apostles, Men and Brethren, What shall we do? He bids them Repent, and with many words he exhorts them, Save yourselves from this untoward Generation Whereupon a Multitude of them came over that same day; one short plain Sermon converted three thousand of Christ's Murderers: And I make no doubt, not a few of those that were carried away with the Dissimulation of the men of malice among us, have been converted by the Blessing of God, and the preaching every Thirtieth of January more than Three thousand Sermons.  
There is still a healing Principle in the Blood of Christ. The Lamb of God that was slain; that is, designed to be slain, from the beginning of the World, takes away the Sin of the World, that is, he gives his Grace to all that are ready to receive it, for the taking away of Sin, all the whole heap of Sin, even this Sin which lies so hard upon many, of Shedding the Blood of Kings. For Christ did his part to expiate even for those that shed his own Blood, and that was the Blood of God. No Traitor, if he be penitent, aught to Despair, but his Spirit may be Saved in the Day of the Lord Jesus, since our Blessed Saviour has said it, St. Luke 22. This is my Blood which is shed for you (speaking to all that were present) nevertheless the hand of him that betrayeth me, is with me on the Table: Therefore Judas himself, the foulest Traitor, had a Share in the Blood of Christ, if he would have put in his Claim to it, He had offered him, if he would have accepted the Grace of Repentance.  
And in that weighty Christian Duty, in order to which this Divine Grace is extended to all Mankind, we are all of us deeply concerned: Since alas! we are none of those whom our Saviour calls just men that need no Repentance; for as many of us as have broken our Baptismal and Sacramental Vows are Guilty of the Death and Passion which Christ once suffered for us upon the Cross.  
And for those of Us that were men, knowing Good and Evil, before this abominable Fact of Murdering the King (for it was done within the memory of Man, and of many in this numerous Audience) We are not able to say (u●●●ss we deceive ourselves as Pilate did) that we are Innocent of the Blood of this just Person. The Crown is fallen from our Head, Woe unto us for we have sinned; Such was the Lamentation of the Prophet Jeremiah upon such a Calamity as ours was, and with great Reason, such was his Reflection on the Cause of that public dreadful Calamity, Their National Crying Sins. And the same Account is given by a great Divine, as well as a most wise Prince, King Solomon, That when the Providence of God permits such strange Revolutions, and suffers Kingdoms to degenerate into Commonwealths; 'tis for the Transgression of a Land many are the Princes thereof. Our repeating the Old extreme Provocations (since God is a Righteous Judge, Strong and Patiented, and God is provoked every Day) may bring upon us new Judgements, such as we cannot foresee, and such as we should not be able to endure the sight of. Correct us, O Lord, but in thy Judgement, not in thy Fury, lest thou bring us to nothing. And God in his mercy, if it be his blessed Will, punish us any way, rather than that his Judgements should ever again be any thing such as the last were, that they should touch the Lord's Anointed; or that God should suffer men to ride over our Heads, as the Psalmist speaks; or that the Lord should cover the Daughter of Zion (the Church) with a Cloud in his Anger, and cast down from Heaven unto Earth the Beauty of Israel. Lamentable things to be reflected upon! But that nothing like them may ever return upon us, it lies upon us all to pursue, with a vigorous Christian Resolution, the Apostles Precept and Injunction upon all those, that were any way concerned in the matter of my Text; Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your Sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshment shall come from the presence of the Lord. Which presence we may be confident the Blessed Martyr of this day, was on this day so long ago as he became a Martyr, admitted to enjoy: There to live and reign for ever with the Lord, in whose presence is the fullness of joy, and at ●●●se right hand there is pleasure for ever more. To which, etc.  
FINIS.