Suspiria Ecclesiae & Reipublicae Anglicanae.  
The sighs of the Church and Commonwealth of ENGLAND: OR, An Exhortation to Humiliation, with a help thereunto.  
Setting forth the great corruptions and mseries of this present Church and State, with the remedies that are to be applied thereunto.  
By THOMAS WARMSTRY D. D.  Isa. 59.1, 2. 
Behold the Lords hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither his care heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquiries have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you.  
LONDON, Printed in the Year. 1648.   

To the High and Mighty Prince CHARLES Prince of Wales, and Heir Apparent of the Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland, Increase of Grace, Honour, and Happiness.  
Great Sir,  
I Here present you with the sad portraiture of the wasted and distressed Church and Kingdom of England, which as it is both the subject and partner of your Father's sorrows, so it is now become the object and matter for your Honourable Actions. Many great and glorious spirits have lost their splendour for want of work, and many others have failed of true excellency by misemployment, whilst the greatness of their achievements and victories have been blemished with injustice and impiety, and for want of a right ground of their enterprises, their conquests over the rights of other men have been but splendida peccata, magna latrocinia. God hath provided better work for you to do; justice and Honour lie equally before you, and offer you a large sphere for so bright a Planet to move in; Since your business is not to oppress, but to deliver your oppressed Father, and his people; not to invade other men's rights, but to recover your own: That you may be the Inheritor at once of the valour of your Grandfather, the Great Henry of France; and of the justice and Piety of your Father, the Great Charles of England. Of which two, whether was more glorious, the former in the prowess of his do, or the latter in the constancy and patience of his sufferings, may be the great controversy of Ages to come. Both these together are a pair of golden Spurs presented unto your Highness to set you forward unto high undertake; that you may give the Crown unto the Stories of your Ancestors; let the foundation of your enterprises be Religion, and then you may expect that the great God will finish them with a golden roof of success, which is the hearty prayer of him  
Who is a most humble and faithful Subject of your Fathers, and honorour of your Highness.  
Thomas Warmstry.   

An Errata of the most remarkable Faults.  
PAge 11 line 5. for cause read case. p 15. l. 17. for limed r. livid. p. 46. l. 9 for an r. and p. 53. l. 6. r. it not p. 89 l 18 r. months. p. 94. l. 3. for one r. on. p. 97. l. 19 for l. wguid r. languid. p. 123. l. 10. for tears r. tares. p. 146. l 2. r. Satyra●, p. 147. l. 6. r. praeter p. 148 l. 11. r. woo. p. 170 l 9 r 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ●b l. 10. r 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. p. 191. l. ●5. r. in these p. 219. l. 13. r. Sacerdotalis p. 245. l. 17. r. of the Ministry. ●b. l. 18 deal will. p. 247. l. 19 r. nostrarum. p. 279 l. 6. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. ib. l. 13. for argued r. agreed. p 334 l. 16. for tyranny r. tit●●●g. ib. l 20. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. p. 384. l. 5. r. unhappiness. ib. l. 20. for in t●rr● r. interea. l. ult. for viz r. s●nctis. p. 385. l. 6. r. prodessent omnia. p. 389. l. 7. 1. amoroas. p. 417. l. 3. r. are as. p. 494 l. 5. r. Chap. 5. p. 519. for to r. too. p. 523. l. 2. deal our. p. 530 l. 19 r. of the.  
In the Help for Humiliation.  
Page 9 l. 2. deal stood. p. 28. l. 6. deal and l. 7. r. and turned.   

To the two Houses at Westminster.  
IT is storied of the most high God in the most ancient Records of the holy Writ, that in the several periods of his great work of the world, he ever and anon took the survey of the results of his operations, and as it is said of every particular prospect that he made of them, That God saw that it was good, so it is the sentence given of the full sum in the conclusion of them all, That God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good. It is not imaginable why the divine Architect should stoop so fare unto the resemblance of a humane Method, but that it was his holy pleasure so fare to limit his own power and wisdom in his performances, that his operations might be at once both the matter of our admiration, and the Pattern for our imitation, otherwise as his omnipotent power could have made all things in a moment, so his omniscient wisdom was too fully satisfied, of the unblemishable clearness of all those streams that were to flow from the immaculate and abounding fountain of his perfection, to stand in need for himself of any aftergame of wisdom to be played in the survey of that opifice which was made by that hand that could do nothing amiss; It was then without doubt not for his need, but for our instruction: To teach us this lesson, That as it concerns us to be well advised beforehand of the uprightness and conveniency of those things that we undertake, so by reason of the manifold infirmities, and the great liableness to failings and miscarriages that are in us, in the manage of our best intentions, and most upright designs we should add unto our care of the predisposing of our actions in that we have to do, a frequent survey of the several events and effects of our performances in the examination of that which we have done. And both these as they are very convenient, and challenged by humane weakness of us in all sorts of our undertake, so are they indispensably necessary in those works that are of most weighty and momentaneous concernment. This rule then that is commended unto all by that most speaking and emphatical example of the Almighty, is much more than ordinarily urgent upon you, who have had those works in your hands, than which it is hard to find any of greater weight and hazard within the Sphere of humane actions: That is to say, the rectifying, or marring (which indeed hath been your business) of those two great bodies of humane society; The state of a Church, and of a Commonwealth, whereupon the whole entire good or evil of mankind, both temporal and eternal under God do depend; whether you have in so great an exigent used that sincere and Christian forecast for the right and just platforming of your designs and undertake as was requisite, is a question too late now to be asked, for the main purpose of that inquiry: Deliberatio non cadit in praeterita; but yet it may be to some purpose for you to consider even of that, and if it be not altogether against the rules of Logic, to guess at the premises by the conclusions, we shall find too much evidence from the Products, to believe that so wretched a building (if a matter of so clear ruin may be called so) had none of the best models in your first and earliest thoughts, and addresses to this affair. But we have good reason to be yet so charitable toward you, as to allow you some share in the truth of that old saying, that Nemo repentè fuit turpissimus, and to believe that you have been so far deceived by yourselves, and one more whom I lust not to name, as that you have both deserted and forgotten your first Intentions, as you have your first Declarations and Expressions, and that the Platforms that you laid in 〈…〉 beginning, (however perhaps they were faulty enough) yet were not half so confused as the edifice you have raised, but however innocent that may be thought to have been, you must look to answer for the structure of every part of that Babel that you have set up. If you can think to carry on your business so safely, as to fordo all possibility of a reckoning to any upon earth, yet I can assure you there is One in heaven, that maugre all the shufflings and rigling, the Muses and refuges that you can use or contrive, will be sure to have an account from you.  
It will therefore be very seasonable for you to take some pause a little from your pursuit, and before you do proceed any further, to look back a while upon the progress that you have made, and to take the survey of the work that you have done, and I am fully assured that unless you look with some other light upon your Fabriques' than that wherewith God looked upon his, you cannot see what you have done to be very good, but will rather find it to be desperately evil; for such is the contrariety between God's work and yours, that it can hardly otherwise be determined, but that if his were very good, yours must needs be evil.  
His work was a work of Creation, your hath been a work of Destruction; and if Creation be good, Destruction is evil.  
There is indeed a destruction which is good, but that is the destruction of evil, but yours hath been the destruction of good, of Government, of Law, of Peace, of Religion, of the lives of Peaceable and Innocent men; and if the destruction of evil be good, the destruction of good must be evil.  
His was a work of light, yours hath been a work of darkness, and if light be good, than darkness is evil.  
His was a work of Order, yours hath been a work of Confusion, and if Order be good, Confusion is evil.  
And yet it may be some good to you in time to know and acknowledge it to be evil, that the timely sense of the evil of your works may bring you to the timely good of Repentance; for this purpose I here take the boldness (and I doubt you will think it so) to offer you a view of this scheme that I have drawn of the sad result of your Seven year's Counsels and Actions, in the dismal and wretched Condition whereinto you have brought this poor Church and Kingdom. A spectacle whereon I dare to tell you, that none among you can look without remorse, unless they be men of a neronian spirit; we read indeed of that monster, that he procured Rome to be set on fire, and when he had satisfied the lust of his Diabolical cruelty in beholding the flame of that his own stately City, to take off the odium of so inhuman an Act from himself, he charged it upon the poor innocent Christians, who were marked out as the Malignants of those times, as if they had been the only men that were the public enemies of humane kind, and the chief causes and Authors of those calamities and disasters, which either by the just judgement of God upon the wickedness of those heathens, or by their own malicious and pernicious practices befell the people amongst whom they lived, as Tertullian excellently expresseth it in that admirable Apology that he made for the Christians afterwards, Si Tiberis ascendit in maenia, si Nilus non ascendit in arva, si Coelum stetit, si terra movit, si fames, si lues, statim, Christianos ad leonem: If the flood of Tiber ascended up into the walls, if Nilus did not overflow the fields, if the heaven stood, or the earth moved, if there were Famine, or Pestilence, presently the cry was, That the Christians must to the Lion: Let it not be forgotten in the examination of your consciences, whether you have not used this Neronian Art against some poor suffering Christians in these days; whether you have not, as he did, set this poor Kingdom on fire, and when you have done, laid the charge upon them whom you have branded with the names of Malignants and Delinquents, as if they were the only enemies unto peace, and the causes of all the public disturbances? If you shall be pleased to cast a serious eye upon this sad Spectacle which is laid before you, you will find much cause to embrace your part in that advice unto Humiliation, and Repentance which is offered with it: And it is now high time for you to return. Do not think it too soon, because you have yet some delusions left of outward prosperity to deceive yourselves withal; but remember that saying in Boetius, Si miserum est voluisse prava, potuisse miserius: If it be an unhappiness to desire an evil, it is a double misery to have the power to execute it; and if this be true, it will easily appear that yours is but prosperity mistaken, and that your successes may be reckoned amongst your greatest disasters, & afford work rather for Humiliations than Thanksgivings, since the matter & sublect of them is in actions of that nature that have the Laws both of God and man against them; For my part (saith Philosophy in the same Boet.) Si vehementer ●●●●dum punire desiderarem hominem improbun, nec flammas, nec rotas, nec tormenta ei instituerem, verùm honoribus, auro, argento & divitiis rumperem, cumque plenus usque ad os ipsum foret, aulaeâ retractâ virtutem & paradisum ei ostenderem, cujus alteram prodidisset, alteram perdidisset. If I had a desire (saith he) to punish a wicked man to the purpose, I would not allot unto him either the scorching of flames, or the anguish of the Wheels, or any other torments, but I would rather burst him with honours, and with riches, until he were full up unto the very mouth, and then would I draw the Curtain, and give him a sight of the beauty of virtue, and the joys of paradise, the one whereof he had betrayed, and lost the other. Beware in time (I hearty beseech you) of this Art that Satan hath so long time made use of to waft you on by the pleasing gale of your outward prosperities & successes in your sins, that he may at length ere you are ware suck you into the unremediable Gulf of perdition. He helps you to put Golden chains about your necks, that therewith he may draw you unto eternal miseries; stinking lakes, and filthy ordures are never more poisonous than when the Sunshines upon them: And evil designs are then most dangerous even to those that are the Authors of them when they are in their greatest glory; As for you, it hath been God's mercy unto you (if he shall give you grace to embrace it) to give you of late divers admonitions, and several Antidotes against such delusions. You have had your clouds as well as your Sunshine, and when you promised yourselves nothing but fair weather, as if you had had the Ordinances of heaven at your beck, you have yet met with some unexpected overcasts that have put you into melancholy fits, to mind you that there is one above that sways the courses of the world without your Votes, that can at his pleasure in the smallest moment turn about the hearts and affections of a people, and tumble down the securest wickedness from the greatest height of presumption unto the lowest depth of desperation. But if all those changes that the Lord hath sent upon you, those crosse-encounters of his justice, and fiery flashes of his displeasure wherewith he hath met you in your unsanctified enterprises, have left so small an Impression upon you as not yet to unbewitch you from your conceited prosperity, but that still you believe yourselves to be in the ascendent of your motion; yet I shall desire to have leave to tell you that it is the best season you can take for your Conversion: when wickedness most smiles it is most a Traitor. The kisses of it are but like the kisses of judas; the promises thereof are but deceitful baits to make you swallow down that hook the deeper into your bowels which is hung fast upon the line of Satan. It may bear you in hand that it will make you a glorious Parliament, but in the end it will perform it no better unto you, than you have performed the like unto His Majesty, that you would make him a glorious King. Instead of that Throne you dream of, you may wake at length and find yourselves in a more dismal prison than that you have bestowed upon Him, and then you yourselves may taste the dregs of that poisoned cup which hath been mingled, etc. I hearty beseech you to prevent it: and if you will prevent it, you must not delay it, nor bring any pleas of your seeming prosperity against yourselves, 〈◊〉 persuade you to be any longer held in the snare of Satan, because it may seem to be of a silken texture; but break through all the flattering charms and entanglements of your sins, and return unto Loyalty to your God, unto your King, and to compassion unto your wasted Country. I would to God it might please him so to work upon your hearts, that this my poor hearty advice might be taken by you. How happy might you make both yourselves and us? How might you yet (by God's assistance) boy up the drowned vessel of this Church and State? how might you glorify God? Increase the joy of the Angels in heaven? and gain eternal honour unto yourselves?  
Saint Augustine's retractations were his greatest glory; and could we see a retractation from you, and see it now, whilst you are yet in so much vigour, as that it may be taken for a voluntary from you, who would not embrace it, hug it, and admire it? and passing by the thought of all former miscarriages, admire you for it? who would not write you in Letters of Gold in their memories, as the great examples of true piety, as the great patterns of the victory of grace, as the great disappointers and bafflers of Satan, as the great vindicatours of the self deny all of Christianity; If you desire to be resplendent and glorious, this were an act that would truly make you so, and render you almost the wonder of the world; And such a one as would make all your forepast miscarriages to come in for aggravations of such your stupendious goodness.  
Would you be conquerors? This is the way to be truly Conquerors, Conquerors of yourselves, Conquerors of sin, Conquerors of corruption, conquerors of His Majesty, whose heart you could not choose but even captivate, I am persuaded, by such a work, and make him more your prisoner than he is, even when he shall be at his greatest liberty.  
Conquerors of all the Loyal Party, (of all I dare say that are truly Loyal,) yea, even of their very souls and affections, and that by an happy and unbloudy victory; nay, me thinks it were even to overcome then in this too: To make them even ashamed of their poor constancy, and to allow you the right hand of fellowship even in Loyalty.  
Since however the devil and corruption doth deceive us, It is more glorious, and a more noble triumph of virtue, to forsake a vigorous and prosperous wickedness, than to adhere to afflicted righteousness. Be persuaded then to do this miracle of repentance, and thereby get an heaven unto yourselves, and plunge the devil into another hell, by deceiving him and the powers of darkness of their so great and assured an expectation of your ruin, that the English Story of this our time (to recompense all the sad pre-eminences of wickedness that have been amongst us,) may yet dazzle the eyes of other Nations and ages, with two such resplendent and unparalelled jewels, with so bright a Star, and so clear a Constellation, shining forth in so gloomy an horizon: The admirable patience of an afflicted King, and the strange repentance of a misguided Parliament; what shall I say? Think upon your King; think upon your bleeding Country, your endangered souls; Think upon God, and upon that account which you must one day make before him for your actions. Cast your eye upon this prospect you have before you, and consider what you have done. I shall conclude as Tertullian once spoke unto Scapula in an Argument not much unlike this unto you; Parce tibi si non nobis, parce Carthagini si non tibi: If you will not spare us, spare yourselves. If you be merciless unto yourselves, yet be merciful unto poor England, to bleeding Ireland. The God of heaven yet work upon your hearts to his glory, your own comfort, and the preservation of his Church and people; So prayeth one that hearty wisheth your conversion and salvation.  
THO. WARMSTRY.   

An earnest exhortation to the people of England to Humiliation and Prayer unto Almighty God, for the obtaining of his mercy in these miserable and sinful times.  
WHen I consider how many powerful Orators God hath sent unto our Nation to declaim unto us upon this Theme, in those many and heavy afflictions which he hath laid upon us; It might well seem needless for me to speak in an argument that is set on with so much eloquence from heaven. But when on the other side I remember how deaf we have been unto all those Orators, it might well be conceived a thing hopeless for me to be heard, where so many and so earnest pleaders from heaven have not obtained an hearing.  
Not a stroke that God hath laid upon us, but hath brought with it an admonition unto humiliation and Prayer.  
The Word of God, and the rod of God are but several preachers in a divers dialect of one and the same doctrine. The word speaks it more clearly: The Rod more terribly: The Word is the interpreter of the Rod and the Rod the quickener and enforcer of the Word: In the WOrd God dictates his Rules and Precepts, and calamities are as it were the Press of the Almighty to imprint them upon the Tables of our hearts. Affliction urgeth us to every duty, but to none more properly then to humiliation and prayer.  
The Rhetoric thereof hath been so powerful, that it hath convinced Hypocrites, and even mere natural men. It was so powerful that it brought down Pharaoh and Ahab to do something in humiliation. Though they came short of the full performance; it forced some expressions even from corruption itself, it overcame the stubborness of rebellious Israel, although their hearts were not right toward God; yet whilst the hand of the Lord was upon them in the multiplied lashes of the divine indignation against sin, they durst not stand out in a professed opposition, but fell down prostrate at the incensed divinity, Psal. 78.34. When he slew them, them they sought him, and they returned and enquired early after God, and they remembered that God was their Rock, and the high God their Redeemer.  
It was prevalent upon the natural temper, (for we know no other that be had) of the Shipmaster in jonah, so that he could become the reprover of jonah for his sluggishness, and exhort him to the necessary duty of supplication to the divinity, jonah 1.6. when the storm was violent upon them, he thought it strange that jonah should be asleep and forget to pray. He came to him and said, what meanest thou O sleeper, arise call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us that we perish not.  
It is a Doctrine that nature itself it seems can hear from the mouth of present distress and anguish; a voice of God that overcommeth the deasenesse of those that are spiritually dead: A principle much below Christianity, that was legible in the dark and gloomy glimmerings of corrupt humanity: That it concerns men to seek for help of God in the time of danger, and anxiety. Yea some have thought that it hath been forcible enough, to improve the brutishness of mere sensible creatures, and to teach them some motions toward God and heaven in their extreme necessities; The Lions roaring after their prey seek their meat of God; who prepareth for the Raven his food, when his young ones cry unto God? job 38 41.  
And although that of Lorinus be good Commentary, that it signifies, that God is invocated by them, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, not by the clamour of language but by the cry of their necessity, which God is pleased to hear by the holy ear of his providence, so fare as to extend his care herein unto those brutish Creatures; Or that of Simeon de Muis upon the 104. Psalm, That these brutish Creatures are said to seek their food of God, whose office it is to provide for all, in the like sense, wherein we may say, that the child by his cry asketh food, or the Teat of the mother, which yet knoweth not the mother.  
Yet I find Euthymius brought in for the Author, that many men have often seen it in the time of famine or drought, that those brutes have lift up their eyes unto heaven, as if they did by an ineffable kind of language call upon their Creator for a supply.  
And is it not a shame that we should be such dunces in Piety, that we should be of a lower form therein than the beasts themselves? that we should be set to learn to seek God in affliction of the Ravens and the Lions, and yet come short of the lesson?  
It was an ignominious reproach that lay upon the ingratitude of Israel, Isa, 1.3. That the Ox knew his owner and the Ass his Master's Crib: And yet Israel did not know nor consider the bounty of God who was so liberal a Master toward them; at whose hand they were continually fed, at the breasts of whose providence they continually sucked: who bore them in the arms of his mercy, and carried them in the bosom of his compassion.  
The Wiseman without doubt intendeth to shame (as well as to instruct) the sluggard when he sets that Truant to School unto the Pismire, that he may learn industry and providence of that little Mistress.  
And certainly job meant it for no grace unto the Scholars he was instructing, when he sends them for learning in matter of providence to the Beasts and Fowls, to the Earth and to the fishes: And what a dishonourable stupidity is it in us; that Affliction should in any sense work that upon natural men, upon mere hypocrites, yea upon bruit creatures, that these should in any signification be said to seek to God in the time of affliction; And that we cannot learn this lesson of the same Master. It is time for us to disclaimeour very humanity and kind, and to yield up all the pre-eminence thereof unto the meanest of those creatures, if we suffer them to outgo us in Religion too, as well as they are beyond us in many other perfections.  
And yet alas how dull have we approved ourselves! How many severe Masters hath God set over us for the purpose; To teach us these so low and mean Lectures of Piety: To seek for deliverance from God in the time of our trouble, at least when the cause is so with us, that we can see no hope of attaining it any where else; that we should at least make God our Cum nemini as it is said, and betake ourselves to him when all other helpers reject us; that we should make him our last refuge, if we will not make him our choice; and yet how poor proficients have we proved ourselves herein? Are we such sworn fools that experience can teach us nothing after so long a Prenticeship of misery? Are we so fast asleep that no Thunder can awake us? So dead in our Lethargy, that we cannot feel so many bloody gashes that the Sword of the Lord hath made upon the wounded and dying body of our Nation? that we have no sense of the scorching and the scalding of those flames of the wrath of heaven, which have so wasted and consumed us, and burnt away so many members of our Church and State unto ashes?  
Have so many years pruning and digging about us made no cure at all of our barrenness? but that we will needs have that fearful sentence, Cut it down, why cumbreth it the Ground?  
Hath the Cycle upon our branches been so utterly uneffectuall, that we will needs have the Axe laid even to our root? that we may be hewn down, and cast into the fire; because we will bring forth no good fruit unto God for all those corrections wherewith he hath chastised us?  
Shall the Lord complain of us, as once of Israel, I have corrected their children in vain; the bellows are burnt, the Lead is consumed of the fire, the Founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away.  
Will neither the Rod turned into a Serpent, the wholesome Rod of Government that heretofore bore Almonds of Peace, and Plenty, and happiness, unto us, turned into a Serpent of oppression and violence, that hath stung so many of us even unto death?  
Nor the waters turned into blood; The calm and pleasant streams of concord and prosperity wherewith this Land of ours was heretofore watered and refreshed; turned into a red Sea of Christian blond shed so abundantly among us.  
Nor the Frogs, the spawn and progeny of corruption, that have so covered the face of our Nation; those multitudes of errors and heresies and blasphemies that do swarm in our Egypt, which have made it to stink in the nostrils of the Almighty.  
Nor the louse of beggary and bondage: Nor the Flies of Oppressors that sit galling upon our sores, and have corrupted the Land wherein we live: Nor the literal murnins that have destroyed our Cattle: Nor the Biles and blains of the Plague and Pestilence, that have transplanted so many Colonies weekly into the Land of darkness where all things are forgotten: Nor those more pernicious Biles and Plagues of the body of the State, whose swelling tumors of ambitious Tyranny, and limed spots of corroding envy, are sad presages of the approaching death of this poor Nation. Nor the terrible and wasting showers of hail that have been shot against us from heaven in many judgements, and from the engines of war and enmity, that have been upon man and upon beast, mingled with the raging fire of desolating division: Nor the Locusts and Caterpillars that have devoured the fruit of our Land in the field; nor those armed ones that wast our provision in our houses and habitations, and eat up that which hath escaped the former.  
Nor the darkness of Atheism and infidelity that hath obscured us; nor the destroying Angel that hath been sent forth against us, and hath cut off so many of the firstborn; and of the chief of all the strength of our nation: will not any of these I say, nor all of them work upon us, nor soften our hearts, that we may let them go from that hard and vile bondage of sin to which we have enslaved them, That Egypt of ungodliness, wherein they are in servile captivity; that they may go & do sacrifice unto the Lord in the offering up of the holocaust of a broken and contrite spirit, and the incense of earnest and sincere prayers and supplications unto God for mercy? Are we so hardened in our stubbornness with Pharaoh and his people, that nothing will take us off from the pursuance of our sins? but that we will needs follow them on desperately, even into the midst of the Sea of the fury and rage of our incensed God; that we may be utterly overwhelmed and swallowed into destruction.  
Do we not yet perceive that we are miserable and wretched? Do we not yet feel that we are caught, that we are entangled in the snares of confusion and destruction from the Lord?  
That whethersoever we fly, and which way ever we run, the bearded arrow of the anger of the Almighty still sticketh fast in us?  
The fire of his indignation still meeteth us in the face, and the threatening flames thereof have encompassed us round about, so that we can find no way to get out: we have turned this way and turned that way, and sought at every corner to make our escape from his fury, but still the Angel standeth with his sword drawn in our way, and we (like blind Balaam) cannot discover him.  
It is now a long time, that this pooro miserable Nation hath lain lowing and tumbling like a wild Bull in a net; we have struggled, and bellowed, and foamed, and fretted, and tired ourselves with striving to break out; but the more we have struggled, the more we have been entangled.  
We sink still more and more into the mire of destruction; The floods and the billows still arise upon us, and we like the poor Dove can find no place to rest our foot on, and yet we will not return unto the Ark; we have fled from it unto this Mountain and to that hill, but the waters of desolation still ascend up after us, and no advantage of ground hath secured us.  
Our wounds are rankled, and Gangrened, and the fretting Cankers thereof have eaten even unto our hearts, and are ready to seize upon the very principles of life; and yet we delay to seek for a recovery; we will not admit of any mortifying applications that may kill the rancour of these devouring Ulcers, that we may preserve the being of this perishing Nation: Do not be so foolish as to think you are safe because the Sword is taking breath a while from the chase of your blood, because it seems to rest itself for some hours after so full a meal as it hath made of the flesh and the carcases of this people: This temporary cessation (if you take not heed) may prove but a re-enforcement of its violence, that may shortly return it upon us with the greater rage, and gain it but the better stomach and appetite to feast itself more freely hereafter in our utter ruin. You would not think him to be a good Politician, that should presently conclude the siege to be raised, because the roaring of the Cannon of the Adversary is intermitted for a space; that takes every Truce for a conclusion of the quarrel: Such leisures are many times but the gaining of opportunity either for the contrivance and expediting some new works or designs that may prove more effectual to more speedy destruction; A giving of us leave to fall asleep, that we may be surprised in our security and oscitancy. God's respites of judgements if they be neglected by us, and not entertained with addresses of conversion and humiliation unto him, become not the removals, but the growths of our calamities; when his long suffering leadeth us not to repentance, it will deliver us up at length unto the greater condemnation: and every minute of his forbearance shall be set upon our score, and be reckoned for by us in the advancement of our following miseries. What though the instruments of death which he hath prepared be not for the present active upon us as heretofore? we see yet they are still brandished against us; The mystery of our desolation we see is working every day: The engines of our destruction are restless in their motions, and nothing we see can stop them from the fatal business they have in hand: but they are still hastening on the sad period of this once flourishing Nation, as if they had no price left them to purchase their own safety, but by procuring the ruin of us all. The case is with us as it is said to have been in France in some part of the Reign of the Great Henry of that Kingdom: It is impiety to speak of Peace, and Treason to seek it. All the gracious tenders of a pious King offering the most precious jewels of his own Crown to buy the safety and preservation of his people, and to divest himself of his honour, to save the lives and the blood of his poor subjects, are scornfully despised and thought unworthy of an answer; The great Masters of our calamities are become like the spleen in the body, which groweth big by the consumption of the rest of the parts. Ephraim is against Manasses, and Manasses against Ephraim, but both together against judah: Pilate is against Herod, and Herod against Pilate, but both agree together against Christ and against his Church. The public misery is the common mark that they both shoot at from their opposite stations. The showers of blood that have fallen amongst us, have not at all abated the lowering of the skies: but, The clouds have returned after the rain, Eccles. 12.2. They are still gathering more and more thick and gloomy about us, and threaten us again with a more violent tempest. The sharp physic that we have taken, hath indeed weakened our body, but hath not at all cured us of our diseases; The evil humours are still predominant, and ready to cast us into a relapse, and to renew the paroxysms of our furious malady. Do you not perceive, that after all those dreams of happiness, That some have so boasted of to themselves and others, in the sad successes of their prosperous impieties: who promised you grapes from those thorns which they planted and fostered, The Serpent's root is yet still alive. The root of division, discord, and sedition; and that it is ready to bring forth a Cockatrice, and the fruit thereof to be a fiery flying Serpent; a Serpent for the poysonousnesse; fiery for the fierceness & rage; and flying for the swiftness of that devastation wherewith it menaceth us.  
What though we have tasted deep of the Cup of that Red Wine of the divine wrath and indignation, which was filled and mixed for us in the hand of the Almighty? Be not secure: The dregs of that Cup it may be justly feared are still behind: and if we will not seek to prevent it by repentance, this ungodly Nation must drink them and wring them our. But Lord if it be thy will let this Cup pass from us. judgement hath begun at the house of God: in those persecutions and miseries that have befallen the Church and the faithful people; it was God's pleasure that they should begin the round: but the rest must look to pledge them at the last without a timely reconciliation unto God: and woe be unto them, whose lot it shall be to drink the bottom of the heavenly fury. I fear we have ye● seen but the beginnings of sorrows; and that yet we may 〈◊〉 that saying fulfilled, Anglorum miseria ultima, pessima, My dear fellow-Country men, whose preservation I hearty and earnestly long after. I that speak unto you am a man full of infirmities and sins, yet I hope I may say truly with that good woman of Abel. of Beth-maachah, 2 Sam. 20.19. That I am one of them that are peaceable and faithful in this Israel. And though (I confess) I should not be unwilling with her to throw a Traitor's head over the wall, where it is necessary to prevent the swallowing up of the Inheritance of the Lord: yet I call God to witness, who knoweth that I lie not; that if I know my own heart, there is not that man living upon the earth (maugre all the hard dealing that I have met with from some in these times) whose safety and happiness I would not willingly promote; and I hearty wish that the sufferings of myself and others that have been my fellow patients in that Physic which God hath administered unto us, and our Brethren in tribulation, may if God please, excuse all others of this Nation of what side soever they have been, from those draughts of miseries which are yet behind; but then I must beseech you to be sensible of your miseries; That you will seriously lay your present condition unto your hearts, and those yet greater calamities that are impendent over us. That we may be all induced to join for the procurement of a release. There is none more dangerously sick than he that is well in his sickness: that is unsensible of his disease, and takes his malady for health. And then secondly, I would feign put you in mind of those fountains and roots from which our calamities flow, and upon which they grow and prosper, and will do still if we prevent not, to our utter undoing.  
And then thirdly, I would willingly persuade you unto this truth (not that you may know it, for I doubt not but you do, unless you be ignorant of the very natural principles of Piety,) But I would feign press it upon your affections that it may be operative in your hearts and lives: That there is no possibility of obtaining a release from our distresses, a deliverance from those judgements which are befallen us, but from God, and that without him no outward means, agents, or endeavours can procure it us.  
And than fourthly, That there is no way to obtain this from God, but by repentance, humiliation, and faithful prayer unto him; that we may be stirred up all of us to set about these businesses, unto which I shall labour to incite you by some powerful motives thereunto.  
And then I would entreat you to accept my poor endeavours for your direction, and guidance in the reght performance of these works, of fare greater moment than all Humane Counsels or Armies, and without which they will be all in vain and pernicious unto us.  
And after all, I shall offer my poor mites into your treasury, for your help and assistance in the exercise of these duties.  
The Lord of heaven help me in the performance of these several tasks, and give his blessing unto them for the good of this poor Nation, and to the eternal honour of his glorious mercy, to which I desire to be a poor servant, though most unworthy in this enterprise.  
And the first thing that I have here to do, is to persuade you that you are miserable. That we may be sensible at length of the sad and wretched state of this Nation, both in regard of those evils that are already come upon us, and also those that seem to stand at our doors ready to devour us. As long as we are not touched with a sense of our evils, we are never like to look after the remedies. The torment of the disease is the solicitor of health, and the best advocate for the entertainment of the Physician and the Physic. There are two great bags of poison in the serpentine hearts of corrupted men, that do above all others keep us off from the cure of our spiritual diseases; presumption or security, and despair of mercy: The one keeps us from taking notice of our wretchedness: The other renders us hopeless of relief. And therefore the great Physician of the Church though he be not wanting in his provision against all our sicknesses, yet he seems in the general scope of his compositions to have aimed at the removal of these two. Having ordained us two great Antidotes against them: The Law against Security and Presumption; whose office is the discovery of the malignity of sin, both in its own nature, and in the curse and condemnation that it brings with it; For By the Law saith the Apostle, is the knowledge of sin, Rom. 3.20. And the same Apostle Rom. 7.7. telleth us, that he had not known sin but by the Law. And at the 8. vers. Without the Law sin was dead; That is (as I conceive it may well be understood) that the sense of sin is dead: that it is not felt to be alive, but is in us like a Gangrene in a mortified member, that eateth on insensibly to the destruction of the body: and in the like signification we may perhaps not amiss understand that which follows in the 9 verse, When the Commandment came, sin revived and I died: That is; Sin appeared to be sin, the sense of it was quickened, and thereby I was mortified & humbled, etc. and thus the Law rouzeth us from our Presumption and security.  
But because this Physic of itself is very destructive, and if it should be let alone, would never cease, till it had brought us to despair, and so killed us with a contrary Disease. Therefore God hath ordained the Gospel for a Cordial to abate and qualify the violence of this Corrosive: to keep us from being desperate and hopeless of health: to meet with the rigour and sincerity of the Law, and to hold us up in the hope of salvation, by the offers of mercy in Christ Jesus. The Law is like a Lance to open our tumors, and to search our Wounds: but as the Lance of itself cures no sores; so the Law of itself heals none, but makes way only, and propares for the Gospel, which applies the saving Plaster thereunto. The Law is our Schoolmaster, and whips us unto Christ, by giving us a sense of our sins, and of the terrors of Hell, and the curse that is due unto them: And then Christ heals us with the comforts of the Gospel. And both these works must be done in us, if we mean to obtain our spiritual health; otherwise for want of the work of the Law upon us, we may perish through security, and never know what Disease we die of; or else for want of the comforts of the Gospel we may perish through Despair. It may be some question which of these two are most pernicious, but they are both deadly; and if the question be which is most universally operative in its malignity, Security and Presumption will be found, I take it, by much the more Epidemical plague of the two; and that there are many, yea very many more perish by this, then by that overwhelming sense of the greatness of their sins, which renders them hopeless, and so helpless. The greatest part of the world die of a Lethargy; the Devil deals much in Opium, and Narcoticks, that stupefy the soul; and deals with men as Physicians use to do with those whom they use to cut of the Stone: he first casts them into a dead sleep, and then cuts them and mangles them how he pleaseth, whilst they lie still and quiet, and never so much as cry oh! nor flinch at it, nor struggle against it, until at length he cuts out their very hearts and souls: He knows his hellish enterprise never goes on so prosperously, as when it moves secretly and undiscovered. His great care is, that his Engines may not be heard, and therefore he sends most men to hell in a slumber, charmed with the pleasant Dreams of earthly prosperity, and sometimes of Heaven itself; from which they are never awaked throughly, till they find themselves scorching in the very flames of the Infernal Pit. Indeed Despair it seems to be but the Devil's refuge, which he seldom makes use of, but where his Opium will not work: When he meets with some (and they are too few) that will not be dandled in his lap, nor nuzzled in the security of their sins, but that they will needs be searching into the wounds and corruption of their hearts, than he strives to make them kill themselves with the Lance, presents their sins unto them in such a dreadful colour, and doth so possess their thoughts with the apprehensions of the greatness of their iniquities, and the fearful flashes of hell fire, that they cannot believe God hath mercy enough to pardon them. But the former is his more usual, and more effectual Stratagem; And therefore by the way give me leave to tell you, that I think there is a great fault in the managing of the work of the Ministry in these times, for want of the due application of the terrors of the Law unto the souls of men, for the discovery of their sins, which should be the Trumpet to rouse them from their security, and to fit them for mercy. We are all for Cordials in these times; but it is easy to perceive, if we consider the looseness and slumbering condition that we are in, that we have much more need of Corrosives to eat away our dead flesh, without which the Cordials of the Gospel do usually rather strengthen our Diseases then our Souls, and rather hid & palliate, then cure our wounds; one main reason why the work of grace goes on no better amongst us in these days; and I pray God it may find a timely Reformation. Nothing kills more surely than doth a false persuasion of our health: And therefore we find it was the Method that the Spirit used unto the Angel of the Church of the Laodiceans, Rev. 3.15, 16, etc. to convince him of his great corruption, and of his miserable Condition, that so he might lead him on unto the cure. The Angel of that Church it seems was conceited of his own Works, and was not sensible of the luke warmness of his heart in the performance of them: that his Devotion was but half coddled, as they say, therefore the Spirit puts the Searcher into his Wound; I know thy works, saith he, that thou art neither cold nor hot, I would thou wert colder hot. He shows him that such a temper is of no acceptance with the Almighty, who receiveth no Sacrifices that are not offered up by the fire of Divine love: nay, that it was so fare from pleasing him, that it was loathsome unto him, and ready, as I may so speak, to turn the stomach of the Almighty, like lukewarm Water received into the stomach of a man. Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth, ver. 16. And then he shows him yet a further view of his misery, by awaking him from the fond conceit he had of his uprightness and happiness: Because thou sayest I am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me Gold tried in the fire, that thou mayst be rich, etc.  
As long as we are unacquainted with the vileness an wretchedness of our condition through sin, we can never be cleansed from our iniquities; we must feel this burden and groan under it, or else we shall never be rid of it. Therefore this is the order of the Spirit in the work of the healing of the soul, as our Saviour hath declared it, john 16.8. When he is come (saith he) He will reprove, or convince the world (for that I think under favour is the better Translation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in that place) of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement; of sin because they believe not in me; of righteousness because I go to the father, and ye see me no more; of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged. First, he convinceth of sin that they may know their own vileness and corruption, and learn the wholesome lessons of self-despair, and thereby obtain a longing thirst after Christ, by teaching them what they are in themselves without Christ Jesus, because they believe not in me, and then he raiseth them up upon the wings of faith unto the comfortable doctrine and apprehension of righteousness, of justification by Christ, who hath perfected the work of our Redemption and reconciliation, by his going unto the Father, by his Triumphant Ascension into the Holy place of heaven for us, where he sitteth as Prince of our Salvation. Having overcome all our spiritual enemies, and gotten the victory for us, and not only so but from the apprehension of sin he quickeneth us unto the righteousness of Sanctification and holiness: Because by Going unto his Father, having led Captivity, Captive, he hath received gifts for men, even for his enemiess, that the Lord God may dwell among them, Psalm 68.18. Eph. 4.8. He hath received power to bestow the gifts of heavenly graces and virtues, which he scattereth abroad unto his people from that triumphant Seat where he sitteth, to the sanctifying of their hearts, That the Lord God may dwell among them in the height and holiness of his Spirit; Because I go to the Father; and then having laid in them the foundation of humility, and selfe-distrust; by the discovery of sin, and raised up the building of Justification by faith, and Sanctification by love thereupon; he in the last place convinceth them of judgement: That is, (as I conceive with submission unto better judgements it may be profitably understood) He leadeth them from justification and sanctification, unto a comfortable hope, expectation or assurance of a favourable sentence from God in judgement: whereby they shall be invested into Salvation and Eternal life, Satan their arch enemy being cast in his suit against them; Because the Prince of this world is judged. But the first work we see is the conviction of sin; And this is God's method in healing of sin.  
And we cannot choose a better for the curing of our miseries. There is no greater enemy unto true happiness than a conceit of happiness where it is not; neither is there any more incurably miserable, than he that will not believe himself to be so. Therefore it is the sad complaint of God against Israel; That when he 〈◊〉 them, they grieved not at it, and that they laid not the judgements of God unto their hearts. He will not leave off from the punishments of his people until he● hath quickened them from this stupidity: Lord when thy hand is lifted up (saith the Prophet) They will not see; But they shall see and be ashamed for their envy at the people; Yea, the fire of thine enemies shall devour them, Isa. 26.11. God will make use of his own enemies, even of wicked and ungodly Caitiffs to scourge his own, rather than they shall die of that disease. It was the greyest hair that was upon the head of Ephraim, and that that did most of all evidence him to draw toward his end; That he did not know the grey hairs that were upon him; He took no notice of his decays, but was unsensible of his calamities, Hos. 7.8, 9 Ephraim is a Cake not turned; He lay burning upon the hearth of the fiery anger of God, and would not turn unto him, he would rather burn then turn; what was the cause of it? He had lost his sense, he did not feel the heat of the fire, no more than a Cake feels the heat of the Oven. Strangers have devoured his strength, & he knoweth it not; Yea grey hairs (that is, such calamities as presaged his decay, as grey hairs do the decay of Nature in the body) are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not: And what followed upon this stupidity, but a deplorable neglect of seeking unto God: And the pride of Israel test●fieth to his face, and they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek him for all this.  
The very case of wretched England at this day: grey hairs are upon this Nation, not here and there, but all over: a multitude of grey hairs, numerous calamities that presage her decay and approaching ruin; and yet this wretched people seems to take little or no notice of them, that they might address themselves unto the Lord, who alone is able to renew the youth thereof like the Eagles, Psalm. 103.5. It was a strange kind of blindness that was upon the poor Fool that was kept for the sport of Seneca's wife; who had so fare lost her sight, that she could not perceive that she was blind: but as he himself telleth it for a wonder, Called unto her Governor to let her go abroad, complaining of the darkness of the house; We are even become a Kingdom of such fools; nay, are we not think you somewhat worse than she? She took her blindness for the darkness of the house, and we seem many of us to take our darkness for light. How many are there amongst us that are so unapprehensive of our miseries, that they do even rejoice in them for happiness? Till this madness be healed in us, we are not like to be cured of any other of our diseases; give me leave therefore to present you with a glass wherein you may look upon yourselves, and see now at length how grey you are grown, what messengers of death and destruction are upon you, that you may seek some heavenly Charm from the Almighty, that may restore you to an youthful condition, if it may be, or else at least provide for your latter end.  
And oh that I had now the Spirit of Lamentation, that was once so eloquent in the Prophet jeremy, wherewith he seems to sing the funeral dirge of jerusalem, in those holy strains of bleeding compassion, which are recorded in his Book of sorrows for that people; Read that holy Book of his with a serious heart, and think upon England, and would you not imagine, that those miseries of the Jews were but the type and figure of ours in this Nation; scarce a piece that he draws to hang about that hearse, but seems to be a fit Emblem to set forth unto us the mournful Estate of our English. Commonwealth at this time.  
Lamen. 1.1. The solitary widow, wherewith the holy Prophet adorns the frontispeice of that sad Poem he hath there composed, what is it but an apt resemblance of the wretchedness of England at this time; Deprived of the presence and comfort of her politic Husband. The Father of this great Family being chased away from the care of his Household, and the poor Widow become a prey to her own ungracious children, of whom she may even cry out as once God of Israel, by the Prophet, Isa. 1.2. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. When we read there of a great Princess among the Nations. Do we not see the splendour of our former condition, whilst the light of the Lords countenance shined upon us, and we were the envy and glory of other people? And when we cast our eye upon that Princess reduced unto servitude, and become tributary, do we not behold the very Image of that sad exchange of perpetual and uncomfortable slavery, which we have made for our former freedom, whilst we feel Excise, Freequarter, a fifth and twentieth part, and divers other greedy devourers, like so many harpies eating up the flesh, and picking the very bores of the poor people, whilst we can find no relief for the present? The Laws whereby our Liberties should be secured and preserved being trampled under foot, notwithstanding all the Protestations and Covenants wherein men have bound themselves to preserve both the Nurse and the Child, both the Laws of the Kingdom, and the Liberties of the Subject, and almost as little hope appearing of any ease or remedy for the future.  
Vers. 2. There we find jerusalem weeping sore in the night, when others eyes are safe and a●● rest within their Canopies. Here were restless fountains of sorrow, but we cannot find any such streams flowing amongst us for the most part; and we have cause to weep the more because we weep so little: whilst these wells are dry, we want their water to quench the rage of that devouring flame which is about our ears.  
But though we weep not as she did, we are as comfort less as she was; may I not complain for England, as well as he for jerusalem? That amongst all her lovers she hath none to comfort her, all her friends (they at least that pretended to be her greatest, her only friends) have dealt treacherously with her. All their fair promises of safety, and Honour, and Riches, and Liberty, and of Religion itself, have proved but Golden shadows, specious baits with bearded hooks hidden in the midst of them: The fair baits are all swallowed up in the confusion that is still more and more upon us, and the hook is only left sticking in our bowels.  
Vers. 3. The Lamenter of Israel complains, That judah was gone into captivity; and that she was sent to dwell among the heathen, and found no rest: And we may truly complain, That Captivity is come unto us, and hath overtaken us in our own Land, and that the heathen dwell among us; even heathen Christians, which are the worst heathens in the world: How many are there amongst us that are heathens in judgement 〈◊〉 That hold and profess the very Doctrines of the heathens? That have denied the Lord that bought them? That have accounted the preaching of the Gospel's foolishness? That have set up the Dagon of their corrupt and carnal reason, in opposition to the holy Ark of God? Casting down the glorious and sacred Truths of Christianity tevealed from heaven, clearly recorded in the holy Book of God, and confirmed by the abundant Testimony of God himself, in many wonderful and holy miracles; and delivered unto us from the best and soundest antiquity, even the holy Doctrines of the Divinity of the Son of God, and of the holy Ghost: The very fundamental Points upon which all the building of Christianity doth depend, and is supporred, and in the contradiction whereof, that whole frame falls to the ground. Casting down (I say) these Sacred and awful Truths to set up the Idols of their depraved ratiocinations in the place thereof.  
And how many more heathens in practice are there amongst us? yea, even Atheists that are worse than heathens, the whole course of whose lives is a current Lecture of Atheism; every Action whereof death as it were speak blasphemy, and says, there is no God; no Supreme Power that governeth & ruleth the world; none to punish Injustice, Deceit, Rebellion, Oppression, Uncleanness, nor any wickedness; none to call men to account for their actions: And what rest can poor Christians take in such miscreant Society?  
The persecuters of judah overtook her between the straits: so mourns the holy Prophet for that Nation: That is to say, they got such power over her, such advantage against her, that there was no way left for escaping: like as when an enemy overtaketh a man in the pursuit of vengeance in a narrow place, where there is no space to avoid or fly from the stroke of his fury. Put but England for judah, and the Persecutors, and the straits are at home with us: They whose mouths were full heretofore of the clamours against persecution; for little else perhaps, but because they were not flattered, & promoted, for their factious and seditious practices; have now sanctified the name and Office of Persecutors, whilst they think they do God service, to starve their brethren and fellow-subjects. I fear our Saviour's Prayer will not serve their turn; Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. But yet I wish we may all join to offer up Saint Stephen's Prayer for them; Lord lay not this sin to their charge: And for ourselves; Lord lay not this charge for ever upon our sins, but rid us from them that persecute us, and deliver us: Yea, let us from our hearts pray as the Church of England hath taught us, if we may have leave of an Ordinance and Directory: That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecuters and slanderers, and to turn their hearts.  
We beseech thee to hear us good Lord.  
Varse 4. Did the wayer of Zion mourn, being left desolate as it were, for want of the cheerful society of passengers to the House of God: Wherewith they were wont to be cheered up and beautified. Because none came to the solemn Feasts, which were laid down as it were in the time of the captivity? And do not we see the like sadness and mourning solitariness in the ways of our Zions, which lead unto the holy Mountains and Sanctuaries of the Lord, whilst the solemn Feasts, and Memorials of the Holy Saints of God, are abolished, which were so many Schools of Holiness unto the people; calling to their minds the excellencies of the Graces of those eminent and resplendent Lights of Piety for their imitation: and the Memorials of the most glorious mercies of the Lord are rejected, even of the Incarnation, the Nativity, the Passion, the Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ Jesus, and of the Glorious Fruit of all: The sending of the Holy-Ghost, with so many Treasures of divine Graces and mercies to the enriching of the Church, which were of such excellent use; not only to stir up the people unto thankfulness, or to revive the comfortable sense of God's mercies in their hearts, whilst they were so often, and in such solemn manner presented unto their apprehensions by the Church: but were also so many blessed opportunities gained to draw the people together unto the solemn Exercise of Religion toward God, and of Christian Love and Charity to one another; so many days of mercy to the poor beasts, and toiling servants. And were of excellent use, for the instilling and preserving of the Fundamental Doctrine of Christianity in the hearts of the people: Which served in stead of an easy Catechism unto the simpler sort; whilst if they were but wise enough to know what day went over their heads, they could not be utterly ignorant of the great Mysteries of Salvation. An use of solemn days which God himself ordained, partly for that very purpose in the Church of the Jews; See Exod. 12.26, 27. and so warranted sufficiently unto us. And which indeed is of great necessity, in regard of the great ignorance and ineptitude that is in many, for the apprehension of the profound mysteries of Christianity: Which being so great strangers unto Nature, and their natural apprehensions, would not so easily have been entertained by them, but that they were by this Ordinance of the yearly solemnities of the Church, made familiar unto them by custom, which being as it were another nature, facilitated by use the admission of that high and mysterious knowledge unto their souls: These, these alas are all now cast away, as if the Church could not be reform, unless Christ Jesus and his glorious mercies were forgotten amongst us. I deny not indeed but those daid● were much abused by some unto looseness and licentious Liberty; But than it had been true Reformation to have sought the remedy of those miscarriages, and to have reduced those days unto their proper and holy use, by making more strict rules for the direction and restraining of men unto the right observation of them, and so to have retained them to the honour of God, and edification of his people, in the due exercise of the works of Piety towards God, charity and love one to another, and of mercy and release to our poor Beasts and Servants. But alas, if the matter be rightly examined, I doubt we may find that the Works of Piety, Mercy, and charity are only cast away, and the licentiousness and lawless liberty of those days is still retained, at least that there is no such watch set against the latter, as against the former. And I can hardly forbear to tell you, that it is the right method of the devil's Reformation, to cast away the good and retain the evil. They winnow with Satan's Sieve that shake out the good Gorne, and retain the Chaff and offal; so he would have winnowed S. Peter no doubt; & so some have now winnowed the flower of our Church. This whirlewind-Reformation of ours, hath even blown a great deal of the Wheat from us, by casting out the holy Ordinances of God, the beauty and Order of his Service, together with the Government of the Church, and instead thereof hath left us I know not how many great heaps of Chaff, of Corruptions, Confusions, and Depravations amongst us, which are ground and ministered unto the poor deceived people, who whilst they expect Bread to nourish them, find Husks to choke and destroy them. I confess heretofore there was some Chaff in our heaps which did deserve a winnowing, but with a more moderate wind. But we had better have eaten the Wheat and the Chaff together, then to have had the Wheat taken from us, and so much Chaff left us in the stead of it.  
I should be too voluminous in this sad Subject, should I draw out the Parallels of our Evils and those of the Jews. Through the whole Book of the Prophet's Lamentations, should I show you every face of our miseries, in those waters of Marah, or bitterness; Those floods of affliction wherewith they were overwhelmed.  
I might tell you of the Exaltation of the Adversaries of each Church. The prosperity of their Enemies, Ver. 5. But they themselves will not doubt be your remembrancers of that.  
Of the Princes of our Nation as well as of theirs; yea, the King himself (as we all know) amongst the rest become like hearts, poor chased Hearts, hunted up and down by the bloodhounds of our times, like Hearts that find no pasture, and gone without strength before the pursuer, Verse. 6.  
I might present this poor Church neglected in her Afflictions, bemoaning herself unto you because none of you will bemoan her; In the sad Dialect of jerusalem, there, ver. 12. Is it nothing unto you all ye that pass by? Behold and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger, etc. And set her before you like poor forsaken Zion, spreading forth her hands, whilst there is none to comfort her. ver. 17.  
I could tell you (but what need I?) of the Sword that hath been bereaving abroad, and of the Plague or death that hath been destroying at home. v. 20.  
Chap. 2. ver. 1. etc. The cloud of God's Anger wherewith Zion was vailed. The casting down of the beauty of Israel from heaven unto the earth: That is, from a state of happiness and glory, to a state of misery and contempt. The Lords forgetting of his footstool; his swallowing up of the Habitations of jacob; the throwing down of the strong holds of the daughter of judah; the polluting of the Kingdom and the Princes thereof; treading them as it were in the mire in his fury. The cutting off the horn: That is, taking away the strength and glory of Israel. The drawing back of his right hand from before the Enemy; That is, the withdrawing of his protection and defence, and his giving of them over to the fury of the Adversary. The burning flame, and the bend bow. The pouring out of fury, like a stream or flood of fire. The taking away of his Tabernacle as it were of a Garden; That is, either the pulling down of the Church of Israel, or the removing of the gracious presence of the Lord, whereby he dwelled amongst them in his mercies and graces, in the light of his Truth, and the comforts of his Ordinances. These, and many other like these, are all but so many emphatical expressions of the violence and fury of God's anger against that nation in those times, and may serve for the same purpose amongst us in these sad days of ours. As if the Prophet had therein set us a Copy to write after, our present miseries being as it were a Translation of a great part of that sad original Text, wherein God was pleased to read humiliation unto to them, as our Language in the Lamentations thereof is a Translation of theirs.  
But when we read of the destroying of the places of assembly, and the forgetting of the solemn feasts and Sabbaths again in Zion: (for that it seems was an evil that the Prophet would not dismiss with a single Lamentation, and of the despising of the King and the Priest:) Those great Symptoms of the Anger of the Almighty, when both Government and Ministry: The two great Cisterns whereby God usually conveys the streams of mercy from that unexhaustible fountain that is in him, in all manner both of Temporal and Spiritual blessings unto a people; when both these (I say) are demolished and trampled on, when we read of these, and of these three together, me thinks, we may see there the very lively Countenance of the sad and calamitous estate of our own Nation at this present; as if the Prophet had then been looking through the prospective of his Spirit, upon England in this very time and condition it is now in, whose parallel miseries may seem to be a sad Commentary & Exposition of those sad expressions of jeremiah: our Gloss and his Text come so close one to another in every particular there mentioned, that it needs no more but bare and ordinary observation to understand the compliances.  
And let all that have any eyes yet left amongst us, judge whether we have not a large portion, in that which followeth at the 14 ver. of the 2 chap. Thy Prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee, and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy Captivity: but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banish meant.  
What daubing hath been amongst us with untempered mortar? What sowing of pillows under the Armholes of most horrid sinners? even of Rebels, Perjured, and Sacrilegious persons: What strengthening the hands of the wicked? What calling evil good, and good evil? What putting of light for darkness, and darkness for light? What exchanging of Doctrines between heaven and hell? What confounding of the Laws of Christ and Belial? And a multitude of other miscarriages have been of late in the Ministry of the Church: What Gall could make Ink black or bitter enough to declaim against them? But motos praestat componere fluctus!  
I shall break this holy Glass of the Prophet into no more pieces. You may at your leisure contemplate the heavy case of this poor Church and Nation in the sundry passages of it, and exercise yourselves in the just Lamentation thereof, in those several helps that he there most elegantly administereth to teach us the art of holy sorrow.  
I shall come more plainly, and closely home unto you; and entreat you of this Nation to consider two things with me, very requisite for the right understanding of our miserable condition.  
First, what we have been: And secondly, what we are, from whence we are fallen, and whether we are fallen.  
First, Consider what you have been, that by the comparison of your lost prosperity you may the better take the measure of your incumbent misery. This is one stone or weight that both spiritual and humane Oratory makes often use of. Happiness & calamity as opposite neighbours as they are, yet at their departure, they many times, and almost always leave some Legacy behind them unto one another; so that each is advanced out of the others store. Precedent calamities leave jewels and ornaments behind them, to beautify the face of succedent felicity. Health is much the sweeter after a fit of sickness; A calm season at Sea seems a kind of heaven unto the tossed and wearied Mariner, after the blustering and tearing assaults of tempests, the raging mountains and valleys of the tumultuous billows; A foregoing poverty and indigence, enricheth the store of every degree of plenty and abundance that comes after; and it is probable enough, that the Celestial joys and rest in heaven are the sweeter and more pleasant unto the Saints, for every portion of misery and bitterness that they have tasted in the various afflictions of this turbulent and transitory life here in this world; That of the Apostle may be true even in this sense amongst others: That our light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh for us a fare more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 2 Cor. 4.17. Not only in regard of the great recompense that the Lord there rewards our sufferings withal: but also in respect of the enhancement and value that our sufferings here do bequeath as it were unto our recompense there. Thus every Cross here, is turned into a Diadem there: The thorns of our present troubles, and tribulations, may seem to add sweetness unto the Roses of our future tranquillity which grow upon them.  
And so on the contrary; A foregoing state of happiness, addeth unto the burden of our subsequent adversity: Poverty is a wrack indeed unto that worldling that hath lately wallowed in the golden mires of his riches. That man that is borne blind, and never tasted with his eye of the sweetness and pleasantness of the Sun beams, doth not find near so much discontent in his natural darkness, as he that hath lately enjoyed the various delights of the seeing eye. Miserum est fuisse foelicem; It is a wretched thing to have once been happy. Fuimus Troes, we were once Trojans, is a Motto of a mournful importance; Therefore we find it the Eloquence of the Psalmists sorrow, Psalm. 42.4. Lamenting the sad loss of the comfortable Society of God's people in the divine worship, by reason of some affliction that had befallen either himself or the Church: To aggravate that damage upon his own disconsolate Spirit by the memory of the former joyful freedom thereof which he enjoyed: When I remember these things, saith he, I pour out my soul by myself; why so? Why, because it had not always been so with him: For I had gone with the multitude, I went with them unto the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise with a multitude that kept holiday. Q. D. It grieves me much the more to think what felicity I have lost: that I have been heretofore in a better condition, when I enjoyed the freedom and comfort of the holy assemblies, and of the full Solemnities in the sacred festivals of the Lord. And thus that victorious Martyr of patience job, blazons the Armoury of his sable afflictions, of that pedigree of mischiefs that made up the matter of his trials: by setting forth the honourable and prosperous condition, wherein he was before they fell upon him; job 29.2, etc. Oh that I were (saith he) as in mneths past, as in the days wherein God preserved me: when his Candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness, etc. But now they that are younger than I have me in derision: whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock. It added much unto the trial of jobs patience, and to the burden of his misery, that he was fallen from an estate of so much happiness and honour.  
That therefore I may give you the greater and truer sense of your calamities, give me leave to desire you to remember what you have been, and to compare it with what you are now: and that in these several regards.  
First, In matter of Religion, Secondly, In matter of Peace. Thirdly, In matter of Liberty. Fourthly In point of Government. Fifthly, In point of honour and Reputation; And in all these, as in many more respects, we shall find the impairements very great that are upon us.  
First, concerning Religion, which is above all others of greatest weight and consideration, and of the highest importance unto happiness: The time was not many years since, that we were the glory of all the Reformed Churches: The home as it were, and proper habitation of the true, sincere, beautiful, and orderly Worship of God: which was an Exile in most other places of the world: and in some received (as it were) but as a stranger, and sojourner under the conditions of restraint and bondage; and rather permitted as an harmless evil, than embraced as an honourable and commodious good. Here Religion was in the Throne, in other Kingdoms and Nations it was set as it were upon the footstool. In this Realm of ours it was ruling as a Mistress, or Queen; in most others, it was made to serve as an underling, or servant. Here it was in power, and glory; and ornament; in other places in subjection and servitude. Here it was in its free and full course, like a clear and untroubled River or stream, watering the several parts and territories of our Land: and conveying unto them the rich Traffic of Spiritual and Eternal blessings, together with the vantage of temporal prosperity; whereas in other places (for the most part) if it were at all in sincerity, yet it was not at all in freedom and liberty: but chained up, and limited unto this or that particular station, under confinement & restraint, as if it were some dangerous and pernicious beast. Oh how comfortable and glorious was the state of Religion once with us in this Nation! When it was encouraged by the Royal example of a gracious and pious Prince: Managed in the hands of a Learned and Religious Ministry: Steered and carried one, (not after the humours of foolish and frantic men, not put to Lackey by the side of those unsanctified designs, which have been the Brood of the brains of the Achitophel's of our Age:) but guided by the Load-star and Compass of the Divine Truth, in the true road of Eternal happiness: conducted by the wholesome rules of order and decency: Administered with an holy and awful reverence, answerable in some kind to the Majesty of hat great God unto whom the acts of Worship were directed: Strengthened and enforced with Unity, and Christian Concord of the people of God, gathered together in the law full and orderly Assemblies of the People, in those places which are consecrated to the peculiar service of the Almighty: secured from blasphemies and other inconveniencies, by the help of a pious and excellent set form of public Devotion, framed with great deliberation and judgement by those holy Martyrs, who have sealed the Truth of God, and testified their sincerity in the embracement thereof, by the loss of their dearest blood, and Authorized by the Authority of the Church. Oh how happy was it then with us! When this Church of ours was as it were the throne of the glory of God here upon Earth: The Zodiac wherein the Sun of righteousness had his motion: The choice and peculiar portion of God: The Land of Truth and Holiness.  
But now alas! what is become of us? Our silver is become dross: Our wine is mixed with water. The tried silver of divine Truth stamped with the image and superscription of God himself, wherewith we were enriched, for the traffic of Heaven, is turned into the dross of errors and heresies, foisted upon us under the names of Truths. Those malae monetae; those counterfeit pieces which the Coiners and spiritual imposturers of this age have put upon us, which will purchase us nothing but shame and confusion, destruction and damnation: and the pure wine of the Divine Worship and Ordinances, that refreshed the hearts both of Men and Angels is mixed with the muddy and unwholesome waters of unreverent, unseemly, and corrupt performances in Religion, whereby the holy heat and fervour is cooled, the life and vigour thereof is deadened and extinguished, and the soule-reviving strength and virtue thereof is rendered lawguid and forceless.  
Not any thing left us, wherein Religion is concerned, but all is either abolished and cast off, or changed for false wares, or poisoned and sophisticated with venomous mixtures and infusions. The Harlot of schism and sedition hath dealt with us, as the Harlot is charged to have dealt in the first of Kings the third Chap. and 20 verse, She hath stolen away the living Child of true Religion and Piety, of which this Church of ours was happily delivered by the Divine goodness: and hath left her dead child of disorder and depravation instead thereof in her bosom, and the poor deprived mother is abridged of her remedy. Her wise and pious Solomon (oh that he were a Solomon in peace, as much as he is a Solomon in wisdom,) is kept from the Throne that he cannot hear her cause, and redress her injury, and restore unto her the living child again; but he that is greater than Solomon, will we hope in his good time restore both.  
If we look for the true and sincere rule of Religion, the golden standard of the pure and incorruptible Word of God, illustrated and explained unto us by the solid and sound interpretation of Antiquity. Instead thereof, we find the foolish and frantic imaginations of every presumptuous and unlearned Enthusiast, imposing drunken dreams for the dictates of sober and sanctified Divinity; setting up themselves for the measures of Religion, whilst they take upon them a superintendency over the very Scriptures themselves, to mangle and cut them into what forms they please, bending and bowing them like that regula lesbia, like a leaden rule to make them square with those wicked and seditious designs that the devil and their carnal interests commend unto them for the ruin of the public; one while corrupting them by false interpretations, another while depraving them with impious additions of their own pretended visions and revelations, either feigned by themselves, or inspired into them by the spirit of error, God having given them up to strong delusions, that they should believe a lie, because they have not received the love of Truth that they might be saved. Yea lest there should be left any impediment to cross them in their ways, and to hinder the spreading of their hellish errors, it is thought there are some that have taken the boldness, to pull the Scriptures down from the Throne of excellency and infallibility wherein God hath placed them, as being the dictates of his own infallible Spirit, and to equal with them, or prefer before them, their own wicked fancies, and the very witchcrafts of Satan.  
Hence it is come to pass amongst us, that the light of true Christian knowledge is so eclipsed amongst us, like the Sun in caudâ draconis in the Dragon's tail, as the Astronomers speak; for what else are these wicked Sophisters, these bold disturbers of the Church of God, than the tail as it were of the great red Dragon sweeping down the stars of heaven, the true and genuine lights of the Church, and of Divine knowledge.  
Hence it is that humane interests have gotten so much the start of sincere piety, and are become so impudent as to take upon them to give rules unto the Spirit, to silence the preaching of he pure Word of God, to build sanctuaries and asylums unto the grossest sins, whereby they are become incurable Gangrenes and noli me tangeries in the ulcered body of this Church and state.  
Hence it is that there are so many supersedeases, countermands, and inhibitions served upon the Scripture from the Chancery of the corrupt judgements, or rather affections of wicked politicians, to reverse or silence the Edicts & decrees of the most high God, to embezzle and invalidate the Records of heaven, making them subordinate to the impious and unsanctified ordinances of men, and allowing the sacred and unchangeable Oracles of the Almighty to be of no force any farther than they can be wrested to a seeming and forced compliance with those wicked principles and ends that worldly minded men have entertained and proposed for the consummating of that work of ruin and confusion that they have undertaken; which must be asserted and made good with a non obstante, to all that the spirit of God hath declared to the contrary, whereby they seem to deal in some sort with Christ Jesus as with his substitute, under the colours and fair promises to render him glorious, not only attempting to make void the authority of his Prophetical office, by disallowing his directions to be an infallible and all-sufficient guide into all truth, but also to depose him from the Throne of his Royalty by repealing and abolishing the force of his divine Laws, which he hath made for the rule and government of his people, whensoever they lie opposite to their seditious and pernicious judgements; as if no act were high enough to show the absoluteness of that supremacy which they challenge unto themselves, unless the Precepts of God, as well as the Laws of men, be made the Pavement for them to trample on at their pleasure, in the passes and repasses that they make for the carrying on of the bold adventures of their awlesse and Lawless tyranny.  
Would you not think them the heirs, if not the Ghosts of that inso lent Roman Senate in the time of Tiberius? And that as they refused to admit of our Saviour for God, because he was consecrited a God before he was so decrecd and approved by the Senate: so these had determined to reject him from being God, because he was not deified by their ordinance, and received not has Godhead from them.  
What is it else for them to take upon them as they do, to set up their own rules in oppostion to the clear dictates of his Law and Gospel?  
The Word of God teacheth us to celebrate the memorials of the great blessings of God, and to solemnize his praise for them in the Congregations of his people. Psal. 103.1, etc. Psalm. 42.4.  
They teach men to abolish the memorial of the great blessings of Salvation wrought for us by Christ, and forbidden by their command, and hinder by force, the Ministers of God from assisting the People therein.  
Psal. 2. Psal. 95. The Law of God teacheth us to serve the Lord with fear, and to rejoice unto him with trembling; to bow down and kneel before the Lord our maker.  
They teach men, or at least allow them, to abolish outward reverened from the Divine service.  
6. Com. The Law of God teacheth us that we shall do no murder.  
They teach men, and engage them to murder their Brethren, and to destroy the lives of those that are innocent for the compassing of their wicked purposes, and to make good the usurpation of their unjust power and greatness.  
8. Com. The Law of God teacheth us that we shall not steal.  
They justify the robbing and plundering of their Brethren, the good and peaceable Subjects, and even the King Himself, without any colour of Law or conscience, and without so much as allowing many of them a hearing.  
The Law of God teacheth us that we must be merciful as our Father which is in heaven is merciful.  
They teach men to be cruel and bloody, as their father in hell is cruel & bloody, who was a murderer from the beginning.  
9 Com. The Law of God teacheth us that we must not bear false witness against our neighbour.  
But now men are encouraged, and it is thought suborned too, to bear false witness against their Brethren, that they may get Naboths Vineyard into their possession.  
1 Cor. 9.13, 14. The Law of God teacheth us, that the Ministers of the Gospel ought to live of the Gospel, as they that waited at the Altar were partakers with the Alear.  
But now men are taught to deprive the Ministers of God of their lawful supportance and livelihood, neither allowing them to enjoy their portions, nor to exercise their callings.  
The Law of God forbids men under the danger of damnation, to do evil that good may come.  
These teach men to do manifest evils under the pretence of holy purposes, but indeed for the procurement of greater evils, making one wickedness the scale to get up to another.  
Acts 23.5. The Law of God tells us that we must not speak evil of the Ruler of the people.  
They do not only speak evil of him themselves, but countenance the same, & teach others to do so.  
1 Pet. 4. 2 Pet. 13.14. The Law of God teachethus' that me must submit to the King as Supreme, and to Governors as unto those that are sent of him.  
They teach the people to despise and disobey the King, whom they are sworn to acknowledge as their only supreme Governor.  
Rom. 13. The Law of God teacheth us that we must not resist the higher powers, and shows us that they that do so shall receive to themselves damnation.  
They set up resistance and Rebellion for a virtue: and slander that holy Law with the opprobrious title of Malignancy, wherewith this brand those that submit thereunto.  
Mat. 26.52. The Law of Christ is, that whosoever takes the Sword against the power of the Magistrate shall perish by the Sword.  
But they teach men (and practice it themselves) to take the Sword, and ravish it from the supreme power, and to use it not only without him, but against him, to maintain their wicked Doctrines, their Schismatical designs, and unjust oppressions, and to beat down both truth and righteousness.  
The Law of God tells us in the judgement of David, that men ought to fighter defence of the King's Person, insomuch that David in 1 Sam. 26.16. tells Abner, and binds it with an oath, That he was worthy to die because he had not kept the Lords anointed, though so wicked: Tyrant as was Saul. And our blessed Saviour the Son of David tells Pilot, john 18.36. That if his Kingdom had been of this world, than his Servants would have fought, that he should not have been delivered to the jews.  
But they teach men not only to hold the contrary, but bind them by wicked oaths never to interest themselves, nor to assist any in the defence of the King, and punish those that have followed this rule of the Scripture, with imprisonment, death, and confiscation of goods.  
The Word of God teacheth us to perform our oaths, and to keep the King's commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God, and designed a heavy judgement unto Zedekiah for breaking the oath wherewith he had sworn unto Nabuchadnezzar.  
But they teach and practise not only the breaking of the sacred oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance, but do also compel men to swear down those oaths, and to vow perjury unto Satan by the name of the great and holy God, making it the instrument of wickedness, and using it for a seal to confirm their obligations unto the Prince of disobedience.  
The Word of God teacheth people to study to be quiet, and to do their own business.  
They teach them to forsake the business, to raise tumults and disturbances in the Church and State.  
The Law of God commands the Ministers of the Gospel to preach the Gospel.  
They forbidden men to preach the Gospel, unless they will countenance their seditious practices.  
The Word of God teacheth that men should be allowed and approved, and ordained by imposition of hands, that are to undertake the Ministry in the Church.  
But now— alas! the Priests of jeroboam, of the meanest of the people intrude into the exercise of the Sacred Function in the Church, without any allowance from just authority, or competent furniture of solid knowledge.  
And what is all this, and much more of the like, but to say of Christ, Nolumus hunc regnare super nos, we will not have this man reign over us? The symplicity of the Gospel is of too low a pitch to sort with the deep plots & wise contrivements of our politic brains; it is much too plain to serve the turn of those great designs which we have in hand. Good God vindicate the Glory and Authority of thy truth. But I must hasten; The Judgement of God me thinks is riding so post upon us, that I am afraid it will prevent my admonition, it will scarce give me leave to pursue my purposed intention.  
My meditations are even overwhelmed with the floods and deluges of those various calamities that have broken forth upon us in this wretched Nation; we may justly cry out of them in the voice of the Psalmist, The floods are risen O Lord, the floods are risen, the floods have lift up their voice, the waves of the Sea are mighty and rage horribly; all our comfort is, that the Lord that dwelleth on high is mightier; and as the same Psalmist telleth us in another place, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Psal. 29.10. The Lord sitteth upon the flood or deluge, to rule and moderate it for the good of his people and his own glory, and the Lord remaineth a King for ever; were it not for this, we could have no hope to escape the swallow of those devouring surges that do assault us. Do but open your eyes and look about you, and you may see yourselves encompassed with deep and threatening waters on every side, miscarriages in the manner and manage of the work of instruction, whilst the people and the Ministers both join together to seduce one another; The one kindling the wasting flames of seditious Factions & corrupt Doctrines, clawing the itch of scabbed and putrified ears, and the other blowing those fires, and encouraging those evil performances in their Teachers, by their applauses, and bribing the poisonous tongues of those that love the reward of unrighteousness, keeping up the market and commerce of destruction betwixt them: The one buying, and the other selling wicked deceits, and spiritual impostures, and the mutual ruin of one another and the Truth; So that as Learned Graser speaketh, Neque facile dici potest utra pars alteram fortius ducat aut ducatur; It is hard to determine whether the people be more guilty of corrupting the Ministers by their acclamations and bribery, or the Ministers of the deceiving of the peole by their pernicious and sophisticated Doctrines.  
And of those that are not for this evil Traffic; yet there are too many (as the evil effect thereof seems to demonstrate) that for want of the right gage of Christian prudence to steer and regulate their unguided zeal, which they have indeed toward God, but not according to knowledge; run from one error into another, and sometimes perhaps leap out of the pan into the fire; that I say not out of God's blessing into the warm sun; that like the foolish horse that hath no understanding, blench into the pit to fly from the fluttering of a bird in the hedge, who may well be compared with Dionysius Alexandrinus, unto an unskilful Gardiner, or dresser of an Orchard, who when he finds a crooked plant, instead of straitening it, bends it as much clean on the other side; or unto some unexperienced Physicians, who to cure the patiented of an Ague, or some cold disease, by overstrong Physic, begetteth a fever in the stead of it, and doth not somuch remedy as change the malady. They are very much for Reformation, and it is not to be denied but they light upon some things that are fit for animadversions, but whilst they pull up the tears they pluck up the wheat with them. They abominate superstition, and therein they do well, but in the overmuch abandoning that, they fall into the opposite mischief, and run into profaneness. They are much (they say) for the clearing of the Truth, for the purity of Worship, for the power of Godliness (a name that is of late given I fear unto a mystery of iniquity) but they are so overbusy in snuffing the light to clear it, that they often times put it clean out; in striving for Purity they justle out Order and Decency.  
And for those that are of a more moderate and Christian spirit than to deny a truth or reject a good usage, because one that is esteemed an Adversary embraceth it, or to think every glimmering appearance of some small mistake in the one, or miscarriage in the other, a sufficient ground to dissolve those golden Chains of Unity, and Charity, which are the Ornaments of the Spouse of Christ, and the badges of true Disciples; The furious and unguided Zeal of those that feel no other heats but of self-love, and hatred of all others that will not allow them as Gods to set up their Throne of infalibillity in the consciences of other men, is presently ready to cry down such honest and peaceable men to be worse than Heretics.  qui Christum & Belialinter se reconciliare velint; as if they went about (as a learned Author speaketh) to reconcile God and Belial, and to make up a match between Truth and Falsehood. They look upon such not as Stars but as Meteors, hanging in the middle Region of the Air, and allot unto them no other portion than sometimes is observed to befall those that dwell in the middle story of an house, digni propterea, qui inferiorum faetorem hauriant & a superioribus lotio perfundantur; worthy to be molested both with the droppings of unsavoury excrements from above, and with the stench of smoke and ordures from beneath. Thus whilst men state their Religion, not so much in the embracement of the truth, or in the sincere obedience unto God, as in the abomination of one another, True Devotion and Piety is murdered betwixt them in the quarrel, and that of a good Father is proved too true amongst us, Dum alter alteri anathema esse cepit propè nemo Christi est; whilst we curse & anathematise one another in the bitterness of opposition, we are on all sides too much anathematised from Christ for want of Charity and true Devotion.  
An evil than which I know not any under which the Church of Christ hath more laboured; nor have I observed any Stratagem in all the policy of Satan, whereby he hath more perniciously either hindered the good, or promoted the ruin of the Church, than is this spirit of opposition, and contradiction, setting up of sides, and dividing one against another by odious names, and appellations; intruding our selves, or others whom we admire, into the Throne of Christ and allowing no other scale to measure Truth or Falsehood by, but the dictates of our own judgements, fancies, or affections, and theirs. And thrusting all men into the bottomless pit of hell, by our presumptuous and uncharitable censures, that depart, though but in some small and inconsiderable matters from their or our magisterial impositions: whereby not only many falsehoods are put upon the world instead of truths, obtaining admission, not by any true price or value that is in themselves, but by the credit of their Authors with us, or the affections that are borne unto them, whose sentences we take for authentical rules, without any due trial by the divine Word: but also many Truths are rejected by the prejudice that men have entertained against those that offer them, and those truths which are received upon such terms rendered not very much better than falsehoods unto the souls of them that do so admit them, whilst they entertain them upon such false grounds, as upon the mere reputation of humane judgements, and upon the request of our partial affections; for if I embrace a Doctrine never so wholesome, or practise a duty neverso Pious or Religious in itself, yet if I do it, either in admiration of one man or side, or in opposition to another, and not out of any due regard unto the rule of God, either in Scripture or sound Reason; I therein worship man, malice, or myself, and not God: for he must needs be the owner of my worship, in whom I place the ultimate resolution of my judgement in matter of Truth, or of my affection in matter of Duty: and whilst we ground not upon God, but upon the errable and fallible opinions of men or sects therein, it is upon the matter but merely by chance that we hit upon that which is in itself right, and so a good building falls upon our heads for want of a right foundation: Yea, I think. I need not much fear to say, That he is in as good if not in a much better case, that cleaveth to an erroneous opinion or practice, so it be not of too pernicious a nature, with a heart unengaged to sides and Factions, or to self-love and opinion, but exercised in sincere and earnest enquiry after those divine and sure evidences which God hath ordained to be our guides, and with a strong persuasion that he hath right ground from thence; than he that receiveth a Truth out of a factious mind, either out of admiration of one, or abomination of another, or inordinate love unto himself; for as it is not enough to make us accepted with Christ, to receive a Prophet, unless we receive him in the name of a Prophet: So neither is it accepted with God for us to receive a divine truth, unless we receive it as a divine Truth: making God and not men, nor any parts that are in them, or any affections we bear to them, the reason of our acceptance of them, or submission unto them; giving up our judgements, and prostrating all our affections at the Throne of his infallible Divinity, and not unto any humane excellencies or endearments; nor to the self conceit of our own judgements, or to the partial defence of our own opinions, or received practices, or to the desire of victory over others; much less to the hellish tribunal of malice and enmity against others, of whom we have entertained an evil conceit in our hearts: Nor yet is this all the mischief that Satan worketh by this hellish engine of partiality and opposition, to impose falsehood upon us: exclude us from embracing the Truth: or enervating the virtue of those Truths which we receive upon such grounds, and depriving us of the benefit and comfort thereof, and of the duties which they direct us unto: But herein lies one great masterpiece of the Prince of division, to keep up divisions and contentions in the Church: it lieth diametrally oposite unto Peace and Charity, and is the very bellows of the devil to blow the flame, and the fueller to nourish and maintain the fires of perpetual quarrels and contentions among people. A means to keep the wounds of that body still bleeding and rankled, there being scarce any more importunate factor of strife, than the Tyrannical imposition of our own opinions for laws upon other men's consciences, whilst that deplorable state of the Church of God, which was lamented by Saint Basil, as an evil of too much growth in those times, seems to have acquired a more perfect malignity amongst us. 〈…〉 Neque Sacrae jam literae tantum valent, ut intercessio harum admittatur: Neque tradita ab Apostolis controversias horum inter ipsos dijudicare possunt, unus est inimicitiae terminus, ea loqui quae delectationem habeant, & inimicitiarun satis praeclara causa, non convenire sententiae: firmior autem reperitur ad seditionis secietatem omni conjuratione, sola errati similitudo. It needs no other translation, than the sad and pernicious practice of our time and Nation, doth daily make of it, wherein we are so fare engaged by the evil spirit of contradiction, in the maintenance of quarrels against one another, that we may preserve the credit of our sides, our own judgements and interests, and our malice and uncharitable dispositions against others. That the holy Scriptures are not allowed to be of such force as to be admitted for intercessors or arbitratours betwixt us: Nor do we suffer our controversies to be decided by those things which have been delivered unto us from the Apostles, no end of our strifes but to sacrifice the Truth unto the pleasures of those that oppose it, whilst that doth not please us which is true, but that only is allowed to be true which pleaseth us. And it is held for a laudable and specious cause of enmity, if any man will not subscribe unto our sentence. And compliance in the same error, is become a greater security to associate men in the contrivance and practice of sedition, than any conjuration or conspiracy whatsoever. How many controversies had been prevented, & how many more had been long since ended amongst us, could we but have been brought on all sides to a fair and sincere compromise to stand to the award of the Spirit of God in the holy Scriptures, and sound reason agreeable to the Scriptures, and not to have reserved an appeal from thence (in our hearts and judgements at least) unto the usurping umpirage of this spirit of partiality and opposition? How had the names of Papists, and Protestants, and Puritans, of Lutherans, and Calvinists, and those new make-bates of Roundheads, & Cavalieres, & Malignants been either long ago forgotten, or else never known amongst us, were it not for this humour of siding and contradiction against one another? I speak it from my heart, and not without grief to think of it, and I wish it might be well considered by all others. I do not find when I look upon the state of the quarrels that are amongst us, that they are held up near so much by any difficulty or want of clearness, either in the rules of Scripture and reason which concern them, or want of light in men's judgements to apprehend what they declare therein, as by that partiality of heart which men bear either to themselves, or some whom they adhere to, and by the prejudice and opposition against others, whom they are resolved to contend with be it right or wrong, whereby they have enslaved their own souls unto error, contention being their Jailor; whilst men are not so much contentious because they err, as they do err because they are contentious. So true is that which Charron hath in his book of wisdom; Chacun prend plaisir de se tromper; Every man makes it his sport to deceive himself. And yet they are not satisfied with this unless they may deceive others too, and play the decoys of their Master to draw others into his net with them.  
Hence it is, that there are daily amongst us such tumultuous and irrational crying down of most clear and evident Truths, without so much as allowing them a fair trial, or a liberty to speak for themselves.  
Hence it is that there is such headlong condemnation of righteous Doctrines, and practices, with no better arguments than such as the Jews used against our Saviour before Pilot. If any part of Christian Doctrine or duty seems to lie opposite unto humour, and those evil ends which men have proposed to themselves, then presently the cry is, Crucifige, Crucifige, crucify it, crucify it, and if any ask why? and what evil that Truth hath done? They have no more to say many times than they had than against Christ, john 18. who when Pilot asked them for their accusation, instead of objecting any crime against him, cry out, If he were not a Malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee; As if it were crime enough to condemn Christ Jesus himself, that he had the foolish people for his Adverfaries; A way of proceeding, that I fear hath left too much blood upon the score of this Nation in these times: viderit populus, & viderit Pilatus; Let the people, and the pilate's both look to it. So if the true and ancient Doctrine of Obedience, and of Suffering and bearing the Cross, in case of Tyranny or persecution, one of the most proper notes and tokens of the Christian Church and Profession, which is so gloriously recorded in the blood of so many Martyrs, come but in the way: What other cry is there with some in these days, but Crucifige, Crucifige, Crucify it, Crucify it? They are ready to Crucify the Cross itself, and those that teach them any such foolish Doctrine as to submit to it: But then if they be asked as the Jews were, Why, what evil hath that Doctrine or the Preachers of it done? or, What accusation bring ye against them? it is enough that they dislike them, and that they are not for their turns.  
And in like manner they deal with other advices and instructions which are offered to them, concerning Reverence, Order, and Decency in God's Worship, etc.  
And this evil hath so far possessed the Pulpits, & Presses in our times, that instead of being for what they were ordained, the great gates for the entrance of true and sincere knowledge into the Public: They are become the marts of division and strife, the Channels and common gutters to convey the filthy and infectious ordures of vile contumelies and reproaches, not away from us, but amongst us, to the poisoning of the very air of this whole Climate, and to the breeding and spreading of contagious Plagues throughout the whole Region of this Kingdom; whilst they (whose office is to instruct the people) have forgottten the business of their Master, which is to be the dispensers of food unto his family in due season, and like that evil servant in the Gospel, Math. 24.48, 49. seem to say in their hearts, The Lord delayeth his coming, and fall to beating of their fellow servants, thrusting them out of their employments and possessions, as if that terrible threat of the great Judge were but a mere mormo, or Bugbear to fright children with, but they will one day find it to be true; The Lord of those servants will come in a day when they look not for him, and in an hour that they are not ware of, and shall cut them asunder, and divide them their portion with the hypocrites, There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  
It was a sad account that one gives of the miscarriages of this kind in his time; Invitus dico & tamen dicere coger, Ecclesiarum cat hedras hodiè multis in locis pro rabularū causidicorumque, & hujus generis demagogorū rostris haberi, ex quibus ij quibus statio haec concredita est Satyrus suas in imaginatos adversarios declamitant. I am loath to speak it, but I am compelled to speak it; That the Chairs of the Churches are in many places at this day esteemed for the Pulpits of Railers, Cause-drivers, and such like side-maken amongst the people, out of which they unto whom this station is committed, declaim their Satyrs against those whom they imagine their adversaries.  
To which we may add what he complains of afterwards Pro salubri alimento quod familia Christi apponere debebant, auditorum plausum & faudree captant fictaeque & composite orationis lenocinio. (Petrus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, diceret) fluctuantis populi motum & pruritum ad suaslibidines torquent, & circum agitant. Hoc igitur boni deplorare, corrigere autem preter Deum nemo poterit. Instead of that wholesome nourishment which they should administer unto the household of Christ, they hunt after the applause and favour of their Auditors, and with the alluring dresses of their sophisticated language, or as St Peter hath it, with feigned, or plastered words, (fair in show, but dirty and filthy in substance) they turn and ●osse the itching and movable people at their own lusts: this good men may, and aught to deplore, but God only can correct and amend, which God grant of his great mercy. That the houses of God may be no more turned into brothels by committing adultery with the souls of the people; That they that have the manage of holy works in those places, may remember whose cause it is that they have in hand: that they are not to woe for themselves, but for the Bridegroom, which is Christ Jesus, whose servants they are, to make ready and adorn his Spouse (which is his Church) against the wedding; That they may not seek to gain the applauses of the people unto themselves, which are too often made the hire of vanity and corrupt Doctrine, but to gain the souls of the people unto Christ. To conclude, that they may not preach themselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and themselves the Church's servants for Jesus sake. And it were much to be wished, that the nursery of this evil affection in some Ministers were removed, by changing those theatrical applauses of the people; (which if rightly valued, are rather the accusations and reproaches of the Ministry, and too suspicious a symptom, that that work is not performed with that gravity and severity that it ought to be, especially in such times as these) into sighs and tears, and sobs of Godly sorrow for their sins, and into the cheerful concurrency of the votes of the people to the petitions and praises that are offered up unto God, But it is a sign of no healthful constitution in the Congregations of the people, when their periodical hums of the Minister are louder than the Amens of their Prayers and Thankesgiving unto God. This, and not that, is the thunder of the Church wherein s●e struck and battered in piece● the adversaries of the Truth● That would throw down th● Towers of Satan and his instruments: Those Babel's of confusion that are setting up amongst us. That being accompanied with the lightning 〈◊〉 a fervent devotion, would break the cloud of the displeasure of the Almighty, and make the fruitful showers of his mercies flow down upon us. Blessed is the people that know this joyful sound.  
And yet the faults we have spoken of might be the better borne with, were they not accompanied with more (and those of no mean depravation) in the Ministry of the Word.  
Such is the too much unworthy and effeminate pusillanimity, and extreme lukewarmness, that is found in too many in this age, who dare not reprove prosperous sins, that have betrayed the Cause of God, his Church, and his Anointed, for fear of the frowns of men: Such whose discretion hath devoured their devotion, that cry out, it is no time now to preach against such sins, because they are wickednesses in high places, that could talk much and earnestly against Rebellion, in an Assembly of Loyal men, in those Cities and places (whilst there were any) where Rebellion dwelled not; or in those Times when sedition was in a lower condition; But in these times, and in those places, when and where those sins are in their power and glory, they cry it is wisdom, and think it no impiety to hold their peace, as if a Physician should say, he is discharged from the necessity of giving Physic, because the patiented is very sick, and standeth in great need of it, forgetting that the works of the Ministry are to be gauged not by the interests of our safety, but of God's glory, and our duty to him and his people, and that however we may please ourselves with some present ease that we find upon our shoulders, yet that security will prove dear bought in the end, that we have purchased by suffering and conniving at the spoil of Truth and Righteousness, and although this may go for prudence amongst men, yet it will be found Treachery & Treason in the account of God. Oh how have we forgotten those severe and peremptory rules of the Almighty, so earnestly exacting the discharge of our consciences in this duty. See Ezek. 33.8, If thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand.  
How have we forgotten those woes of the holy Scripture, which are threatened against fearful hearts, and faint hands, See Revel. 21.8. See it and tremble.  
Do we fear the menaces of men, and do we not fear the menaces of God? Home minat●r mortem, & metuis, & contramiscis: Deus gehennam minatur & contemnis; Man that shall die himself, and perhaps before he hath done threatening, menaceth death if thou speakest: and thou fearest and shakest: God threatneth thee with hell if thou be'st silent, and thou contemnest it; and yet God can defend thee from the threatening of man, but man cannot defend thee from the threatening of God. If God be with us who can be against us? But, if God will not withdraw his anger, the proud helpers must stoop under him.  
Oh, I beseech you consider this in time, you whom God hath honoured so highly, as to be made the Advocates of his truth, you that are the solicitors, and the Atournies of the King of Kings, Impeach these Traitorous Iniquities boldly, and faithfully: and do not become Traitors yourselves, in becoming accessary to those horrid impieties whereby your Lord and Master is dishonoured in these times; You that are the Ambassadors of peace, be not afraid to proclaim war against those that are enemies unto Peace; You that are the Factors of the God of heaven, buy the Truth and sell it not, buy it though you pay your own blood for it, God will account it again unto you: He that will save his life, shall lose it, but he that will lose his life for my sake shall save it. Sell it not, no not for the greatest preferments, not for freedom, nor for life itself. Oh let us nor be so vile as to keep the door whilst the devil and wicked men commit fornication together in the most horrid iniquities. Let us not see the name of God dishonoured, the Church of Christ demolished, and ruinated, the Lords Anointed abused, imprisoned, and trampled upon, and sit still and say nothing, as if we were not at all concerned in it, or as if all were well, because you enjoy your liberties, your revenues, whilst your Sovereign is in bondage, poverty, and persecution; me thinks we should be even ashamed of our freedom almost whilst he suffers such straight imprisonment for us; what shall I say to this? I will say no more, but wish that we may remember the curse of Eli, and take heed of it; I have told him (saith God) that I will judge his house for ever, for the iniquity which he knoweth (not for the iniquity which he had done) because his Sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not. And yet Ely was not altogether wanting in the business, he did reprove his sons after a manner, but it was too gently for such sins, he was too ceremonious and complemental with their iniquities, 1 Sam. 2.24. Nay my Sons, for it is no good report that I hear, etc. And yet this would not serve to free him from the judgement; And shall we think to escape if we sit and say nothing, whilst the most horrid iniquities eaten acted and justified amongst us?  
Add unto these, that great neglect under which this Church of ours doth so miserably groan; and which is the great fountain both of our corruptions and distractions; and those other bloody streams of sedition, confusion, and oppression in this Nation: The laying aside of that most necessary kind of instruction by Catechism, whereby the foundations of Christian Piety and Righteousness should be laid in the hearts of children and young disciples: A method practised by the Apostles of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus, who held it a duty in themselves, and by their authentical example have commended it unto the Church; to administer first this milk unto children, that they might thereby be prepared and fitted for the stronger meat of more perfect knowledge. The want whereof hath proved most unhealthful unto the Congregations. Having proved that saying of Master Calvin too true, that he hath in an Epistle of his unto the Protector of England: That without the use of a set-forme of Catechism, it is not possible for a Church to consist. If any ask the question how it comes to pass, that the building of Christian doctrine and practice is of so sinking and tottering a condition in these days? And that the solid and true knowledge of God and Christ Jesus (which is eternal life) is turned into so many airy and foolish fancies and imaginations with the people? Or if any shall inquire from whence it proceeds, that there are so many contentions and divisions, such a multitude of foolish and mad conceits and apprehensions; such devilish heresies, and horrid blasphemies; such ignorance of Christian duties, and such general counter-practise thereunto in this Kingdom? If any shall expostulate why the light of Christianity is grown so dim among us, that there is such a black cloud, (that I say not an Eclipse) of the Sun of divine and heavenly illumination: That faith is so weak, devotion and charity so cold, zeal so intemperate and unguided, our wisdom so earthly, sensual and devilish? why obedience to God and the Magistrate so trampled on? If any shall wonder, as they justly and sadly may, why under the bare name of a Christian profession, which is a profession of mercy and meekness, of righteousness and humility, of purity and patience under the Cross: There walketh such horrid, and more than Turkish and Heathenish cruelty and barbarousness; why such injustice and fraudulency in our trades and deal, such intolerable haughtiness of spirit, such ambition, spiritual pride, and contempt of one another, such Pharisaical boasting, such Epicurean luxury, intemperance and uncleanness, such envy, hatred, murmuring and revengefulness? Or if it shall be examined, why all Religion is so much monopolised by the tongue and the ear, and so little a share left unto the heart? Why men are so sick of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or canine appetite: So greedy after Sermons, and yet so fruitless in the use of them? why they devour so much spiritual food, and yet after all are like Pharaohs lean Kine, lean and ill-favoured as before? why such hypocritical fasting, such dull and uneffectuall praying, etc. One of the most general answers that I know how to give unto these and all other pensive and mournful queries that our evil and ruinous condition may prompt us unto, is this: That the people of the Land have not been catechised as they ought: That they have not been instructed in the first grounds and principles of sacred Doctrine: That they are thereby become destitute of the knowledge of God, of his greatness, of his goodness, of their great and indissoluble obligations unto him, as they are his creatures, and his purchase, of the holy Vow and Covenant that they have entered into in their Baptism; of the privileges of a Christian, and the duties that hang upon them; Of the great necessity and comfort of obedience and holiness; Of the nature and meaning of the divine Laws, and the holy rules of Christianity; Of the propriety and purity of divine worship; Of the true characters of holy and Christian love; Of the necessary matter and object of faith, and of the inseparable connexion thereof with good works and holiness of life: Of righteousness, temperance, and judgement to come: Of the mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation: Of the Passion, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ: Of his Natures and his Offices: Of the Spirit of God, and his gifts, and operations: Of the Essence, unity, order and power of God's Church: Of the communion of Saints with Christ by faith, as members of that body of which he is the Head, and with one another by Christian charity in Christ, and the operations thereof towards one another, as fellow members of one another in him: Of the glorious fruits of this holy fellowship and communion with Christ: The pardon of sin: The Resurrection of the Body, and everlasting life and salvation, etc. In stead whereof, the foolish and unsteady curious impertinents, and affectatours of science falsty so called, have like the prodigal child, or like the Swine, said upon the husks of empty speculations, or upon the dung and dross of gross Errors, and carnal doctrines; and have rendered themselves of that evil complexion which the Apostle deciphereth in the first Epistle to Timothy, the sixth chapter, and the fourth and fifth verses: Proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions, and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, rail, evil surmises, perverse dispute of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the Truth, supposing that gain is godliness; forgetting the wholesome advice of Saint Paul, 2 Tim 2.14. Strive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers; And that at the 16, verse of the same Chapter, etc. Shun profane and vain babbling, for they will increase unto more ungodliness, and their word will eat as doth a canker; And that of the 22, and 23. verses, Fellow righteousness faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart; but foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes: Or else not minding that elegant and excellent rule of the same Apostle, Rom. 12.3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
They have strained their weak and feeble wits out of joint, by reaching at the knowledge which was neither necessary for them, nor comprehensible by them; and if they have by chance, (more than skill) perhaps light upon things in themselves true and wholesome, yet in default of that growth, and age, and manly strength of Christianity which they should have arrived unto through the knowledge of the first principles, as the spirit of God leadeth on, Heb. 6.1. That food otherwise sound and healthful, yet for want of ability of digestion, breeds ill humours, and noxious qualities, and pernicious diseases in them, whilst they have refused to stand to that wise dispensation of the Author to the Hebrews, Chap. 5. verse 13, 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe; but strong meat belongeth unto them that are of full age, (or to them that are perfect) even those who by reason of use (or habit) have their senses exercised for the discerning of good and evil: And so that is fulfilled in them, which was spoken of the Gentiles by Saint Paul, Rom. 1.21, 22. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. They became vain in their ratiocinations, and their foolish heart was darkened, professing themselves to be wise they became fools, like weak and feeble eyes looking upon the Sun, or some glorious and splendid object, above the passibility of the sense, they have blinded themselves with too bold atttempts upon that light which they are not able to bear, not considering that modesty and humility is the best gate to bring in knowledge into the soul, and that there is scarce any more incurable bane unto agents and enterprises than the attempting of things that are above the strength of the undertakers; From this it hath come to pass, that this age of ours hath brought forth such monstrous and frantic opinions; That the foolish and presumptuous seekers of our times have vented such mad and blasphemous questions, like that which was once with great acuteness and wisdom, as the Author thereof seemed to think, proposed to myself, whether it were lawful to desire God to forgive us our sins or no?  
And indeed how can it be otherwise, but that many maladies both in judgement and affection, and practice, which is the child of these, should proceed from such a miscarriage in diet, since it is of great consequence unto health; not only that the food should be of good substance in itself, but that it should be proper and fit for the nature and constitution of the body that receives it.  
If all Parents should give unto their Infant children, Beef and Bacon, instead of the breast, and other such like sustenance which is apt for the weakness of that age: it were the ready way to the destruction of mankind.  
The blame of this mischief lieth upon more than one sort of people; The carelessness of Magistrates, whose charge it is to see that things be rightly managed in the Church, as well as to look to the peace and government of the State, and that should make that the principal work of their Authority and wisdom.  
The negligence of Ministers, or which may be too probably suspected, a vainglorious humour in them, that affecteth nothing but that that bringeth honour & applause unto themselves, by the ostentation of their parts and gifts, and hath taught too many of them to despise this and other prescribed duties of the Church, and to look upon it as a thing below their wisdom and excellency to have to do with children, to descend to their weak capacities, and to lead them on in that easy road of instruction, in the foundamentall points.  
The intolerable improvidence of Parents, and Masters of Families, and their forgetfulness of that cure of souls which they have in this particular over their Families, and of the great obligation that lies upon them for the performance of this duty to their Children and Servants by themselves, and to send them at fit times to the Ministers for the bringing up of them in Religion and Piety; that they may say with good joshua, I and my house will serve the Lord; whereby they become answerable unto God for the souls of their Children and Household, whilst they take care indeed for their bodies and estates, but reckon not at all what becometh of their souls, whether they go to heaven or to hell.  
The miscarriage of Schoolmasters, whose prime and most profitable business it should be at some set and convenient times frequently and orderly to initiate their Scholars, and to lead them on in this way of Christian knowledge, and to teach them Piety as well as other Learning; That they may know Christ Jesus and him Crucified, without which all other Rudiments will prove barren and fruitless, yea, even hurtful unto them, and will teach them only to be wise to do evil.  
And lastly, the stubborness of many children, servants, and others, that stand in need of this instruction, and for want of it incur the danger of the damnation of their souls, and yet will by no means submit thereunto: Though invited and called upon, accounting it their dishonour, and an unnecessary slavery. Oh how soon do we grow too old, and too wise to go to Heaven! The Lord grant that they may all seek to reform it. That this so necessary and useful an Ordinance may be restored into credit and practise again amongst us. The most ready way to recover the truth and unity of doctrine, the firmness of faith, the purity of worship, and to reform the abuses and miscarriages of life and conversation in this our lapsed and depraved Nation. Yea, although it is my hearty desire that the preaching of the word of God, in the concionary way, in doctrinal discourses, Scripture-expositions, declamatory exhortations unto virtue and holiness, and dehortations from sin, may be more and more encouraged and promoted amongst us: And am not at all of the opinion of those men (of which side soever they are) that cry down preaching of the Word in that kind, as if it were the cause of more evil than good amongst a people; because too many have made a perverse and corrupt use thereof, to the serving of their own or others unsanctified ends, & to the raising of factious and seditious motions in the Body of the Church and State,) a mischief that lies full sore upon our shoulders at this very time,) and yet of no such force as to give us a warrant to desire the abolition thereof from amongst us. For this were to fall into the error of the Papists, who upon the like pretence have locked up the Scriptures in unknown tongues from the people, and prohibited them the liberty of the reading of them; because as it is too true (though not of all those upon whom the Church of Rome would fix the charge thereof) That many through presumptuous ignorance, and resting too much upon their own judgements, and despising those guides which God hath appointed for their help to lead them on safely, and keep them from drowning in those depths: And perhaps many more through wilful perverseness, have drawn poison from that honey, and by an ill composition, and worse application of those excellent drugs that are there laid up and ordained by God for the health of our souls, have procured diseases, and death both unto themselves and others. This were to be as unjust and unreasonable as some others (that walk under a better title) in these times, that can find no other way of Reformation, than like that foolish Vine-dresser, that cut up the Vines by the roots in stead of pruning them; to pull up the Trees of Government in Church and State, Root and Branch, because some boughs or sprigs thereof were unfruitful or corrupted. I know intemperance is a great evil, and hath proved very pernicious, both unto the bodies and souls of men: And yet if any should advise the Husbandman not to sow his ground, or the householder not to provide meat and drink for his family, or any other, absolutely to forgo the use of those creatures for fear of abusing them; It would be a hard matter to tell which were the wiser, the giver or the taker of such counsel. Many Doctors perhaps through carelessness or ignorance become the greatest diseases of their Patients: And natural bodies as well as politic prove oftentimes to be sicker of their Physicians than of their maladies: And yet he were no good Physician, that would persuade men to cure themselves by abolishing the use of the Physician & of medicine. It is the express command of the Spirit of God, and no pretences of humane wisdom must dissolve the force of it: Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. Yea there is not only a bare command, but a severe charge and adjuration applied to Timothy by the Apostle to that purpose: I charge thee before God (saith he) and the Lord jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and dead at his appearing and his Kingdom. Preach the Word, etc. And dare any say that this was for Timothy only, and not for all those that are called to the like office in the Church? As well they may go about to make void the Church's interest in the Gospel of St Luke, because it was dedicated to Theophilus; or deforce the Universal Authority of the Epistles of Saint Paul, because the first was written to the Romans, the second & third to the Corinthians, etc. As if the People of England were not bound to submit to the King as Supreme, because England is not in the Title of that Epistle of St Peter, where this Precept is Recorded, but that it is directed to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia; nay, there is no respect of persons with God. Wheresoever any meet in their callings, they must meet in duties as they do meet in obligations. Therefore I say again, I cannot, I dare not be of their opinion, that would upon any pretences pull down the Pulpits, or strike them dumb to prevent mischiefs; and whilst God shall allow me liberty, and strength, and ability of performance, I shall always hold it my duty to be exercised in that work, and so much my duty, that I shall take no humane prohibitions to be my discharge, though Kings, or Parliaments, or both join together therein. And I wish there had been, and were still more of my mind in this, remembering that answer that the Apostles returned unto the inhibition of the Rulers of the Jews, that forbade them to speak at all, or teach in the name of jesus, which I am resolved shall ferve my turn against any of the like sort. Whether it be right in the sight of God, to hearken unto you more than unto God judge ye. Act. 4.19. And yet though I have made all this digression to satisfy my Reader of the uprightness of my judgement and desires in this particular, I am not afraid to profess, that if the case were so, that we must needs part with one of them, it were better and safer for a Church to want any other kind of instruction, than to be deprived of the use of Catechism, which containeth the Principles of all Christian Doctrine; for where this is well managed, there can nothing be wanting in matter of knowledge that is absolutely necessary to salvation; so that this alone, where no more is to be had, might serve the turn to steer us unto heaven; and besides he that hath the principles well settled, cannot but be made master thereby of many of the conclusions that flow from them. These Fountains will run and produce their streams: These seeds will grow and bring forth their flowers and their fruits: though they have no other manure than our own private meditations. But where principles are not settled, the conclusions that are taught without them are neither like to be sound apprehended, nor firmly embraced, where the fountains are not opened, whatsoever showers may fall, or whatsoever store of water may be cast in, it will hardly produce a constant current of divine knowledge, and Christian practice in the soul; where the Plant wants Root, it will have no lasting growth or fruit. Nay, I will venture, one step farther, and I am ready to wish, that we knew no more than Catechism, than the mere necessary Principles, so that all the Christian name were united in this, rather than for want of holding this Head, for want of sticking to this Foundation, there should be so many quarrels and contentions amongst us as there are, to the so great scandal and reproach of Christianity. Pardon me if I forget the bounds of my discourse, so fare as not to forbear when I have been in contemplation of these diseases, to add some hearty, though poor consultations about their remedies.  
Had I the art of mournful Rhetoric I might anatomize and dissect many more members of this sad body of our desolations in matter of Religion; Consider I beseech you, how the holy Sacraments those great Seals of the King of Kings are defaced, abused, and rejected from amongst us. How the Sacrament of Baptism is denied by some unto the Children of Christians, who like presumptuous Disciples take upon them without commission, to rebuke those that bring these little ones unto Christ in that ordinance; and that after the promulgation of that merciful (permittite) of Christ Jesus: Suffer little children to come unto me and forbidden them not, for to such belongeth the Kingdom of God.  
How the Sacrament of the Lords Supper is even utterly left off and cast away as a thing unnecessary or rather pernicious, in too too many places of this Land. The frequent use whereof, as it was an excellent Fountain of comfort to distressed souls that hunger and thirst after spiritual refresh in Christ Jesus, and a powerful exacter of self examination, than which there is scarce any thing more conducing to the restraining of the liberty of sin, or the keeping up and re-enforcing of decaying duties in us, so the neglect thereof (under what pretences soever of strictness it is brought in by those Pharisaical Spirits that have taken the Chair in times, who shut up the Kingdom of heaven against men, and neither go in themselves, nor suffer those that are entering to go in. Math. 23.13.) yet if the evil effects of it be but well observed, and rightly weighed, will be found (I doubt) to be one of the main Stratagems of Satan to widen the gate, and enlarge the way that leadeth to destruction and damnation, and to keep men from being disturbed or awaked from their sinful courses. I cannot forbear me thinks to put one question here, and wish all those that are concerned in it, to make a true and unfeigned answer to their own consciences, for they shall whether they will or no one day unto God, whether the abolition of this Sacrament under the pretence of strictness, be not joyfully made use of by too many to serve their turns, who are entered and engaged into those known sinful courses; those bloody, unjust, and seditious designs, which they know too well if persisted in, (and I fear they are too far gone to return) must needs make this holy Sacrament unto them, nothing but the Seal of their own damnation. But they will find the deeds between Satan and them authentical enough, without that Seal, and it will afford them no such advantage as they do perhaps dream of; for he that refuseth the Sacrament because he will be unworthy of it, is in little better condition, than he that receives it unworthily: At least I am sure, if the latter crucifies Christ, the former sells him, and makes him the price of his sinful courses, since he will rather reject Communion with Christ, than with his sins, and than I see not but both are guilty of the body and blood of Christ, unless whilst we condemn him that abuseth the Sacrament, we will absolve him that despiseth it, or give an acquittance unto one that giveth up Christ jesus, that the seditious murderer Barrab as may be delivered.  
Ponder this well, and how to the so great an abolition of the holy Communion is added (as another underminer of Religion) the casting out and excommunicating of Excommunication itself out of this Church, whereby it is come to pass that no way is left us to purge out the evil leaven from the Congregations of the Almighty; so that the Incestuous Corinthians, and the Sacrilegious achan's, the Rebellious Korahs', with their Dathans, and abiram's, and the rest of the Rabble of Adulterers, Murderers, Blasphemers, etc. do not only appear freely, but may take upon them without interruption, to rule powerfully in the Assemblies; and how can that body think you continue in life or health, that is neither allowed to receive things that are wholesome, nor to purge out things that are noxious and hurtful, the two great means of preservation, both in the body Natural and Ecclesiastical. All our Congregations are become sick of an Iliaca passio as it were, or a miserere mei, they purge not at all for the most part, or else at the wrong end, and in the wrong matter: But I pray God this and other miscarriages, make not Christ Excommunicate the whole Land.  
What shall I say? Or, where shall I end? Imagine what you will or can almost, to make a nation despicable, wretched, and unhappy in this kind we are now speaking of, and see whether you can miss of it here in distressed England.  
If an unworthy, unlearned, corrupted and depraved Ministry will do it. Would it not wound a Marble heart to see that glorious assertion which did heretofore so adorn and beautify the English Nation; (Irascatur mundus, saeviat daemon, stupor mundi clerus Anglicanus;) turned now into this, Rideat mundus illudat daemon, pudor mundi— I will not speak it! my Pen shall not be guilty of proclaiming so sad a story. Yet this I will say; Heretofore Learned, Grave, and Reverend Bishops, Champions of the Lord, that by their victorious Pens triumphed over the pride, and Sophistry of Babylon, and Conquered this Land of ours to the possession of Truth, Ministers, and Deacons, approved, ordained, furnished for the work, burning and shining lights, burning with zeal, shining with knowledge, burning to consume the dross and stubble of Error and Falsehood; to waste the holds and habitations of Satan; shining to illustrate and manifest the Truth: But now, Heu quantum mutatus ab illo? Boys, Novices, Shoemakers, Cobblers, Women, what not! without any calling, but their own Pride, and the people's Folly to admit them: without any furniture, but their own intolerable impudence to enable them; proh puder! proh dedecus! as if that awful, holy, and weighty Function (enough almost to crack the shoulders of Angels, which drove St Paul unto his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who is sufficient for these things, that made the holy Prophet cry out in the consideration of the greatness of the work: 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ah Lord God, behold I cannot speak for I am a child,) were fit for nothing but to lackey at the side of the mean employment of every mechanic, to be their sport and recreation from their more serious occupations. But whilst every sort is thus ready to make a claim unto the Ministerial abilities and privileges, that they may divide the spoil of the Ministerial supportance among themselves, how few are there that think themselves bound withal to the rules of Ministerial conversation and holiness? That they should be blameless, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, apt to teach, as well in regard of ability and furniture, as readiness of mind, in respect of skill, as well as of will to do it, no doubt: Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre, but patiented, not a brawler or fighter, not covetous? or how do we find that they do according to the Apostles rule, endeavour to approve themselves as the Ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watch, in fastings, by pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by the holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the Armour of righteousness, on the right hand and on the left, by honour & dishonour, as deceivers and yet true, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and yet living, as chastened and not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, etc. Blameless they are indeed in their own eyes perhaps, puffed up (as the Pharisee) with the windy conceit of their own holiness, canonising themselves for the only Saints, to make room for whom, poor Peter and Paul, james and john, yea, and Christ himself too must be put out of the Calendar of the Church, where they may succeed in time in red Letters, in bloody Characters written with the gore of those thousands of Christians, who have been made sacrifices for the consecration of their holiness. But whilst they style themselves Saints, I would they did not prove themselves— But the poor Publicans, whom they despise who stand afar off knocking their breasts, with a Lord be merciful unto me a sinner! might go home to their houses (if they would let them, and did not keep them from them as the purchase of their piety) justified in the sight of God rather than they. Indeed some of them may be called Saints, according to that Hebrew phrase, whereby jobs wife wished him to bless God, that is (as it is interpreted) to curse him: or as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be holy. Is used to signify the impurest kind of polluted carnalists, that make a trade of the vilest sins, or as Sacrum in the Latin is used sometimes for Sacrilegum, or impium, as in the Poet, as I remember,  

Ad quid non mortalia pectora cogit  
Auri sacra fames.   

What wickedness was ever hatched within the depth of hell,  
To which the holy love of Gold men's hearts doth not compel?   
That is the unholy love of riches and wealth, which is the root of all evil.  
Vigilant they are indeed, but to do wickedness, like those in the Proverbs, They sleep not except they have done mischief, and their sleep is taken away unless they cause some to fall; They are watchful as Satan is watchful, who goeth about like a roaring Lion seeking whom he may devour.  
If they be sober in regard of wine or strong drink, yet how many of them are drunk with pride, intoxicated with the opinion of their carnal security? or what is the cause there is such a vertiginous swimming in their brains, such reeling too and fro in their unconstancy of opinions and resolutions? How come they to think there is no Church but what turns round? or how few are there that are sober in their judgements, in their opinions? nay, may it not be truly said of many that are taken to be the wisest and the gravest amongst them, that they do but cum ratione insanire, are but more soberly mad than others; for what is it indeed, but mere madness, to think to set up the Throne of mercy in blood? to call cruelty piety? and to profess Christianity in oppression? to think to maintain a reputation of sanctity in themselves, by talking of Religion and Godliness, whilst they are at the same time in their hearts contriving, and acting in their outward performances, the great and horrid designs of seditious wickedness; joabs' in practice, as well as some of them in profession, dealing with Christ as he with Amasa; at the same time he gives him a fair salute with his tongue, Art thou in health my brother, and takes him by the beard with his right hand to kiss him with his lips, and with his left hand stabs him under the fifth rib, and shed out his bowels to the ground. 1 Sam. 20.9. And what did judas do before he hanged himself? And what is it else to give Christ good words, to have mouths full of Religion, and hearts full of intolerable and diabolical pride, envy, malice, covetousness, and ambition, yea, both hearts and hands full of Blood, Treason, Murder, and Oppression; but is it not pure madness, to think that God will thus be mocked; may they be as bold with him as they make with his Anointed? Or will he take it well that they shall jeer him with a bended knee (but indeed this is scarce allowed him) and a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That like those Soldiers in the 15. of Mark. verse 18. They should put a crown of thorns upon his head, and then salute him with a hail King of the jews. That they should at once or in the same breath smite him and spit upon him, by those persecutions and contempts, those scorns & reproaches, that they cast upon his poor members, and yet pretend to adore and worship him? Are we turned Lucian's, julian's, porphyries instead of Christians? is this sobriety? Let them remember what Saint Paul received from heaven, for all his strictness, (& yet he was in earnest,) when he was exercised in the business of cruelty against God's people, all his zeal and mistaken holiness, could not secure him from that terrible voice, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Burning lips and a wicked heart, are like a potsherd covered with silver dross; so saith the wiseman, Pro. 26.23. pious and devout discourses, are but drossy pigments or varnishes: Though we put never so many of them upon earthy and wicked minds, God will be cheated with no such ware; He hath a touchstone that will quickly discover it, Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, saith our Saviour, shall enter into the Kingdom of heaven, but he that doth the will of my father which is in heaven, and what is the will of God? Even our Sanctification, that our hearts and our actions should be religious as well as our tongues; And what is true Religion and undefiled before God? To throw down the Thrones of Princes, that they may without control devour and oppress their miserable Subjects? To lie and dissemble with God, the King, and a whole Nation, to bring to pass their wicked purposes, until they have got them, and then to cancel all their promises and protestations? To make wicked Covenants to join one another together in sedition, making the holy name of God the bond of their hellish and black conspiracies, and then when their Idoll-interest prompts them to it, to break them in pieces as Samson did his new Cords, and to become open confessors of Satan, (they may have the honour to be his Martyrs in time) by professing atheistical policy, & as if oaths were of no force but to be the servants of their designs, when they have done their work, and served their turns with them, to turn them out of doors and send them packing, saying that they are but old Almanacs. Is not Matchiavell think you that Christ which they so talk of, that was never known till they taught him to the people: jura perjura. etc.  
Let me make it out a little.  

Swear and forswear, that so thou mayest obtain thine own desires;  
That thou mayest reign, set all the world on fires.   
Or is not that religious speech of him in Lucan, a great part of their new Gospel which they brag of:  

Jus & fas multos faciunt ptolomaee nocentes.  
Dat paenas laudata fides cum sustinet (inquit)  
Quos fortuna premit, etc.   
But let them take heed how they play too much with God. His Magazine is not all spent, they have not disarmed him yet; He can when he pleaseth frown them all in a moment from the greatest height of their success and glory (whereof they do so boast) into the lowest depth of ruin and confusion: and let them not think with the wicked man in the Psalm, that because God holds his peace for a time, he is therefore even such a one as themselves. There will be a time when he will reprove them, and set all their sins in order before their faces.  
Or let the heathen Poet ask them one question:  

An quia non fibris ovium Ergennâque jubente  
Triste jaces lucis evitandumque Bidentall.  
Idcirco stolidam praebet tibi vellere barbam  
Jupiter?   
Take it briefly thus.  

Because thou art not thunder struck,  
Will Jove give thee his beard to pluck.   
Let not the forbearance of God, make them presume too much. Yea, let them remember that pure Religion and undefiled before God is this; to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world, jam. 1. v: 27. To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God, Micha 6.8. If they be sober let them teach and practise these things.  
And is their scornful and insolent carriage, that good behaviour that the Apostle requires? Or is it hospitality to turn men out of their own houses, in stead of receiving them into theirs, that they may imitate therein the piety that was heretofore showed unto Christ; The Son of man (saith he) hath not where to lay his head. Math. 8.20. Is this the hospitality that the Apostle requires? or are they apt to teach, in the Apostles sense, that are scarce capable to learn? Or if we hold it absurd in Popery to say ignorance is the mother of devotion, is it not almost as bad to hold ignorance to be the mother of Instruction? Or when the blind leads the blind, do we think the ditch will have nothing but water in it?  
Are they no strikers, that make it their practice to smite with their tongue, to curse the Ruler of the people, to speak evil of dignities? and have set up the trade of smiting with their hands too, which they have so deeply embrued in the Christian blood of their brethren, and are angry that men will not admire it for a beauty in them: That God that would not suffer David to build his Temple because he had had his hand in the shedding of blood, though it were the blood of God's enemies and Rebels, in just and lawful wars, will he (think we) approve of such bloody bvilders as these, to set up his Church, or to repair the decays of his spiritual habitation? Are they not given to filthy lucre, that to enrich themselves with other men's have have sold themselves to work wickedness, and have taken away the lives of the owners thereof?  
Will they say they are patiented, which will not only suffer nothing for God's sake, but are enemies even to the very Doctrine of the Cross? Teaching men to resist, and not to suffer, let our Saviour say what he will; in stead of practising patience themselves, exercising the patience of others by their persecutions; and whilst they forbidden men to suffer under the lawful Magistrate, they compel them to suffer under their unlawful Tyranny.  
They do indeed well approve themselves the Ministers of God: In afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments. For though they suffer them not themselves, yet they will be sure to act them upon others. In tumults indeed they are excellent, but it is in raising them against the lawful power of the Magistrate; which Saint Paul thought good to clear himself of, as being no good mark of a good teacher of the Gospel, Acts 24.12, 18. and likes it not well it seems in the people, since he was afraid to find it amongst the Corinthians as no mark of good Christians, 2 Cor. 12.20. I fear (saith he) when I come, that I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found of you such as ye would not; lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisper, swell, tumults. Bring them to the touch in these and the rest of those marks of Ministerial perfection which the Apostle sets down, and we shall easily perceive that fulfilled in them, that Tertullian takes notice of in some of the like spirit with them in his time, de monogam. c. 12. Quum extellimur & inflamur adversus Clerum, tunc unum omnes sumus, tunc omnes Sacerdotes, quia Sacerdotes nos Deo & Patri fecit. Quùm ad peraequationem disciplina Sacer dotatis provocamur, deponimus infulas, & impares sumus: When we are lifted up and swelled against the Clergy, (saith he, speaking in the person of some insolent spirits in his Age) Than we are all one, than we are all Priests, because he hath made us Priests unto God and the Father; but when we are stirred up to the height or perfection of Sacerdotal Discipline, than we lay down our Priestly Ornaments, and then we are of an inferior rank.  
Such were they of whom Saint. Cyprian not long after complained of in his time, as a pest of the Church: Hi sunt, saith he, qui se ultrò apud temerarios convenas, sine divinâ dispensatione praeficiunt, qui se prapositos sine ullâ ordinationis lege constituunt, qui nemine Episcopatum dante Episcopi sibi nomen assumunt. These (saith he) are they who take upon them of their own heads to set up themselves, ever their rash and unadvised Congregations: That make themselves Rulers and Leaders of the People without any legitimate Ordination, etc. And these the good Father saith, are Sedentes in pestilentiae Cathedrâ, pests & lues fidei, serpentis ore fallentes, & corrumpendae veritatis artifices, venena lethalia linguis pestiferis evomentes, quorum sermo ut cancer serpit, quorum tactus pectoribus & cordibus singulorum mortale virus infundit. They sit in the pestilential chair, they are the very plagues and murraines of the faith or Christian Profession, deceiving with their serpentine language: Artificers of corrupting the truth, vomiting out deadly poisons with their pestiferous tongues, whose word doth creep like a canker, whose touch doth infuse mortiferous venom into the breasts and hearts of all men.  
And now we see how the devil acts over and over his old tricks among us in these days.  
But sure the song of the 4 Beasts and the 24 Elders, Rev. 5. is not so to be understood, as if thereby all men indifferently were to be admitted to the public Office of Ministry in the Church, because it is said there without distinction, that Christ hath made us Kings and Priests unto God; but it is rather in regard of that access which all true Christians have obtained by Christ Jesus unto the mercy-seat, according to that of St Paul, Rom. 5. ver. 1, 2. Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. Or that of Ephes. 2.13. In Christ jesus ye ●ho sometimes were fare off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. And ver. 18. Through him we have an access by one spirit unto the Father. As it was the privilege of Priests heretofore in the Jewish service to draw nigh to God in the Temple: and also in regard of those spiritual Sacrifices which every true Christian may and doth offer up unto God in and by Christ; 1 Pet. 2.9. Heb. 13.15. Unto this Priesthood we are consecrated, not by the blood of our brethren, but by the blood of Christ: Rev. 1.5. & Heb. 13.12. Not that the Spirit of God intended at all hereby to confound the callings in the Church, or to give a general Commission to all men that have insolency enough to presume upon their own gifts, to take upon them the public office of instructing the people; for why than did the Apostle ask that question; 1 Cor. 12.29. Are all Prophets, are all Apostles, are all Teachers, etc. Or why doth the same Apostle give order unto Timothy and Titus solemnly to ordain with imposition of hands? 1 Tim. 5.21. and Tit. 1.5. Why doth he give them such severe rules and cautions for the managing of the power of Ordination? That they should admit none but such as were rightly qualified, 1 Tim. 5.22. Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partakers of other men's sins: and 1 Tim. 3.1, 2. etc. He sets down the Catalogue of those conditions which they were to look for both in Ministers and Deacons, and will have them be proved before they be suffered to exercise that calling; which were all in vain and to no purpose if (notwithstanding all those rules) it shall be still in the power of any to intrude themselves into the execution of those Sacred Functions; it is not to be denied indeed, but it is the duty of every Christian to make use of those occasions that God offereth to communicate that knowledge which they have unto others, in private occasional exhortations, consolations, and reproofs of sin; and it is not only lawful but requisite for Parents and Masters, to instruct their Children and Servants in the known and certain Principles of Christianity, and in the duties that belong unto them, according to those rules which are clearly set down by the Church of God and the Scripture. But it is a business of an higher nature to undertake the public administration of Doctrine in the Church, and of the interpretation of the Scriptures, unto which those inferior works of private instruction and admonition, are subordinate, and whereby they are to be guided. The people of God in the time of the Law, were to exercise the like duties to their Families and their Neighbours, etc. And yet the offices of the Priests and the Prophets were not thereby prohibited unto the common people, but were still preserved proper and entire unto them, otherwise the Spirit of God would not have said as he hath done in the 2. of Malachi v. 7. The Priest's lips should preserve knowledge, and they should seek the Law at his mouth. There is no scruple at all to be made but a Father or a Mother, a Master or a Friend, may apply some known or ordinary medicines unto the wounds, or diseases of their friends, or children, or dependants, or others; but yet if every man should take upon him the practice of Physic or Chirurgery, there would be more killed by Medicines, than by Diseases in all likelihood.  
If every Mariner or Passenger in a Ship should undertake the office of a Pilot, there would need no storms nor tempests to make Shipwrecks. The order and distinction of parts, members, and faculties, is not only the beauty, but the preservative of organical bodies, and substances. As we have many members in one body, (saith the Apostle, Rom. 12.4.) and all members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. But yet the unity of the body doth neither confound the variety, nor destroy the order of the several parts and functions, but the variety and order of the parts preserves both the unity and being of the whole. Having then gifts differing according to the grace given unto us, whether Prophecy let us prophecy, according to the proportion of faith, or Ministry let us wait on our Ministering, or he that teacheth on teaching, etc. So the same Apostle, 1 Cor. 12.14. The body is not one member but many; and ver. 17. If the whole body were an eye where were the hearing? if the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? and if they were all but one member, where were the body? but now are they many members yet but one body. It is the Apostles rule, and sure it is a just one, That they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel; 1 Cor. 9.14. And that he that is taught in the word should communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things, Gal. 6.6. That double honour should be given to the Elders that rule well, especially to those that perform their duties industriously, labouring in the Word and Doctrine, 1 Tim. 5.17. And what the Apostle means, he himself will tell you in the next verse; for the Scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the Ox that treadeth out the corn, and the labourer is worthy of his reward: If there be no distinction between Clergy and Laity, between Teachers & Learners, no bounds set about the Sacred Mount, but that every one that will, may break in to the exercise of the office of a public Teacher in the Church, how should these rules of the Apostle be observed? how should it be known who is to communicate, and who to receive the benefit of that Communication? Or at least, how shall the people be able to maintain all that will be ready to intrude into that business? Or, why hath God ordained such a supply in temporals for the Preachers of the Gospel from the labours and possessions of others? but that it was presumed, that the work of the Ministry was to be their proper occupation and function; unto which they were so fare to apply themselves, as to prohibit them the exercise of other trades and occupations ordinarily: for although the extraordinary gifts of St Paul, and of some others perhaps in the Apostolical times, did enable him or them to exercise both together, yet that is no warrant unto any that make no just claim unto that portion of gifts which God thought fit to bestow on them who were the first planters of the Gospel, to take upon them the like mixture of occupations. It is a good rule of the Schools I think, that Opera liberi spiritus non sunt trahenda in exemplum communis vitae; That the works of the free Spirit, that is, the extraordinary works of the Spirit, are not to be drawn into example of common life, not to be patterns for us to walk by. But what unreasonable creatures are we grown? What an incongruity and gross solecism is it to cry down the Ministry so loudly and so earnestly as they do in these days, from having to do with civil affairs, or secular matters, under pretence that they are not to be distracted from that great work of their spiritual employment? and upon that ground to render them mere slaves, depriving them of the liberty of assenting unto those Laws whereby themselves as well as others are to be Governed? and yet withal to admit of every Layman that will, to exercise the meanest and most toilsome mechanic occupations, and withal to take upon him the office of a Minister? To forbid the Clergy to meddle with Lay-matters, and at once to admit the Laity to meddle as they please with the work and function of the Clergy? yea to ravish that work out of their hands who are properly designed and furnished thereunto? That they may get up into their places, to vent their mad fancies, their raw and rude conceptions, their follies, their blasphemies, their seditious doctrines, and their vain dreams and imaginations to the people. If it be not likely, as it hath been pretended, that that Minister can answer the great expectation of the Ministerial work: that makes it his main business, his daily study, his ordinary exercise, that doth but admit of some few or rate interceptions from that work, to attend perhaps once in three years at a Parliament, or to perform the Office of a Justice of Peace once or twice perhaps in a month, or three, or four, or five times in a year: How is it likely, or even ordinarily possible, that he whose main employment is in Secular affairs, that follows a Trade all the week long, and makes the work and employment of a Minister, only as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, a breathing business, or matter upon the by: How is it possible I say without a miracle, that such a one should rightly perform that work? Let the World judge, whether there be not either great want of reason and logic, or else great want of honesty and sincerity in these carriages? Or whether it doth not favour more of design than of Religion: First, to urge the weightiness of the Ministerial work, to exclude the Ministry from any secular business, to deprive them of all Offices in the State, of their voices in Parliament, and other temporal advantages, that they may get them into their own hands? and then, when that is done, to admit of a mixture of that holy and weighty business, with the most dirty, bloody, or toilsome employments in the world, by prostituting it at the feet of every dusty Mechanic? that they may ravish both the work and the supportance of the Ministry out of their hands unto whom it belongeth: Stripping by this means the poor Churchmen, first of their personal advantages by exclusion, and then of their spiritual proprieties by intrusion. But I know what will be said, Oh they have gifts, and why should they not use them? If God hath given them Talents, must they be bound to wrap them up in a napkin, and bury them in the earth for fear of displeasing a black gown or a square cap? or entrenching upon that Monopoly of teaching and saving souls, which a sort of people called Parsons and Vicars, have thus long challenged unto themselves against the liberty of Christians? When God hath given us light, must we hid it under a bushel? Did not Eldad and Medad prophesy in the Camp, without the censure or reprehension of Moses, Num. 11.26. Do not we read of the house of Stephanus, that they addicted themselves unto the Ministry of the Saints? Or where do you find that Apollo's was ordained, or that Aquila and Priscilla received imposition of hands, were they not Tent-makers as well as Paul? It may be answered: For their gifts which they have, God forbidden that we should envy them, and perhaps there is no great temptation to it. But it is thought to be reasonable, That since the hearts of men are (as they teach us too clearly) very apt to overween of themselves: And since what ever their gifts be, the use of them is not their own but the Church's interest, wherein the public good, if well used: or evil, if ill employed, either above their strength, or against their duty, is very much concerned: They are not therefore fit to be their own Judges, whether their abilities be answerable to the work they undertake or no; but it is to be judged by those that are designed by God and his Church for that purpose (such as was Timothy and Titus, at Ephesus and Crete) that upon trial and approbation from them, and by solemn ordination, and imposition of hands, together with Prayer and Supplication to God for a blessing upon them and their gifts, they may be admitted to that work, which is indeed very requisite for the security of the Church and God's people, that they may not have wolves instead of Shepherds, to devour them instead of feeding them, that they may not have perverse insolence, and bold ignorance, but solid, sober, and modest knowledge to be their guides in the ways of righteousness and salvation; that they may not receive poison instead of nourishment, but that they may have the sincere milk of the Word administered unto them that they may grow thereby. A matter of so great consequence, as our own lamentable experience at this day may inform us abundantly, That although it were to be wished indeed, that the Church had the enjoyment of all her riches, and that nothing should lie idle that may be of use, yet it were much better that many good gifts should lie hid, then that under the colour of a liberty in making use of good gifts, the people of God should be bewitched, and poisoned with so many sophisticated impostures of Satan; have so many heresies and errors, and frenzies, and schismatical, and seditious Doctrines put upon them instead of the truth of God, to the producing of such a Chaos of confusion among us, and the enkindling of so many false, but raging fires of division and distraction in the Church of God. It is much better that the building of the Temple should go on somewhat the slower, then that the Adversaries of judah and Benjamin should be suffered under the pretence of promoting, to hinder and confound the work, Ezra 4.1, etc. Many hands many times makes light work in a worse sense than the Proverb is usually understood in; that is, they make slight work. If a Watchmaker should suffer every comer in or passer by to be tampering with his business, he might well give them all his gains for their wages. In short, do but stand still a little, and consider what excellent fruits this liberty of prophesying (as they call it) hath produced in this Church of ours, and if you can conclude it to be commodious or a blessing, go then and pull down your hedges, and hire the hogs to dress your Gardens and your Fields: set flames of fire to repair your houses: let the moth be your tailor to mend your : or use the like husbandry for yourselves that Samson did for the Philistines; Tie the Foxes together by the tails, and a firebrand betwixt them, and send them into your standing Corn to weed out the Thistles: no, no, we have learned by too sad a trial, that Satan hath his seed and his seedsmen, as well as Christ; and if all that will offer themselves may be admitted, think him not so dull a contriver of mischief, but that he is provided of his volunteers, who though they hate the Garments of Ministry, yet they will will put on the Garb perhaps of Angels, and will sow Tares instead of Wheat, even in the field of the Lord himself. I know none that desires to make any monopoly of the gifts of God, or of the business of salvation. I doubt not but there are of the lawful Ministry, that are so sensible of the greatness and difficulty of the work, that they could be content, if God would be pleased with it, to have any body take the burden thereof off their shoulders, and so that they might be rid of the great charge, willingly to part with the honour and supportance too of their callings, much more would they be ready to receive the aid of any that were fit, and willing to help them, and to join with Moses in that holy wish of his Num. 11.29. Would God that all the Lords people were Prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them. But whosoever they be that wish well to the Church, or to God's glory, must needs wish withal, that those gifts may be well weighed and allowed according to Gods will, and that they may be set free with a blessing, by the prayers of the Church, and a solemn ordination unto the holy Function, before they be let lose into the public. That they may be tried and approved not by themselves, for that old saying is too true, Omnes rerum nos trarum iniqui estimatores sumus; We are all of us unfit to be the prisers of our o●wne goods; Non videmus id manticae quod in terg● est; It is an hard matter for us to look round about ourselves: And withal, it is not amiss I hope to desire that no private gifts may be so much preferred, as to destroy that great gift and ornament of the whole body of the Church which gives lustre and beauty unto all the rest, which is the grave and matron-like Robe of Order in the use and dispensation of these gifts, which doth at once safeguard and commend them all, with which the Apostle concludes that excellent discourse of his concerning spiritual gifts, set down in the 12, 13, and 14. Chapters of the first to the Corinthians, as that which was to have the guidance, and the moderation of them all, and to have them in custody and Guardianship; after he had set forth the variety of gifts, and their uses in the Church, he sets this rule as it were to have the government of them all, Let all things be done decently and in order.  
As for Eldad and Medad, they were not ordinary men, they were of those 70 Elders that were chosen to assist Moses for the government of the people, unto whom God gave of the spirit that was upon Moses: for as we may see Num. 11.26. They were of them that were written, though they stayed behind in the Camp, and went not out unto the Tabernacle, and to these God was pleased to give the testimony of the spirit of Prophecy.  
Apollo's, and Aquila, and Priscilla lived in those times where in the Spirit of God as he gave extraordinary gifts, so he moved men to the exercise of them by extraordinary motions, as was requisite in those times of the planting of the Gospel; and wherein the Church of Christ was not yet settled, so that the ordinary course of admission unto the Ministry could not be every where had; and this may serve to answer to that in the 11. of the Acts, at the 19 concerning those that were disporsed upon the persecution of Stephen, and all others of the same nature, etc.  
Now that the oeconomy of those times is not to be a pattern to the Church of God now in a more settled condition, may appear since we see even in those times where the Church was settled, (as in Ephesus and Crete,) the Apostle gives rule● for an orderly admission: so that these are no warrants for these men, to refuse the ordinary way of vocation to the Ministry where it may be had, to intrude themselves without i● unless they will plead that unsettlement which themselves have wickedly wrought in this Church for the colour of the in presumption, which is but to excuse one mischief by another.  
If they shall say they are tried, approved, and admitted by the people; I answer, that trial is coram non judice, since it belongeth not unto the people either to judge in election, or to confer that Ministerial power by ordination.  
The first is against reason, for the election of Ministers must reasonably belong unto those that are able to judge of them: and as it is in Sciences, that that hath in it the rules whereby other Sciences are judged of, is held to be above the rest in wisdom and excellency, so in persons or callings: now whether that can be a fit man to guide the people that is inferior unto the multitude in wisdom and knowledge, let any man judge; so that the very election by the multitude doth upon the matter infer him to be unfit, and so that choice doth as it were destroy itself, and as the Musician rebuked his Scholar (as I remember the Story) because the people applauded him, telling him that he knew it could not be right or good Music that they approved; and as a man may judge that to be crooked that agrees with a crooked rule, so of the two we might rather conclude that man to be unfit that the people chooseth than to be fit: and so more consonant to reason that he should even therefore be rejected than admitted, for in that he is chosen by the people, it is to be presumed that they are fit to judge of him, and if they are competent judges of him, it will reasonably be inserred that he is inferior to them in wisdom and excellency, but this is not to be imagined, and therefore the conclusion holds fairly; per argumentum ab absurdo, that the people ought not to have the choice of the Minister.  
Again, it is against two main ends of Trial and Election, which are first that the Minister may be such as may not deceive the people, Therefore there must be some wiser than the people to try him, or else they may be deceived by him in the capacity of Triers, as well as in capacity of Disciples or Learners, otherwise this would suppose upon the matter all Election unnecessary in regard of this end for if they are presumed to be able to judge of his Doctrine, there is no danger that they should be deceived by it; nay, for aught I know, it will infer no necessity at all of a Minister, or of his teaching them, for if they be wise enough to examine him in point of Doctrine, or to try him in it, it is to be presumed that they have as much or more light than he, for that light must be greater that will discover the failings or imperfections of another light: unless we will have darkness to judge of light.  
The second main end is, that he may be such as will not corrupt them by his life and conversation, that will not lead them on by ill example in Faction, Sedition, or in any wicked course. Now this is not likely well to be provided for by committing the Election to the people; for how soever the timpany of opinionate holiness is become so general a disease in these times: yet if we take not masks for faces, if we understand holiness aright, or make a true survey of the people, it will be found a conclusion too operative even in these times; That the greatest part of the people are not of the best inclinations; and than if that be a true principle, that own appetit simile, Every thing delights in that which is like itself. The major part of the people which is evil, are not in any great probability to choose a pious Minister. In short, the question than will be, as I have it from an Elegant Lamenter of this Churches miseries in far better times, when these evils which we suffer, seem to have been but in their cradle, Quonam pacto de eruditione imperiti, vel de sapientiâ stulti, and let me add, vel de probitate impii recte judicabunt? Querim. Eccles. How shall rude and illiterate men judge of erudition? or fools of wisdom, or wicked men of honesty and righteousness? Have we not cause to fear with him least in a popular Election the holier sort may be overcome of the greater number, and that they may choose such Ministers, as in their wills, their inclinations, their lives and manners are most conformable unto themselves?  
If reason will not prevail, let the Scripture be searched, and see if upon due examination, it can be found that ever a mere popular Election was erected by any Divine warrant to be the gate for the Ministry to make entrance by into their Functions; I deny not there are pretences of Scripture for the purpose, but shadows are many times much longer than their substances, & if they have any substance at all in them, that note which is taken from those that have showed themselves none of the best friends unto the true and genuine orders of the Church, may well serve to abate the force of them in this argument; Quae pro populari Electione à nonnullis afferri solent, ea nascentium rerum primordiis fuisse accommodata, sed nostrae aetati minùs aptè convenire; That those things that are produced in behalf of popular Election by some, were proper unto those rudiments and beginnings of the church, but do not agree with the age wherein ●e live: not only in regard of the necessity which might then give countenance thereunto: but also because the whole multitude of Disciples, and Christians, as they were much more pure and sincere, and more eminent in piety, which secured them proportionably from miscarriage in the choice, so they were endued for a great part, if not all, as it appears with extraordinary gifts, whereby they were enabled to judge of the Abilities and orthodoxness of those which were proposed to their choice.  
And yet even in those times there is sufficient to be found to show us that those acts that were done, or seem to be done in that way, were not intended for ruled cases to the Church, in that it is evident in the practice of the same Apostolical times, that men were sent to exercise the Ministry amongst the people, and accordingly undertook and performed it, without any the least reference to their consent or approbation. See Acts 13.4, 5. and Acts 9.20. with divers other places.  
And indeed had it not been so how should the work of God's building have gone on? How should the Vine of the Gospel have spread itself so gloriously as it did over the face of the earth, sending out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the River, and covering the hills with the shadow of it, as the Psalmist speaketh in the 80. Psalm. Should the Preachers of the Gospel have stayed and expected that they who were not converted to the faith, and yet enemies to the Gospel, should have chosen Ministers to preach it amongst them? Or how can it be expected now in these days, that the people who are deeply infected with corrupt opinions, and schismatical affections, should Elect Orthodox & sound Teachers, in such times as these are? wherein that sad prediction of St Paul (2 Tim. 4.3.) is fulfilled That the time should come when men would not endure sound Doctrine, how then is it likely that 〈◊〉 should make choice of 〈…〉 minister's, or not rath●●●●●●●hat they should (as they do) after their own lusts heap unto themselves Teachers having itching ears, turning away from the Truth and being turned unto Fables? Nay, if the case were so, in such an age as this, wherein Religion seems to be looked upon and used by too many but as a mere cheat and imposture of humane policy, and wherein there are so many that had rather save their Tithes than their souls: Both Ministry and Preaching would perhaps ere long be totally discarded and cast off, as things unnecessary and burdensome, when men have once fully served their turns with the shows of Piety and Religion 〈◊〉 all would be swallowed 〈…〉 that Religion that the Storck speaks of in the Character that he gives too truly of the common devotion, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where men's profit is, there is their Religion. If any here shall urge the practice of ancient times after the Apostles wherein the Bishops were sometimes chosen by the people: I answer first, that it was not constantly so. Secondly, that the practice doth not so much convince the legality of that course as the evils that it produced doth demonstrate the inconveniency; for as one saith,  eligeret, excitavit tumult us; Commisit varias caedes, & infinitis prapè malis turbavit Christianam remp: as Tumult was the leader on to those elections, so they were the occasions of divers murders, and of disturbing the Christian Commonwealth, with almost infinite mischiefs. Thirdly, A facto ad jus non valet argumentum; it doth not follow that it was just because they did it, for examples are to be examined and corrected by rules; and as the same Author of whom I last spoke hath well determined, Non quid aliquando factum fuit, sed quid perpetuò ficri debet perquirendum est; We ought not so much to inquire what hath sometimes been done, as what ought in all times to be done. But alas nothing is well done now unless the frantic people have the conduct and manage of it; Omnes nempè imperatores in hac mundisenect â natura gignit, nullos milites; (as he also goes on) Nature is grown so strong in this old age of the world, that she brings forth all Emperors, no Soldiers in these days. But as Lycurgus once answered a certain man that would needs persuade him to leave the Government of Sparta to the people. Go thou (saith he) first and leave the manage of thy house to them, and if that course shall please thee well, then come and make it thy request that the multitude may have the rule and regiment of all things. So say I unto those that would have the matters of the Church (or of the State) in these days left unto the people; let them first go and resign up the rule of their private Families and estates unto them, and indeed perhaps they had almost as good do it before hand, for it is most likely to follow after with speed: for where there are so many Masters of all things, no man is like long to be Master of any thing; ex pede herculem, we may make a pretty guess at it, by what the motions towards such a Government have already given us a taste of.  
But were it so that the right of Election were in the people, yet if the right of Ordination be not in them likewise, there will be a maim and failing in that Commission which is pretended for an universal Ministry; and will any say that this is needless? or this also belongeth unto the people. Indeed they have gotten great promotions of late since the old plea of Korah and his company that was once buried alive with the Authors, hath gotten above ground again among us in these days, and men of any rank dare tell both Moses and Aaron, both King and Minister, that they take too much upon them, seeing all the Congregation are holy every one of them, and the Lord is among them, wherefore then lift you up yourselves above the Congregation of the Lord? Both Royal and Ministerial power (for it seems it is their fate to suffer together) are made a scatter among the people. It was shrewdly spoken by Tertullian, in his Book, the praescriptione adversus Hereticos. c. 41. Nusquam faciliùs proficitur quam in castris rebellium, ubi ipsum esse illic promereri est. There is no readier way to preferment then to be in the Rebels Tents, where the very presence of men is meritorious. How easy is it to get up from hence, both into the Pulpit, and into the Throne.  
Alphonsus a Castro (I confess) ascribes it unto Luther, as if it were his Doctrine, (how justly I have neither opportunity nor lust now to examine) That all Christians are Priests, and that they are consecrated to this Office in their Baptism, and that they have all equal power without distinction either of Sex or Condition: but yet so, that it is not lawful for any to exercise this power, Nisi per consensum communitatis; But by the consent of the Community; Quia quod est omnium communiter, nullussingulariter potest usurpare, nisi vocetur; because no man cansingly usurp that power which belongeth unto all in common, unless he be called: as if the power of Ministry or Priesthood were derived first to the Community, and then from the Community to him that doth exercise the Ministry or Priesthood. A fancy that may well contend for the prize in point of wisdom and commodiousness to God's people, with that which our State-Levellers have taken upon them to vent: that will have the multitude to be the originary King as it were, put them both together and make them a Melchisedech, a King and a Priest, and then they will be well contented and live in peace, if we can but persuade them to admit of one condition, that there may be but one head, and one heart amongst them all, and that all the rest may be cut off and ripped out, otherwise we may conjecture without the help of an Ephemerideses, or consulting with the Stars, what excellent Grapes are like to grow upon such Thorns: In the mean time I cannot but wonder (me thinks) that either of these Pleas for civil or Church power should be so Authentical with some in these days, and yet that Korah and his followers had such ill luck as to speed no better than they did in their suit for the like, especially for the latter: since they had not only the same privileges of nature with these, but seem to have altogether as seemly a title from the Scripture, had they but had the skill of our modern interpretation, for what these men find for their purpose in our days, from Saint Peter, and Saint john, That God hath made us Kings and Priests: or a Royal Priesthood, etc. The like they might have urged for aught I know for themselves, Exod. 19.6. where God promiseth the people upon their obedience, that they should be a kingdom of Priests unto him. And yet however it came to pass, the calling of Aaron and his Sons and their Successors, and of their Brethren the Levites, was their enclosure, without the Election or Consecration of the multitude. It might suffice to discover the folly of these pretenders, to tell them what exception one hath made against the force of that argument which they would draw from the named places: Si nihil est Sacerdotis officium quia omnes vocaniur Sacerdotes, oportebit eadem ratione te fateri ut Christus nihil sit supra quemquam corum de quibus dictum est, nolite tangere Christos meos. If the office of a Priest or Minister shall be nothing, because all are called Priests: by the same reason thou wilt be compelled to confess (which God forbidden) that Christ is nothing above any of those of whom it is said in the 105. Psalm. Touch not my Christ's, for so the Original will well bear, and so both the Septuagint and the Vulgar translate it; but if what hath been said already will not suffice to wean them from so fond a mistake of those places before mentioned of the Revelation and St Peter, let them take their choice of wiser Commentaries upon those Texts, and be persuaded either to embrace that of Beda, that the faithful or people of God are called Priests, because they are united unto Christ, who is the great and eternal Priest; or that of St Augustine not much unlike it, remembered by Fevardentius, in his notes upon Irenaeus, Sicut omnes Christianos dicimus propter misticum chrisma, sic omnes Sacer dotes quentam sunt membra unius Sacerdotis; As we call all Christians because of the mystical anointing, so all are called Priests, because they are the members of that one Priest, which is, Christ jesus. Indeed that Priesthood of God's people is no more but their Christianity: and I pray God make all to be Priests in that sense, that is to say, good and humble, and faithful Christians: and upon that conditition I should wish them Kings too, that they may moderate and keep under their unruly affections, with the Sceptre of our Royalty, which is the grace of God's Spirit, and the power of his Word, not excluding but actuating sound reason therein as an useful and commodious Minister; They would be the better Subjects for being such Kings.  
But we have before our eyes too numerous a brood of mischiefs from that womb, to wish that it should teem any more, either to justify the multitude in taking upon them the holy Functions in the Church themselves, or to allow them to have power to ordain others thereunto.  
Can St Paul have found in his heart to have given it unto them, we should not have been against the claim that they make unto it: But then he needed not to have left Titus at Crete for that purpose, or let them tell me if they can better than St Paul: How, and from whom Timothy received his ordination, it was not sure from the people, but from Paul and the Presbytery; from Paul the Prelate (for so we may well call him) and I would to God we could leave snarling at harmless names) assisted or attended (envy not the honour of this term unto the Apostle) with a company of Presbyters or Ministers of the Church; in which we have (me thinks) a clear and excellent pattern, of the Primitive and genuine course of Ordination, which God of his mercy restore amongst us in this Church and Nation. See the first of Timothy 4. ver. 14. Neglect not the gift which was given thee by Prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery, And 2 Tim. 1.6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. I put thee in remembrance to stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the pitying on of my hands. Compare the places together, and see how sweetly they are argued to make up our differences had we moderate spirits: and did we not seek ourselves more than Christ jesw, to make good our own humours, actions, and interests, (yea, I would to God I might not say) our Covetousness, our Pride, and other things as bad or worse perhaps than these, more than to procure peace in the Church: there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in both, the gift, and in both there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. Imposition or laying on of hands: St Paul and his Assistant-Ministers, both joining in Ordination, and Ministerial Collation of that gift, (if any shall strain the word Presbytery to make it a foundation for their skewed Synedrion, consisting of Lay and Clergy Elders together, ipsi viderint, let them be sure they can justify it, for my part I confess I cannot.) But then (me thinks) there is some difference remarkable: in the first place it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and in the latter it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, With the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery, But by the laying on of my hands; whereby, if I be not mistaken in the Criticisms of that Language, the Apostle may seem to intimate by the variety of the phrase, the inequality of concurrence between himself and the Presbytery in the act of Ordination, which was conferred by him as a more principal agent, or at least as an instrumental one in an higher degree, as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or (by) being a causal may import, but with the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery, as his Assistants and subordinate concurrents therein; which may help to clear us in the discovery of the right and exact manner of the performance of this work, and of the true Apostolical Government in the Church; which is then most exactly framed, and most authentically managed, when it is administered by one of supereminent power, as succeeding the Apostle therein in his part, and with the Assistance of other Ministers as subordinate helpers unto him therein: which, as it hath this and divers other arguments to convince it to be the true and Primitive Form of Government; so the admission thereof amongst us, If private Interests interpose not, might satisfy all reasonable parties amongst us, and be a great means to recollect the scattered Members of this poor distracted Church unto one another, again in unity and order, and to solder up those sad breaches and divisions of our Ministry: which have been much fomented and increased whilst the Competitors for Government and their adherents, (I mean the Episcopal party, and the Presbyterian) have been so fare affected with their several extremes, and each to the setting up of themselves, in a kind of solitariness of power, (I speak of some, not of them all) that nothing can serve their turns but the exclusion of one another: whereas if they could be content as they ought to live and dwell together with their several due portions in the administration of Church-matters, the Lord might be much glorified in a happy and sweet compliance, and each might yield comfort and encouragement to one another: for want whereof, their mutual quarrels and contentions, whereby they have thrown dirt upon one another, have had no better effect for aught appears, then to render both sides, even the whole Ministry contemptible to the people, and given occasion to a third party of utter enemies to all kind of order to lift themselves up and trample upon them both; let me not be thought presumptuous if I offer this earnestly unto the timely consideration of all our Fathers and Brethren in this Kingdom, lest the continuance of their divisions prove the ruin of them both, and of this poor Church betwixt them; and beseech them in the bowels of Christ Jesus, that they would ponder it seriously whether there have not been a great cause in this very thing of those judgements which God hath sent upon us; whilst the overmuch imperiousness of some, and the too much disorderliness, and ungovernablenesse in others, have entrenched (it may be feared) so fare upon that Christian temper which should be found especially amongst the Ministry, as to render their quarrels too liable unto such a Character as was once given upon the contention of two great men in this Kingdom: to this purpose (as near as my frail memory doth serve me) Gaufridus & Hugo, magno cum scandalo inter se concertarunt, hic ut praesset, ille ne subesset, neuter ut prodesset.  

Geoffrey and Hugh  
Are fallen in two:  
'Bout what think you?  
He strives to reign,  
This subjection disdains;  
Neither cares for the Church's gain.   
An happy condescension in this particular would not only be a means to set the things of the Church in the rightest and safest way, but also to revive the dying flames of Christian love and charity, which should have their vigour in the Ministry above all other men: and withal, to stop the mouths, and and take away the occasions of the haters of all order that seek occasions, and to keep up Christianity amongst us, which is too visibly stealing away from us at those gaps and breaches which our contentions have made; and above all others, those which are most ours, and indeed the great fountain of others: The contentions of the Ministry.  
However it be, we see clearly enough that the power of Ordination is not at all placed in the people by the determination of the Apostle. If there be any part theirs in this holy business, it is that they may be present at these public performances as witnesses, not as judges, and that they may have liberty to speak freely and with such modesty and reverence as befits them, if they know any just and certain cause, why such as are to be admitted into these sacred offices, should not be invested thereunto. But nothing will serve the turn in these days of ours, unless all order be cast out of the Church to make room for that excellent piece of confusion which men are now pleased to call a Reformation. A Reformation that hath put too much colour of truth upon that Sarcasme which I once heard fall from a foul mouth against the Protestant Churches; Eglise reformee, est deformee, The reformed Church is the deformed Church. I am sure they that have gone about to make such a jumble of holy things and profane together, and to take away the distinction of the Ministry and People in this Nation, have done so much to justify it, as I can scarce tell what one thing the Adversaries could have asked of them, or hired them to have done more for the asserting of their Calumnies against the Church of England: Of whom we may too justly complain, as Tertullian doth of the Heretic in his time; Simplicitatem volunt esse prostrationem disciplina, cujus penes nos curam lenocinium vocant, pacem quoque, possim cum omnibus miscent, nihil interest illis licet diversa tractantibus dum ad unius veritatis expugnationem conspirant; With these men the overthrow of Discipline is reckoned for simplicity, and to take any care thereof, is accounted wantonness; whatever difference of opinions there is amongst them (as there is very much) yet they can agree well enough with any, so that they may conspire together against the truth: They are all swollen with pride and self conceit, and (like unskilful Empirics or Mountebanks in Religion) they all promise much knowledge in their Bills, whilst for the most part there is nothing but ignorance in their Boxes. Indeed that that followeth hath too much order in it for them; Ordinationes corumtemeraria, leves, inconstantes, nunc neophytos collocant, nunc saeculo obstrictos, nunc Apostatas nostros, ut gloriâ eos obligent quia veritate nonpossunt: Their Ordinations (saith he) are temerarious, light and inconstant, sometimes they place Novices in the Ministry, sometimes secular men, sometimes those that are Apostatas from us, that they may oblige them with glory and preferment unto them, whom they cannot with the truth. Should we not spend all our breath in sights, and all our moisture in tears to think on it? that our Age should be found of such transcendent perverseness and irregularity, that the very disorders of former times would be a kind of  Discipline to us? This is a great evil, a womb big with a multitude of mischiefs: A nest of Serpents: A very fountain of poison: A great gate of corruption and distraction: A Pandora's Box full of Pestilences and infections: A blazing Comet that threatens destruction to all truth and righteousness: And I beseech God it prove not the very passing-Bell of Christianity in this Nation, and the forerunner of Tureisme and heathenism, to make way for their entrance into the inheritance of the Lord. And now we need not think it strange (though we must not forget it as another deplorable degree of our present miseries) that they whose piety it is to rob the Church of the Ministry, make no scruple at all of Robbing her and the Ministry both of their revenues and supportance. Indeed there might seem to be a kind of justice in it, that when such unskilful fumblers have undertaken the work, and ravished it out of those hands whom God and the Church hath filled therewith (as the Hebrew phrase of consecration to the holy Function may imply; for in that Tongue, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to fill their hand, signifies to consecrate the Priests; or holy Officers in the Church, and may well intimate, that they that are best furnished and most authentically and orderly admitted unto that work have their hands full of that great business, and therefore should not have their hands left empty of supplies and encouragements.) But since they have put that work into such hands as they have, they may seem to observe a kind of justice in their wickedness, in leaving them no better wages than they are like to earn; but the compliance of impieties is no harmony in the ears of God, or of good men. The uniformity of iniquities is but beautiful ugliness; neither can the issue be legitimate, however equal or consenting the contract be between those actions or designs that are of any kindred in that blood; therefore we cannot but look upon it as another horrid declination of this Church from the happy state and condition that it hath been formerly in; that those revenues which were heretofore dedicated and consecrated to the maintenance of Divine Service, should be now accounted the wages of Rebellion, and, as if God himself were a malignant, that his peculium, the portion of his house and worship should not only be Sequestered, but wholly alienated from him, as if it were the lawful prize of those whose usurped power & greatness knows no limits either in heaven or earth. But it is too too clear an evidence that they have fought against God, that make his Sacred Portion the spoil of their victory: for conquerors (if I mistake not) do not usually make a prey of their friends but of their enemies, and then the plundering of God's house is no good mark of an holy War, nor the confirmation thereof by Law, any good Symptom of an holy state. But they will say perhaps, that these Lands and emoluments though they wear the title of God's Interest, yet they were dedicated to superstitious purposes; The blind and foolish zeal of our Ancestors had so eaten up their brains that they had not wit enough to keep their own; these things were gotten from them by evil Arts, and false pretences, upon erroneous and heretical considerations of no truth nor value: such as are those two great cheats and impostures of the Church of Rome, Purgatory, and Merit, and as they were gotten per malas arts, by evil arts, so they were dedicated to evil and superstitious uses; as to the maintenance of that Romish Dagon of the Mass, Prayer for the dead, worshipping of Saints, adoration of Images, for the supportance of a false Priesthood and Sacrifice set up in opposition to, and derogation of the Priesthood and Sacrifice of Christ, for the adornation of the Temples of Idols, and for the holding up of many superstitious orders and distinctions of idle Monks and Friars, etc. And the fruits and effects thereof have been not much better, even none other but the Pride, Luxury, Sloth, Tyranny, Covetousness, and many other mischiefs in the Ministry: the devouring of Families, and impoverishing of the Civil State, with the reducing of Judaisme amongst us in Tithes and Offerings, which were indeed things proper and peculiar (as they boldly affirm) unto the Jewish Oeconomy and administration of the old Testament, as was also the difference between things Sacred and Profane; which to bring in or continue in the time of the Gospel were to deny the coming of Christ, and to make void the fruit thereof unto the people, to countenance the Jew in his expecting yet another Messiah, and to raise up the Spirit of Bondage again, in putting that intolerable Yoke of ceremonies laid upon the necks of Christ's Disciples, which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear. These, and such as these are the pleas, and colours, that must paint over this Strumpet of Sacrilege, and turn the Robbery of God into a pious Reformation: yea, we must be persuaded hereby that Sacrilege was but a Jewish sin, and that there is no such thing at all in the Christian Church, or if there be any thing alive now under that name, it is not a vice but an eminent virtue. Oh the pernicious & bewitching Sophistry of Covetousness! Sad and dangerous is the condition, hard and hazardous the warfare of those truths which are to fight against the Militia of Mammon in this age: when once the hearts of men have set up that great IDOL-GAINE into the place of God, and put profit for Godliness, what verity is so awful but will pass away in their Market? What sin so deformed but shall find a veil in their Wardrobe, under which it shall be counted as a piece of innocency, nay, as a point of wisdom and piety? What iron wickedness so hard or unconcoctable but the fiery stomaches of these O striches will digest it and put it over? But if there be no such sin as Sacrilege in the time of the Gospel, why doth Saint Paul ask that impertinent question, Rom. 2.9. Thou that abhorrest Idols, dost thou commit Sacrilege? Why doth the Apostle wrong this virtue so much, as to yoke it together with Idolatry? as if they were sins of the like nature, to rob God of that which is devoted and due unto his worship and honour, and to give that which is God's due unto another? Or why did God himself provide so ready an Executioner to execute that dreadful sentence of Saint Peter upon those two Sacrilegists, Ananias and Saphira, by cutting them both off by a strange, sudden and exemplary death, Act. 5.5. etc. For but keeping bacl some part of the price of that Land which they sold, and pretended to offer up at the Apostles feet? Or how I beseech you comes it to pass, that Christ is become such an Alien amongst us, as not to be allowed capable of a donation, or inheritance? Or how is it that he hath forfeited his Interest? Were the Jews think you true witnesses against him; That he was a perverter of the Nation, a teacher of Sedition, forbidding men to pay Tribute unto Caesar, that he was a Traitor in making himself a King? Or if they were, surely these are such virtues now, that they might rather according to the Doctrine and practice of this Age, give him a title too more, rather than forfeit any of his peculiars? Or have men a freedom and liberty to bestow their Lands and their Goods at their pleasure upon the devil in Luxury, and Pride, and Lust, and Cruelty, and in the support of that hellish train of costly sins which are the glory of our times? And is it only unlawful, or a void act, for men to give any thing to the Service of God? It is our honour, and Gods great goodness that he is pleased to stand in need of us, not in himself, he cannot; for as we receive all from him, so in that respect we may say unto him in some sort as he unto the Emperor: Nec tua fortuna (pardon the word) desiderat remunerandi vicem, nec nostra suggerit restituendi potestatem: The state of all-sufficiency in him, doth neither require any remuneration, nor the state of indigency and poverty in us, suggest unto us any power of restitution; but we must still cry out in all our offerings to God in the voice of holy David, 1 Chron. 29.11, etc. All that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine: who are we that we should be able to offer, etc. For all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee. But yet it is the honour he is pleased to do unto us, his poor Creatures, to send unto us by his Servants in the state of his Exaltation, as he did once by his Apostles in the state of his humiliation, with a dominus opus habet, The Lord hath need of us; he is pleased to stand in need of us in his Members, in his Ministers, in his House, and in his Service, which as he hath ordained for us, so he looks they should be maintained by us. If then God hath need of us, and is capable to receive from us, and we not at all forbidden, but most highly obliged to give unto him, shall not those Vows be as Sacred in the time of the Gospel, whereby such gifts are conferred and solemnly dedicated unto the Worship and Service of God, as ever they were in the time of the Law? Is it not as reasonable that our Ministry should have a supportance as their Priesthood? Is it not Gods own Ordinance, that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel now, as well as heretofore that they that served at the Altar should live by the Altar? Or must the Ox only be muzzled that treadeth out this Corn? Or is not faith to be kept with God now (think we) as well as then? It hath been heretofore held injustice to violate a Promise, especially an Oath made unto man, though to our own hindrance, or to temerate a deed of gift or Testament whereby Interests are conveyed from one earthly Creature unto another, and shall we think it any thing less than an high impiety to violate those Vows, those donations, those dedications and consecrations whereby things are devovoted unto the Service and Worship of the Almighty, to the supportance of his Ministry, and the keeping up of the work of his honour among us? Stop thy mouth for ever then thou covetous bag-bearer; thou judas-traitor-temple-theefe, and cry no more, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, To what purpose is this waste? When thou seest this ointment powned upon the head or feet of thy Master Christ jesus; upon his head in the maintanance of Piety, or upon his feet in the works of Charity; Say not it might have been sold for much, and given to thine own Pride or Luxury, or to the maintenance of the sedition or cruelty of others; do not buy nor fallen in the Market of Sacrilege, lest when thou sellest Gods right, his peculiar right, his devoted right upon earth, thou sellest withal that right which thou hopest for in God & heaven: and lest whilst thou buyest the Sacred Portion of the Lord, thou have a Curse, a propagating spreading Leprous Curse made over by God Tibi & Tuis, To thee and thine, to have and to hold for term of life in this world, and hell and damnation into the bargain in the world to come. Be not like unto the foolish Eagle in the Apologue, that took the flesh from the Altar to feed her young with, lest the inseparable Coal of the Divine Indignation, set both thy nest and thy young on fire, and thou perish together with them in the flame. Be not so foolish as to imagine, that all things that were ordained in the Church of the Jews were abolished by the coming of Christ; some things were of order, some things for unity, some things there were for helps unto men's affections, as Music; some things for the excitement of their memories, as the writing of the Law in such manner as might make it obvious unto them; some things for the necessary and comfortable supportance of God's Worship, the Officers and Instruments thereof; other things were properly ceremonial, and of a typical use; some were of a mixed nature; be not carried away with prejudices against the truth; take not the hire of Satan in the proposal of advantages, (as too many have done) to betray thy judgement and thy conscience unto thy filthy and insatiable avarice; Be not thine own judas, that thou mayest fill the Bag of that thief corruption within thee, that would cheat thee to the dear purchase of Thine own ruin: but take these rules rather to satisfy all doubts, and to answer the pleas of Satan for this evil. First, Things properly ceremonial, that were mere types and figures of Christ, are abolished by the coming of him who is the Substance: and what was the effect of this abolition? Even the same, and none other than that which is the effect of the abolition of every Law; to leave the things enjoined or forbidden in the very same state and condition that they were in before the Law, and should have continued in if the Law had never been made. The ceremonial Law made many things indifferent before, to become either necessary or unlawful, it made them that had before no such use at all in them, to become types and figures of Christ, and of things to come. What does then the Abolition of this Law do? Why clearly, it removes all that that the Law added or put upon them, that is to say, the necessity of things enjoined, the unlawfulness of things forbidden, the legal or typical use of both, and leaves the things themselves in the same natural freedom that they were in before. This is the voice of reason, and reason will receive it, & would thereby end some quarrels if it might be heard, and discover the mistake of those that think that the abolition of the ceremonial Law, made the matter of the Ceremonies unlawful. It left them indifferent if they were so before, but makes it unlawful to use them as types, or as things of necessity. Brevity is obscure, and that I must now labour for, but understanding and peaceable men may make good use of this. I intent by God's grace to say something more fully hereof hereafter.  
Secondly, Things of order, of helps of affections, of memories, and the like, as the general reasons remain so they may be useful, the use of such things is not forbidden for such purposes, they were only shadows that the coming of the Substance chased away.  
Thirdly, Ordinances of supportance, as they have the same reason still, so they are no way abolished by the abolition of the Law of Ceremonies, but may be continued without any offence, for the like purposes in the time of the Gospel, for which they were instituted in the time of the Law, viz. for the supportance and furniture, and ornament of the Worship of God, and the instruments thereof: yea, it is not only lawful but necessary that the same (or as liberal a proportion as that, and that certain) should be allowed for the maintenance of gospel-worship, as was allowed for the Ministry of the Law; for if the ministration of the Gospel be more glorious, it is against all reason that it should be allowed less honour, or a less comfortable supportance. It is the Apostles argument, 1 Cor. 9.13, 14. Do ye nos know (saith he) that they which minister about holy things, live of the things of the Temple, etc. Even so hath the Lord ordained, that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel: for if it be a good rule, that sicut se habent simplicia ad simplicia, sic se habent comparata ad comparata; As things in their simple and absolute consideration hear themselves to one another, so the like proportion holdeth in their comparisons with one another. Then I know not how it can be reasonably denied, but if it will follow from the allowance that was ordained for the Ministry of the Law, that there ought to be an allowance for the Ministry of the Gospel, because this as well as that is the worship of God, & the means of Salvation unto the people, which cannot be performed without the pains & labour of the Officers thereof, etc. It will follow, that because the ministration of the Gospel is a more holy, and more excellent kind of Worship of God, and more excellently conducing to the Salvation of the people, and requires at least as much diligence and labour in the Ministers thereof, it ought therefore to have at least as large; nay a more large and a more comfortable supportance. And it is not, nor can be so comfortable, unless it be certain, and settled; for no man can deny, but there is more comfort in an assured and settled allowance, than in that which is only at pleasure, or else why should any man give more for a lease for life or years, than for a tenancy at will? And therefore though in the time of the first rudiments of the Gospel, the Church could not upon the sudden attain unto such a settlement, partly for want of the Christian Magistrate, and partly by reason of the afflictive condition of the Church, which in those times required and produced a kind of community amongst those that were throughly established in Christianity, who brought all as it seems to the Apostles feet, and partly for fear of offending those that were not yet established, lest they should be frighted by worldly respects from the embracement of the Gospel. Yet where the Gospel is settled and established by the authority of the Magistrate, it is most requisite that there should be as a liberal, so a certain and settled allowance unto the Ministry, not only for their encouragement in the manage of that great charge that they have upon them, but also to free them from manifold temptations and snares, that tie in the dependence upon the voluntary and uncertain supplies of the people.  
For first, in such a case of uncertainty, the Minister cannot likely but be much confounded in the disposing and proportioning of his expenses and provisions, his Revenues being still upon uncertainties, and not only alterable, but quite extinguishable upon every dislike of the people. The consequences whereof are like to be not only disturbance of mind and distraction; but also a great impediment unto the exercise of his Hospitality and Charity, since he can scarce possibly tell how to regulate it: For he that knoweth not what he hath, cannot know what he can spare. If any shall here reply, that the Minister is to depend upon God's Providence, I answer; that is the duty of every Christian as well as the Minister; and yet it is not held at all unlawful for the workman to agree before hand for his wages. Nor do those that press this, either hold it or practice it as a Duty, to leave it to the wills of their tenants, and so to the providence of God moving them, what Rents they shall receive from their lands for their supportance. The Ministry of the Jews was equally bound to depend upon God's providence with the Ministry of the Gospel, and had as clear promises for temporal things as we; and yet the Lord was pleased to provide against temptation, by allowing them a certain proportion. But than secondly, Thereby the Minister is too dangerously exposed unto the desire to please men, and to preach placentia, to play that tune that they are pleased to dance, left he be turned away without his reward.  
Thirdly, it is a means to discourage the Minister in the reproof of sin, when he knows that he may not only lose the People's favour, but their supply too; when by such a course the people are made as it were his Judges, and enabled to censure and mulct him whensoever he doth not humour them.  
Fourthly, it is likely to occasion many temptations to discontent and partialities of affection, between the Ministers and people, as they shall increase, or decrease, afford or take away their Contributions.  
Fiftly, experience teacheth us, that this hath been too fruitful a nursery of Schisms, and Factions, and Divisions in the Church. As we may see too clearly in the Divisions of these times, which are sufficiently known to be set a foot, much more by those, if not altogether by those, who have had their dependency upon the voluntary supplies of the people, than by others of the Ministry.  
Sixtly, this would be too much encouragement for wicked men to go on in open and scandalous iniquities, when they know that they have the command of such a key unto the Minister's mouth, etc.  
I confess we nor they should not yield unto any of these, nor unto any other temptations: But in the regulating and ordering of the public matters of a Church, it is a point of Christian wisdom, to provide as much as may be against sin, by settling all things in the safest way, against temptations, and humane weaknesses on all sides. And this is done herein by a settled and competent allowance to the Ministry. And though I confess there may be some doubt made, whether that very precise proportion of the tenth part be absolutely necessary in simple and primary consideration, now under the time of the Gospel, as under the time of the Law: Yet first, I know no Arguments that they have against it to prove the contrary. The best that they can do. I concern, is but to infuse some doubt and ambiguity into the matter, and then in a Question of Title between God and us, it is much safer for us to yield than to stand to the hazard of a trial with God at the last day, when we should have nothing left to make restitution with, but our souls, and the forfeiture may be out eternal damnation. All the overplus that is paid unto God, God will assuredly restore, if we do it with a Christian heart: But if we hold back any thing that is his due, it may be purchased to us at too dare a rate, both in judgements here, as is often seen, and the eminent and notable stories collected by Sir Henry Spelman, and his son Master Clement Spelman, and others, of God's revenge against Sacrilege may inform us; and if we take not heed in greater judgements hereafter.  
And then secondly, it may be some presumption for any to undertake to find out a wiser way than God himself found out, as was this way of tithing unto the Ministry, whereby God provided excellently both for the Ministry, and the People.  
1. For the Ministry, that they should be free from that enslaving dependence upon the people; and yet still learn to live upon the Providence of the Almighty, according whereunto their revenue and supportance was measured forth unto them every year: and that thereby the Minister might be continually put in mind of his duty and charge over the people, from whose hands he received his supportance.  
2. For the people, who were thereby first secured, that their allowance unto the Minister, besides their voluntary offerings, should be no more than such as should bear a competent proportion to their come in, since in this course the allowance of the Ministers or Priests increased, and decreased, according to the increase and decrease of their Estate and come in.  
And withal, the people were hereby continually urged to remember the fountain of their temporal blessings, by their paying of Tithes and first fruits unto the service of God: And withal, it might put them in mind of the holy use whereby they ought to sanctify all the rest unto God, which they did as it were consecrate to him in the tithes and first fruits; for these may seem to have been God's earnest, whereby we acknowledge all the rest to be his due; and in the payment whereof we do upon the matter devote and consecrate all the rest unto God to be used in his service and to his glory, though not in his peculiar solemn worship. A meditation worthy of our serious consideration: And if I be not much mistaken, this is the true thought & affection wherewith Christians are, as well as Jews were, to pay their tithes and offerings. It is no Judaisme, but our duty still to consecrate and dedicate all we have unto God. To vow this and perform it, is a very acceptable service. The paying of thithes I conceive is still an engagement to use our whole Estates to God's honour: and we are to do it as the payment of our homage unto God, therein acknowledging his supreme Lordship and Dominion, and giving pledge of our duty in the due employment of all: as also of our thankfulness unto God for that which we have. If men would pay their tithes in this manner, they should have no cause to repent it, neither here nor hereafter; The benefit thereof would be much more theirs in their engagement of themselves thereby unto their spiritual and Christian duties, than the Ministers in the supply of his temporal necessities.  
But thirdly, in the greatest doubt that can be made hereof, it is to be considered how exceeding dangerous it is to trust the deceitful pleas of our hearts in a matter of Meum and Tuum, between God and us.  
And fourthly, it is very considerable that Tithes were not proper to the aaronical Priesthood, which was the Ceremonial Priesthood that was abrogated, but also to the Melchise dechian Priesthood, which is the order of Christ's priesthood, & therefore seem in great probability, if not demonstratively, to stand still due unto Christ; and so to be due still unto him. And how can they be paid more properly unto him, than in the supportance of his service? and in that it continued in both these Priesthoods, it appears me thinks thereby that it was no part of the Ceremonial Law, but a thing common both to the ministration of the Law, and the Gospel, which were severally presented in those two Priesthoods, as I may so speak: For the Law was changed in the change of the Priesthood, as the Epistle to the Hebrews teacheth. This Ordinance of Tithes therefore continuing, as well as the Ordinance or office of blessing in both those so different Priesthoods, it appears thereby to be none of that changeable Law that is done away. I desire the Reader to excuse my engagement to brevity, so far as to save me some labour here, by casting a diligent eye upon the 7th to the Hebr. from the 1. Verse to the 18. as also Gen. 14.18, 19, 20. Verses. Let these things be seriously considered, and if they be of weight, let them prevail to end this quarrel; and let not covetousness and envy be heard any more against reason and Scripture: nor the comparing of men's own ends be set up for Religion; nor Mammon for the true God. If there be any paralogism, or any unsoundness in these arguments, I refuse not to have them searched by any man's pen that shall please. When their failing is discovered unto me, I shall be willing to relinquish them, and not hang this conclusion any longer upon them.  
But than fifthly, I desire it may be considered, that this way of tyranny holds excellent correspondence with that Command of the Apostle, Gal. 6.6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let him that is Catechised, (I seldom hear that word, but I think of the ruins of our Church through the neglect hereof: And I can hardly pass by it without renewing my complaint) or taught in the word, communicate unto him that teacheth or Catechiseth in all good things. Which cannot be exactly and orderly done (and let the bvilders of Babel say what they will, all things are the better for order) unless by that or some such like way.  
And then sixthly, the rule will hold à minori as before, that the proportion ought not to be less, but rather greater than that of the legal Ministry: So that either tithes or more will be due: and why first fruits should be forgotten I know not.  
And lastly, however the matter be, at the worst that is imaginable, The Abrogation of the Law had left tithing indifferent as it had been so before the Ceremonial Law was given, by the rule afore set down and declared; and if it be of an indifferent nature, and ordinable unto the promotion of God's glory, it may be the subject & matter of a Vow, and of a Law both Ecclesiastical and Civil; and then in case where they are devoted, and that by the will of the dead, the most sacred and inviolable bond, and the most authentical and irrevocable act of humane power in its kind, and established by Law, both Ecclesiastical and Civil. They are to be paid with great fidelity, and that out of Conscience. And though the Law might be abrogated, and that it had not, as perhaps it hath in cases of this kind, the nature of a public Vow, yet as long as the private Vow of the giver, and the Will of the dead is irrevocable, there had need to be much greater reason than is pretended for the violation. But I must away.  
As for those evasions, (for they are no better, and covetousness, will strain hard, but it will find one trick or other to cheat the Conscience withal) whereby the Reformers of these times, as too many heretofore, would feign justify the alienation of tithes and other things consecrated to God and the Church. viZ. That the grants thereof were procured by erroneous persuasions; and upon false grounds, as was the opinion of merit, of satisfaction for sin, of obtaining deliverance out of Purgatory, and the like; and that they were given to evil ends, as to the supportance of Idolatry and Superstition, instead of true Religion, and the sincere worship of God, although they have been answered, and answered over and over by fare more learned and able pens, and sufficiently to the satisfaction of any that have not enslaved their judgements and reason to the partial opinions and admirations of men's persons, or to their own corrupt affections and worldly intents, whereby they have made good that saying of the wise man, Proverbs 27.22. Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a Mortar, among Wheat with a Pestle, yet will not hts foolishness departed from him. And that of Petraach, algidum in cinerem nequicquam flabis, He that blows into the cold ashes, shall do no good thereby, but make them fly about his ears. Or what Gregory Nazianzen said long ago of those that are bewitched with the love of riches:  

— 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉,  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉,   

— If thou persuade  
They are more ready strait thee to invade  
With injuries, than to receive from thee  
Those medecines that might cure their malady.   
Yet notwithstanding give me leave manipelloes meos horreo Domini immittere, to bring in my little gleaning handfuls into the Lord's Barn in this point.  
And first to reply to the former of these evasions; That though it be too probable that many things were given in this kind in the times of the blindness of Popery, upon such erroneous grounds and persuasions, as are before set down, (and it is our great shame that their errors should be more fruitful than our truths) yet it will be an hard matter perhaps for them to prove which of them were so procured, or given; or to assure themselves that there were not joined with those superstitious apprehensions, some mixtures of better thoughts, that might be sufficient to make good the interest of God and his Church therein. Secondly, that long prescription doth make good those acquisitions that are founded in error and mistake; for though it be a rule in the Civil Law, that quod initio vitiosum est non potest tractu temporis convalescere; yet this rule hath this exception, viz. Nisi haec duo simul concurrunt. sc. Vitii cessatio & novissimus actus. Thirdly, that it may be very dangerous in these days to admit of such a principle, that those grants are invalid that are obtained upon false pretences and persuasions: For this would entrench shrewdly upon the validity of the Act some years since obtained from his Majesty, for the continuation of this present Parliament, which was granted upon other pretences and persuasions than do any whit agree with those actions wherein it hath been since employed. Fourthly, give me leave to propose this Dilemma unto all men's consciences, that are any way concerned in this point. Either those errors that are supposed to be the inducements of those donations, made them void or no; if it did not make them void, they stand good unto the Church; if it did make them void, then without doubt it ought to return unto the heirs of the Donours, who ought not to suffer for the fraud of others, or their Father's folly or superstition. What then hath any body else to do either to take them away, or to buy or sell them?  
Fifthly, false persuasions or grounds, where the party granting is faulty in the admission of them, do not seem to make void concessions; especially when they are confirmed with sacred Bonds: Or if so, how came it to pass, that the league of Israel with the Gibeonites, who deceived them with their old shoes, and their old bottles, and their mouldy bread, and with a plain down right lie, Iosh. 9.4.9. etc. was yet so firm and lasting, that the breach thereof was so severely punished by God so many hundred years after: as you may see 2 Sam. 21.1, 2, 3 Verses, etc.  
To the second evasion I answer, That a superstitious use or intention, or employment, doth not make void the Vow, or the consecration of a thing dedicated, much less render it uncapable of being employed in the true worship and service of the Almighty. God himself pronounced the Censers of Korah and his company to be hallowed, though they were consecrated in a superstitious and unwarrantable way, and used in a false worship, Numb. 16.38. and therefore though they must not be used in that particular way in which they were dedicated, yet the Lord gives order to have them made into broad Plates for the Altar; and that is indeed the right cure of things dedicated to superstitious uses, not to alienate them from the Church, & so turn them from the the service of superstition to be the instruments of pride, and lust, and luxury, and rebellion; but to vindicate them unto those employments that are truly religious. See the Story of Gedeon offering Sacrifices unto God, with the wood of the Grove, judg. 6.26. And that by the command of God, and of the bringing bacl the Vessels of the Temple to jerusalem, Ezr. 1.11. & 5.14, 15. & 6.5. & 7.19. & Neh. 13.9. So we see these evasions are no justifications; But without doubt the gain is the godliness; there lies the sweetness of Reformation with these men. Demetrius and the Craftsmen may cry up Dia●●; but the gain, and the profit that came in by the silver shrines, that was the Diana that they worshipped. Had it not been for that, they would perhaps have cared alike for Diana and for Christ. And men in these days may talk of Reformation, (and I would to God we could see them once set about a true one;) but it is too apparent what the English of their Reformation is, even the plundering and the robbing of the Church Revenues, and the enriching themselves with the spoil of the Ministry, and the House of God, and the intruding of themselves into the possessions of other men. It is an ill sign when these Cooks of Reformation grease themselves and lick their fingers so much in the dressing of it, it is like to be but a slovenly piece of Cookery. Had the Church been poor enough, perhaps it had ne'er been meddled with by these men; and therefore we see this hath been the great business: The Bishop's Lands have been sold, and the Malignants, as they are pleased to style them, have been sequestered: And in order to that and some other good purposes, they have been pulled down. But for any matter of Reformation in any thing else, what great matters have been done? What is the glorious issue of these seven year's labour?  
As for those evil fruits that are so much cried out of, as Pride, Ambition, Idleness, Luxury, Worldliness in Churchmen, etc. I deny not but there have been ill uses made of God's blessings as well by us of the Clergy as by others; and we most willingly acknowledge God's justice in making use of the injustice and oppressions of men to scourge us for our miscarriages, and to deprive us of those mercies and encouragements which we have used no better. But first, this is not the fault of the revenues, but of those that abused them; and then again this might have been remedied by a better course; by wholesome Laws for the reformation of such abuses. Thirdly, as Riches have their temptations, so hath poverty too. We do not find it is always the mother of piety. The old saying is too often true, that Necessitas cogit ad turpia; Need sets men upon uncomely and unjustifiable actions. Fourthly, there are temptations also in the riches of the Laity; and if all matters be rightly examined, it will be found that their Honours and revenues have yielded no better fruits in them, than those which are charged upon the Clergy; let the world judge. But will you hear something out of a Church-complainant, in Queen Elizabeth's Days, taxing the like fault in some Reformers of that time: Pamphagum quendam Helluonem spurcissimum, cum ad convivia invitatus esset, in delicatiores cibos sordes conjecisse ferunt;  solus quibus vellet vesceretur: & certè quâ olim aviditate, gurges ille atque helluo ad cibos accersit: eadem reformatores nostri ad devorandas Ecclesiae opes accersisse mihi videntur; cclesia enim opes arripiunt, cum condemnant, omnium malorum semina & alimenta esse dicunt, & in privates quaestus, nequissimè transferunt. It is said of one Pamphagus or Eate-all a most filthy Glutton, that when he was invited to a Feast, he went and cast some filth or dirt into the most delicate dishes, that he might enjoy them wholly to himself: Just so (saith he) do our Reformers seem to us to have addressed themselves to the devouring of the riches of the Church. They cast dirt upon the Church's Revenues, and condemn them as the fountains and causes of much mischief; but it is that they may gain them to themselves. And truly that is but an unmannerly trick, to spit in the Pottage to deprive others of it, and then to eat it all themselves. But give me leave to propound unto them some few interrogatories out of the same Author: Si divitiis virtutem enervari statuant: quid divitiis circumfluere tam vehementèr contendunt? Si opum abundantiâ Ecclesiae puritatem concidisse existiment, quid tanti mali causam non sibi quoque perniciosam futurum putant? Si affluentior rerum copia sine scelere possideri non possit: quid illis, sceleratius qui cupiditati violentiam & avaritiae rapinas adjungunt. If riches be so hurtful, why do they keep such ado to become rich? and if wealth cannot be possessed without unrighteousness, what is more unrighteous than they, that have undone a King, a Church, and almost two whole Kingdoms, to enrich themselves? or are they so armed against the temptations of Mammon, that none of his Witchcrafts can hurt them? or if they may be so happy; why may not others as well as they? And if some of the Ministry have abused their riches, are there not others to be found that have done much good with them? But have you never heard of some Clergy-Reformers, that heretofore cried down Pluralities whilst they could not get them themselves? (for my part I confess I approve them not, and yet not upon those terms, it is well known unto some I think.) But when there was by this happy Reformation a scatter of Benefices made amongst them, by the persecution of the Orthodox and Loyal Ministry; how easily was their old Doctrine forgotten? and what scrambling there was amongst them for Pluralities? How were they ready to choke themselves with Greediness? swallowing down three or four Live at one time. But, to the pure all things are pure. I confess it; and yet there is a vast difference between Purity and Hypocrisy. Sure these things are of no good report. The God of heaven grant the spirit of sincerity amongst us. In the mean time let them and those others that are like them remember, that as he speaks, vitiosos reprehendere, sed probare vitia, condemnare nocentes sed Crimina absolvere: to reprehend other men as vicious, and approve the same vices in themselves; to condemn them as nocent, and to forgive themselves for the same crimes, is no good sign of an upright Conscience. And then they that rob the Church out of zeal to sanctity, put a velvet Mask upon a foul and an ugly strumpet, and go about to arm the devil against himself.  
Indeed Sacrilege is one great bane wherewith Satan hath used to poison Reformations, and Rebellion another. Hear how Master Calvin chid some heretofore for this miscarriage in their work. First, in an Epistle to Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, he notes this as a blemish of the English Reformation; Certè nunquam integra florebit Religio, donec Ecclesiis melius prospectum fuerit, ut idoneos habeant pastors, & qui docendi munus serio obeant; Id quo minus fiat, occultis quidem artibus obsistit Satan: Vnum tamen apertum obstaculum esse intelligo, quod praedae expositi sint Ecclesiae reditus: malum sane intollerabile. Certainly, (saith he) Religion will never flourish entirely, till there be better care taken for the Churches that they may have competent Pastors, that may seriously and diligently exercise the function of Teaching; This indeed Satan strives to hinder by secret stratagems. But there is one manifest impediment, as I understand, That the Revenues of the Church are exposed to the spoil: which is intruth an unsufferable evil. And again, in an Epistle to Viretus: Acriter aurem illis velli cavi de administratione bonorum Ecclesiasticorum, in tempore cogitandumillis esse qualiter Deo & hominibus rationem reddituri forent. Papam fuisse furem, & Sacrilegum. Videndum, ne simus successores. I urged them sharply, about the administration of church-good; That they ought to think upon it in time how they should be able to render an account to God and men. I told them that the Pope had been a thief and a Church Robber: and we were to look to it, that we do not prove his successors.  
And agreeable to these speeces of Master Calvin, is that complaint of Zuickius in a Letter of his to Caivin. Huc ventum videtur quod non sine gemitu dixerim.  magna nostrorum pars credat sese tum demum verè regnum Antichristi evasisse, si cum bonis Ecclesiaeludant pro libito. Nec ulli disciplinae subsint. O egregium Christianismum!  
It is come to this pass (saith he) (which I may speak not without lamentation) That a great part of our people think they have then at length truly escaped the Kingdom of Antichrist, if the Church goods be exposed to be the game of all men at pleasure; and that they be subject to no discipline. O egregious Christianity! Just such a Reformation is this of our days.  
I am even wearied with this sad contemplation, and almost confounded with that flood & heap of Mischiefs and Corruptions, that wild Forest and Desert of thorns and briers that have overspread the face of this poor Church of ours. I am gotten into the midst of them, but can scarce tell how to get out: my medirations are even out of breath, & I am entangled in this brake of our Calamities, neither can I see to the end of them. Wheresoever I look, I see too much matter for lamentation. When I look upon the houses of God, and see them demolished and neglected; When I go into them, and behold how they are profaned and abused; When I consider the waste that is made in the peaceable and orderly assemblies of the people, which are devoured and consumed by Factions and Sectious Conventicles: When I look upon the unreverent and unseemly behaviour of those that remain, to the dishonour of God, and the scandal of Religion: When I observe how the Crutches are taken from the lame, and the guides from the blind, by the merciless abolition of the set and advised Forms of Prayer out of the Church, against so many Warrants of God's Word, allowing them, and prescribing them, so many necessities of the people requiring them, so many undeniable reasons convincing the conveniency and usefulness of them, so many clear advantages of the Church thereby commending them, & setting forth the benefit of them, against so ancient, so constant practice of the Church, both Primitive and Reformed establishing and ratifying them; and such a multitude of evil consequences upon their removal, which our daily sad experience informs us of, and urgeth unto us for the restitution of them. The Tautologies, the Blasphemies, the corrupt, unsound, and unorthodox expressions; the confused, unmethodicall, and undigested, half coddled, scandalous, and temerarious vociferations and frantic ragings, rather than prayers and devotions, that the people of God are continually in danger of thereby. Together with that which is so much the more to be deplored, by how much the less it is deplored and considered of, The turning out of the daily public prayer every where for the most part out of the Church, settled by Gods own Institution and Commandment anciently in the Church of the jews, and commended unto us in the Church Christian, by the authentical precedent and example of the Apostles and Apostolical men, In the second of the Acts and 16 Verse, of whom it is said there, That they continued daily with one accord in the Temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people: and by the excellent fruit thereof, set down there also in the last words of that Chapter: And the Lord added daily unto the Church such as should be saved. When we consider these things, and how the Currents of God's mercies are grown low and dry unto us, since we left drawing with these Buckets, of our daily prayers and supplications, in the Wells of Salvation. How God hath forsaken us, and cast us off, since we have forsaken and cast off him and his service.  
And when we add unto these thoughts, how the ancient and profitable Discipline of Christian fasting and humiliation is abominated and rejected: and in stead thereof jezebels bloody and cruel Fasts, for the destruction of poor Naboth, and the surprisal of his Vineyard, substituted in their rooms; not to the reconciling, but to the further provoking of the Almighty, as we may too easily perceive by the wretched returns thereof that we continually receive: whereby the Lord seems to answer us, as he did the children of Israel, in the 58th of Isaiah; Wherefore have we fasted say they & thou seest not; wherefore have we afflicted our souls, and thou takest no knowledge? Would you know the reason? hear than what God saith at the fifth Verse; Behold ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness, etc. Whilst we fasted in earnest, and fasted in unity, and fasted in obedience, and fasted in Charity, how wonderfully hath the Lord heretofore answered us in this City of London, and in other places of this Kingdom? how hath God yielded himself to be bound by us as it were hand and foot, to be disarmed by us of his Weapons of Destruction, to be overcome by us unto mercy and compassion? How speedily, how hastily, how wonderfully, have the Plagues and the Pestilences fled from the faces of our sincere and Christian humiliations and devotions? And how have we thereby as it were upon a sudden ravished the sword out of the hand of the destroying Angel, or caused him to put it up into the sheath? But now since we have set up our factious Fasts, and our smiting Fasts, instead of true Christian Fasts, How empty have we returned? What continual repulses have we received? How hath the Throne of Graee been shut up from our prayers? How have our miseries and desolations been confirmed, and sealed, and multiplied upon us? though we have repeated them so often, though they have been performed with such outward strictness and solemnity, though we have roared like Bears, and mourned sore, like Doves; yet we look for judgement, but there is none, for salvation, but it is fare from us. judgement is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off, for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea truth faileth, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey. Though we bellow and low like Ox's; yet still the Yoke of our Transgressions is bound by the hand of the Almighty. Our wounds still wranckle, and fester, and there is no healing for us. When we think upon these things, are not our Bowels turned within us? What storms and tempests of sighs and tears should be raised hereby from our hearts, were we not overwhelmed more in our carnal security, than in so great a depth of affliction & misery? How justly may we be ready to cry out with the Psalmist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, Ps. 42.7. Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy Water-spouts, Thy waves and thy billows are gone over us?  
How are we beggared and broken by these losses? How is the trade of our heavenly Merchandise, and of our spiritual Traffic decayed and intercepted? How are we shipwrecked and split in pieces like the Ship wherein St. Paul was, in the 27th of the Acts, at the fortieth Verse, by the encounter of the two Seas that have met together against us, the Seas of the divine indignation, and of our own divisions and confusions. How is our tottered Vessel run a ground? The forepart, that part of the Church which is right and orthodox, sticketh fast, as it were, and remaineth unmoveable, being restrained from the free exercise of that truth and worship which they profess, (and yet God be blessed that they yet stick fast too unto their principles, and hold so well together, in so great a storm.) But the hinder part, you know what I mean, that is broken with the violence of the waves, into innumerable pieces, into a thousand fancies, and foolish imaginations, into a multitude of strange and monstrous Factions, and Sects, and Heresies, and Blasphemous opinions, and Diabolical Enthusiasms, and the Soldier's Counsel is to kill the Prisoners, (it may be feared) lest any of them should swim out and escape. Where shall we find a Centurion that is willing to save a Paul? Some indeed (and too many) cast themselves forth into the Sea, forsaking the Communion of this poor distressed Church: Some into the Sea of Rome, by falling away unto the Idolatry and superstition of popery, so much the more to be blamed, for deserting the Truth in its affliction; a clear discovery, that they were never sincere and hearty friends unto it; otherwise sure they would not have left it in its distress, when it stood most in need of their comfort and relief. I pray God make them ashamed of their base and dishonourable Apostasy. And others have cast themselves out on the other side, into another Sea, a red Sea full of inconstant waves and raging surges, and dreadful Monsters, amongst whom the Leviathan taketh his pastime. But too few of these, I fear will ever get unto the Land. Yet some may perhaps on the Board's of repentance, which is called tabula post naufragium, (which God grant them) and on the broken pieces of the Ship.  
And to add more yet unto all this misery, in all these storms, The Pilot, under Christ and his Spirit, of the ancient government is cast out; and every unskilful Mariner, and capricious lay-Elder, children of a Geneva sedition, viros è sanguine natos, and therefore sit instruments for that business they have to do, to seed and nourish the womb from whence they sprung; These, on the one side, and on the other side some that are worse than these, whom I scarce know what to call, are striving for the stern, whilst the Vessel goes to ruin; and to all the rest of those strange symptoms of the frenzy and frantic madness of the people of this Land. This is added, That they are so foolish as to be persuaded, That the Government established by the Apostle of Christ himself, and warranted by the analogy that it heareth unto that which was established by God himself in the Church of the jews, the wisdom and equity of the order whereof doth still prescribe unto us, though that that was typical, and proper unto the Jewish Nation, and the legal Ministry is vanished; That this government (I say) is antichristian, as if there had never been any true Discipline in the Church of God until calvin's time, Of which we may truly say, aetatem non habet, It is not yet at age to answer for itself, much less to be a fit Guardian for God's people. But this is the sad fruit of the miscarriages and corruptions of those, (I mean of some of those) to whom that high trust of Government in the Church of God was committed, who were more puffed up with the state & dignity, than they were affected with the charge and duty of their places, which they left too freely unto the mismannage of their inferior Officers, who looking after gain more than godliness shall I say? Nay looking after gain in despite of godliness, in opposition to godliness, sowed those tares whilst they slept, who should have looked over them, which have since borne confusion and destruction to this Church and Nation. I wish with all my heart I could have been silent in this, for God knows I delight not in the trade of Cham: But my design is Humiliation, and therein I must not be partial; and therefore give me leave to say as one of the honestest of the Adversaries of the Truth that ever I met with to my knowledge hath said before me in another cáse: Si vero haec culpain Ecclesiae quoque speculatores derivatur, ipsi viderint, ut Christi judici olim suum officium excusent, in talibus. nos in antiqua Ecclesiae nostrae seu prima saecula respicimus, & illa ipsa contra insurgentes haeretistas defendimus; tolerantes interim cum dolore incommoda praesentia,  pote quae mutare non opis nostrae sit: and I hope I may say something more truly than he did; pugna pro veritate Ecclesiae primae nullius novae sectae odio, multò minus ut pseudo-catholicis obsequar, qurbus ut non scribo ita precor ut cum sectis resipiont, illae nimirum ab haeretismo hae ab abusu. I desire to contend for the truth of the Primitive Church, without any rancour against any side, much less with any compliance with those that are Pseudo-Catholiques. Unto whom as I writ not (saith he) and yet I confess I do, to them and all, and as I writ unto them, so I pray that they may repent together with the Sectaries and Seditious; as these from their Heresies, Blasphemies, and ungodly designs; so they from their a buses and miscarriages. In the mean time for those that are as he also speaketh, acti suo quodam spiritu ita antecclesiastico ut nihil Ecclesiasticum illis placeat, sed sordeant omnia quae Schismatica, & transfug is aut horibus nuper inventa non sunt. That are hurried on by their own Anteeclesiasticall spirit (And sure an Antecclesiasticall Spirit is an Antichristian Spirit, for Christ and the Church are one, 1 Cor. 12.12.) so that they can away with nothing that is Ecclesiastical, but account all things sordid and vile that are not schismatical, and invented by those that are forsakers of the Church. For these I say, I humbly desire of God, that he would either open their eyes, and convert their hearts, or else put a palsy into their hands, that they may not enforce others to subscribe unto their follies and wickedness.  
And thus you have seen a sad prospect of some of the calamitous changes that have befallen this poor destitute and forsaken Church, which are as so many crooked lines, yet meeting in this centre, if we may call that a Centre wherein there is no rest, even in the general decay of true Piety and Religion, which is degenerated into a strange and horrid Chaos of Divisions and Distractions, of Quarrels & Contentions, whereby the sincerity of faith is corrupted, the flames of Christian love and charity cooled, the operations of a godly and Christian life abolished and neglected; Conscience dethroned and deposed, and carnal interest got up into its room, which hath arraigned and condemned not only the actions, but the very rules of virtue and holiness, and in stead of the true spiritual and heavenly wisdom, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy: That is intruded under the name thereof, which is the B●ood of envy and strife, and the womb of confusion and every evil work, which the Apostle tells us is Earthly, Sensual, Devilish; and in stead of that which was heretofore the glory of the ancient Christians, which made the very Heathens fall into admiration of them with an Ecce quàm se invicem diligunt? quam pro se invicem mori parati sunt? Behold how they love one another, how they are ready to die one for another, They might now more justly fall into an astonishment at the inhumanity and Barbarism that is amongst us, against one another, with an Ece quàm se invicem oderint quàm se invicem inter ficere parati sunt? Behold how they hate one another? how they are ready to kill and to destroy one another? Thus the fruitless and rotten Vine is become the most sordid and useless of all trees. And according to the saying, that Corruptio optimi pessima, The corruption and degeneration of Christianity hath proved worse in too many than Turkism or Heathenism itself, as the best Wine makes the sharpest Vinegar; those cruelties and injustices being acted among us, yea professedly and openly performed and justified, which even Ethnics and Mahometans would be ashamed to be suspected of. And how shall this reproach and ignominy of the Name of Christ, and the profession of the Gospel be answered for?  
And if this were the full sum of all our miseries, there were cause enough for us even to melt our hearts in tears of lamentation, though we were never so entire and unmaimed in outward and temporal blessings; Though we swam in the midst of plenty; Though our outward Peace ran as heretofore smoothly like a calm and clear River; though the reputation or honour of our Nation were never so splendid and unstained in the eyes of men; though the outward frame of Government were never so orderly and excellently composed and settled, and our liberties secured never so much unto us; all this would be but splendida miseria, a splendid kind of misery and happiness, being destitute of the Crown and true glory of them all, which is the prosperity of Religion and the Church of God: for as one speaketh in the person of the European Church; Quanti ista sunt si comparent ur cum illis aeternis benefici●s, nam quid si frugibus, si mercibus abundarem, si viis a latrocinio, maribus a pyraticâ liberatis pace perfruerer, opulentiae matre. Quid si magnificis aedificiis, bonis legibus, probis moribus, ingenuis artibus exornarer, & in terrâ carerem sanâ fide, puro cultu, viz. precibus, incorruptis Domini Sacramentis, quibus mihi solatium vivae Gloria mortuae solo Christi merito communicetur. Quid (inquam) illa mihi terrena beneficia prodessen●o mnia, hisce caelestibus destitutae? si hic beata viverem ad tempus, & post misera perirem in aeternum? What are all these temporal things, if they be compared with eternal blessings? What would it profit us to abound with the fruits of the earth and merchandise; to have our high ways free from the danger of Robbers; the Seas from the peril of Pirates; to enjoy outward peace the mother of plenty; to dwell in stately Edifices; Nay what would it be for us to have good Laws, civil manners, and to be adorned with liberal Sciences, if with all these, we be destitute of sound faith, pure worship, holy prayers, undepraved Sacraments? whereby comfort in life, and glory when we are dead, is communicated unto us, by the sole merit of Christ? what I say would all these terrene benefits advantage us, being deprived of these heavenly blessings? What behocfe would it be unto us, to live happily for a time here, and to be miserable for ever hereafter? If we be excluded from the end, what shall we be bettered by enjoying the means? However our carnality hath blinded us, it will one day be found true what the foresaid Author hath, that, nan Ecclesia propter rempublicam, sed respublica proter Ecclesiam. The Church is not for the Commonwealth, but the Commonwealth for the Church. The prosperity of the Civil state is lost, or in vain, if the wholesome constitution of the Church be ruined. Nay he goes further, Dicam amplius, saith he, & verè, non Ecclesia propter mundum, sed mundus propter Ecclesiam. The Church is not for the world, but the world for the Church. The prosperity and health of Religion is the foundation of all other blessings. Ruere Ecclesia non potest, as he goes on, quin codem respublica labefactata motu concìdat. The Church cannot fall to ruin, but the Commonwealth must be shaken with it; and so indeed we have found it: For in the concussion of our Religion and our spiritual blessings, what outward blessing is there that is left unmaymed, undissipated?  
First, for our outward peace, which is upon the matter the sum of all; whither is it vanished? is there so much as a shadow of it left amongst us?  
The time was, when we were the Palace of Peace, the habitation of tranquillity and concord; The harmony whereof making a perpetual music and melody in this nation, made us the envy of other people, & them too much our scorn, who should have been our pity: It was once with us in this Realm like a long fair calm and Sun-shiny day, like a pleasant and gentle gale of wind, not buffeting us with rough or injurious gusts, but stroking us with amorous and pleasing Airs. The Current of our hours and days was like a stream of milk running in a Channel of the most polished Ivory, upon which we sailed up and down with pleasure and delight, freed from those jarring and discordant bussles and encounters wherewith our neighbour nations were continually molested. The curled waves waiting round about our Island, as an armed Guard set by the order of the Almighty for our safety, and attending as speedy posts and ready Messengers, and swift Chariots, to run upon our errands unto foreign Nations, and to convey our traffic unto them, and their riches unto us. We sat quietly than every one under his own Vine, and under his own Figtree; No rude and Barbarous Soldier beating open our doors to plunder us of our estates, or to hurry us unto prison, or unto death; No firing of our houses, or Cities; No wasting of our Fields or Vineyards; No tearing away of the poor oppressed Husband from the bosom of his affrighted Wife at midnight; Noopen ravishing of Women, and murdering them when that was done; No common massacring of them and their poor innocent children to be heard of. No fields or meadows died with the dismal Scarlet of Christian Gore; nor Furrows made fat with the blood of the slain. The terrifying sound of the warlike Trumpet, that made the Prophet's Bowels to move within him, and pained him at the very heart, jer. 4.19. was once a stranger in our land. The Travailet might go on in the highways, without being puzzled with that amazing question, Who are you for? not to be answered without the hazard of his life. No capital crime then to be for God and the King. No carrying of a pious and gracious Prince by violence & treachery from one prison unto another; nor forcing of poor Orthodox Ministers, for discharging their consciences out of their Churches or Pulpits, unto the Gaols. The profitable Plough went on cheerfully in the Country, and the Husbandman was not then feign to put out the eyes of his Horses, to save the lameness of his Teeme. The gainful Trade of the City brought in the rich returns of the Merchant and Artificer without interruption. Each man knew what was his own, and possessed what he had gained with his labour. It was not a crime then to be rich, nor a badge of honesty to be poor, nor a piece of malignancy to be faithful and loyal. The certain and known Laws of the Kingdom were the limits and bounds of the private and public interest, and were not demolished by the perpetual and daily battery of Ordinances. Then we were like an health full body, wherein the bumours and qualities keeping their due proportions with one another, Break not the preservative League of nature. Then we were like an entire fortress, strengthened by the cement of solid unity, against the assaults of invading enemies. Then we were like a well walled City without breach, yielding security to the inhabitants thereof, and defying the attempts of the most potent adversaries. Then we were like a Beautiful Body, wherein the parts being fitted with an amiable proportion unto one another, with out Convulsions, Distortions, or Dislocations, and contributing jointly unto the general comeliness, by the tribute of their particular features, enjoyed the mutual sweetness of one another, under the splendour of a royal and Princely head, from whom they received life, and orderly motion under God: The several faculties, exercising their proper and vital operations, to the good and preservation of the whole; and answering the visible music of the outward beauty with another more active, and intellectual harmony.  
Then we were like a specious and well-composed Building, erected upon the foundation of solid, well-framed, and wellestablished constitutions, and covered with the Golden roof of a glorious Monarchy, the one to support it, and the other to protect it: and the Corner-stones thereof were all of Unity.  
We were like the Scythidns sheaf of Spears or Arrows bound up together, which neither Spain nor France could break, nor all the force of sorraigne enemies burst, until the devil, and our own pride and faction, broke the Band asunder, and so rob us at once both of our unity and strength, and rendered us a prey to a more contemptible people than either.  
We were once like a sound and untoitered Vessel, sailing upon the Main, in a pleasant and fair season.  
But now alas! Quantum distamus ab illis? How are we changed from what we were? The health of our body languisheth, through the Wars and Quarrels of the contrary humours and qualities. The strength of our Fortress is broken and demolished by breaches and divisions. The Walls of our City are Battered and beaten down by the Hellish Engines of our bitter strifes and contentions. The foundations of our building are cast down, and the golden roof thereof is broken up, and hath left us open to the storms and tempests, to perpetual ruin and confusion; and the cement of peace being broken and dissolved, the parts of our Edifice moulder away from one another; and in stead of a fair structure we are become a heap. Our sheaf of Arrows are divided from one another. Our poor Vessel is become tottered and broken, split upon the Rocks of our own Discords, & beaten with the surges and billows of these unhappy divisions which are still amongst us. So that we are now become like the Ship wherein the Dissciples were in the eighth of Matth. The storms are risen upon us, and we are even covevered and overwhelmed with the waves, and too few there are that will wake our jesus by their earnest and hearty prayers and supplications, that he may rebuke these Winds and these Seas, and restore us unto a calm. The judgement of the Midianites and of the Philistines is fallen upon us: We go on madly, Beating one another, that our enemies may make a prey of us all. The flames of our intestine Broils have seized upon us, and we are wasted and consumed in the raging heat thereof. Thus is our peace vanished and gone.  
And when Peace is gone, liberty is not like to stay behind. Heretofore we enjoyed the happy freedom of Subjects and of Christians; no Bonds for the most part upon the Body of this Nation, but the Golden Chains of those wholesome Laws which were framed by the Authority of his Majesty, with the general consent of the people of the Land, in the representative Body thereof, which were unto us Chains rather of Ornament than Slavery, and did not so much limit as preserve our Freedom; nor restrain us from using it so much as others from hurting it; for though the blindness of our minds, together with the inordinateness of our affections, hath heretofore so bew itched us, that we could not see our own happiness. Yet methinks by this time our sad Experience, which is the Mistress of Fools, may inform us, that the Power and prerogative of the Magistrate, and the ready subjection of the people thereunto, is the surest guard of the liberty of the people, under God. The removal and violation whereof, hath not rendered us as we soolishly dreamt, so much masters of ourselves, as those that promised it us, absolute Tyrants at their pleasure over us, and us the Vassals unto their irregular and unsatiable appetites, who having ravished the Sword out of the lawful Magistrates hand, and gotten too much of the strength of the Kingdom into their own, use them both, after all their fair protestations and pollicitations to the contrary, to compel the poor abused people of the Land, to prostrate their Estates, Possessions, and their personal services to the maintenance of that bondage which they have brought upon them, and to the strengthening of that intolerable yoke which they have forced upon their necks; and it were well yet that they had gotten but so much wisdom into so sad a bargain, as to discover and acknowledge their folly, and how at length to seek a remedy thereof, by endeavouring the restitution of Law and Monarchy; that they would but now at length see the palpable difference, between one Lord, and many; between one gracious and pious King, and thirty thousand Tyrants, whose variety of designs and inclinations, renders the obedience of the people as perplexed and impossible, as the rigorousness of their Commands, and infinity as it were of their exactions, makes the burden oft their oppression intolerable.  
And whilst we mistook Anarchy for Liberty, we have found that true that was spoken by an acute Politician of this nation; Qui propter libertatem suam omnia agit arbitrio suo, propter libertatem alienam omnia patitur arbitrio alieno. He that for want of a lawful Government, by reason of his own Liberty is left to do all things at his own Will; By reason of the liberty of others is exposed to suffer all things at their Will.  
But we would not be persuaded of these Truths, not yet will we, though we have bought the knowledge of them so dear. We would not believe we were free enough in our possessions or persons, until by dismissing those guards which the Law and the excellent Government of this nation had set upon them, we had set others free to enslave them both at their own wills; as the whole Kingdom hath found by many heavy evidences. Thus whilst they would not live in an orderly subjection to their Superiors for their good and preservation, it is most just in God to make them live in villainy under their equals and inferiors, to their ruin and destruction. And now what is become of our Liberty? surely there is scarce any other Liberty now left us, but such a liberty as the poor Sheep have that are deprived of the Shepherd, and are free to be devoured by every ravenous and savage beast. We took our fold for a prison, our Castle of defence for a Dungeon, our Guardian for a jailor, and our Security for Restraint. We have broken down these Fences, and now we rejoice much in our liberty. Such a kind of liberty indeed as the Lord threatened to the people, jerem. 34.17. wherewith he rewarded their Oppression of their Brethren.  
A Liberty to the Sword, and to the Famine, and to the Pestilence.  
A Liberty to the Oppressor, and to the Plunderer, and to the Thief.  
A Liberty to the Murderer, and to the Waster, and to the Devourer.  
Liberty to Desolation, and liberty to destruction.  
Heretofore no man could be deprived of his estate, or ejected from his possessions, without a legal trial, according to the known and established Laws of the Kingdom.  
No man could be adjudged unto death, but according to the same established Laws, and that upon evidence and conviction, by the trial of 12. men.  
It was then no usual course to imprison men at pleasure, without any crimes laid unto their charge, nor to keep them in prison six or seven years together, without affording them a hearing and trial, being desired.  
If there were some miscarriages of this Nature in the Government heretofore, yet they were but rare, like Comets and wonders: (as there are some extravagances even in the work of nature itself; and must be expected sometimes in the best Government by reason of the infirmities of men, the miscarriages of Instruments, the fallacies and deceitfulness of Representations, and the manifold difficulties and impediments of Government, which hath been too little considered heretofore, and should have been cured with medicines, and not worse Maladies; But now our Estates are ravished from us by violence, by those new orders of Thiefs, called Committy-men and Sequestrators, without so much as any Charge objected against some of us. And if others have had some Charge laid against them; yet how often have they been charged with their Duties in stead of Crimes, and condemned, not for breaking, but for observing the Laws of God, and of the Land, and that without any due hearing, or any the least show of any legal Conviction? witness those numerous multitudes of Loyal and Orthodox Ministers, that have been whifled out of their live and charges, by the illegal storms of a Committee-tempest, upon no other ground but a sic volo sic jubeo; or because their Consciences would not stretch unto disloyalty upon the tenterhooks of their oppression; and that without so much as a form of any legitimate trial and eviction.  
Our Bodies are hurried away to jails and Prisons, without so much as any Cause declared, or a Summons premised to come in to our Answer, or the least Colour of Law to countenance it; and both these clearly against the Petition of Right, and the great Charter of England.  
When some have been kept for divers years, and have never so much as heard, either why, or wherefore; but only to satisfy the pleasures of our new Lords.  
The lives of the honest and loyal people of the land have been sacrificed to the lust of cruelty and oppression by arbitrary Sentence, and without any regular proceeding, for committing Duties against their ungodly Designs, for offences against no law either of God or man, that allotted any capital punishment thereunto, but such as were made by an invalid power, and that after the Facts conmitted: which if allowed, who can tell what to do, or when he does well or ill? or who can be secure of his life? Witness the blood that yet still cries and speaks no better things it may be feared, than the blood of Abel, of Strafford, Laud, of yeoman's and Bowcher, of Tomkins and Chaloner, and many others in Cool blood, and deliberately massacred; besides those many thousands destroyed by the lawless sword of Rebellion: And witness that blood now lately shed, not by Laws, but by false glosses upon the Laws rather, the blood of loyal Captain BURLY. And that this mischief may be secured if possible from all remedy, it is become an high offence so much as to ask the Restitution of our freedom; witness the barbarous massacring of the late Surrey Petitioners at Westminster. And what freedom is left, where we may not so much as petition for our freedom? Or what security remains unto any either of life or liberty under them who take away men's lives but for ask their Liberties?  
But what do we talk of the Liberty of Subjects? look upon your King: Yea let me say unto you in Pilat's words unto the Jews, but in a better sense, and with a better affection: Behold your King, and see the very Grave and Tomb of your Liberty in his base and unworthy Captivity and Bondage. The Lord grant it a resurrection by his speedy deliverance and restitution. But this is a subject both for the horrid impiety of the Actors, and the Glorious and Christian patience of the Royal Sufferer, now made nothing but a Royal slave by their wickedness, too full of Emphasis for me to venture it upon the poverty of my Pen, in that haste that I am in. Consider it, and let it divide your hearts at once into an abomination of their wickedness, an admiration of his courage and tolerancy, and a lamentation of your own wretchedness and slavery. The Crown whereof is the Captivity of the Crown, and your gracious King: for though it be true indeed that this is the just reward of the unthankful murmur and discontents of the people, who were weary of their own happiness, and have thereby betrayed themselves to misery and ruin; and of that too much fondness of outward and mistaken liberty, which whilst we held at too great a rate, and preferred inordinately before Peace, and greater blessings, and esteeming it above that true liberty and freedom of spirit, which consisteth in an ingenuons and unservile Dominion over ourselves, our passions, and affections, which if we had not betrayed in ourselves, no man could have taken from us, it being such as a noble & Christian heart may enjoy in the greatest outward slavery and bondage, in the closest Prisons, & the deepest Dungeons, and under the tyranny of the most wicked oppressors. Yet the visible fountain of this Calamity is the desolation of just and lawful Government amongst us.  
And I need not labour much to tell you of the sad impairements, and dissolutions of that amongst us. You have the sad spectacle thereof daily and hourly before your eyes.  
You may yet remember the time, though it hath had a long interruption, when the Crown of Majesty was the Ornament of this Nation, and upon that glory was a defence; when agracious and pious King was the Crown of his Crown, and with the virtues and Clemency of his Person, adorned the greatness and dignity of his office: When the Throne and the Sceptre of lawful and just power, armed as it were with celestial lightning, and strengthened with the sinew of the Divine authority, from whence it was orderly derived and received, as a Ray of that majesty and Authority which is in God himself, summoning the Consciences of men unto obedience in the virtue and force of the divine Ordinance, yielded protection unto the lives and liberties of the People, security unto Religion and divine worship, solidity unto the Peace and Unity of this Church and nation, and was like a Cherubin and a flaming sword against the invasions of Violence, Injustice, and Oppression.  
justice was dispensed in the right Channels, being derived from the proper Fountain; the Laws, which are it were the lifeblood of a nation, ran freely without such obstructions they now meet with through all the veins and vessels of this lody, and yielded unto each Member its equal and just supply, at least in so good a measure and manner as was sufficient to preserve the Body in good liking and prosperity; and though the secret Briberies and partiabities of some inferior instruments of Government, caused some smaller distempers in this kind, yet they were such as might have had easy cures, and did not at all destroy the constitution of the body.  
We were governed by authentical and certain Rules, and were not subject unto Mushroom Ordinances; those abortive issues of the womb of Sedition, those unformed lumps, and dead motions of a diseased and dropsy state, begotten by no legitimate Father, but by the Incubus of a rebellious people and Army.  
There was then not professed and ordinary infliction of punishments without any offences going before them, no offences then without their precedent Laws, to give the lie to the Blessed Apostles, who tell us that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, That sin is the transgression of the Law, 1 john 3.4. And again, By the Law is the knowledge of sin, Rom. 3.20. And again, where no law is there is notransgression. Rom. 4.15.  
Then justice was administered in the right method, there went a fair hearing before cndemnation, and the sentence of the law was the Usher to Execution.  
It was managed by the right and genuine instruments, enabled by authentical Commissions from the supreme Magistrate, the force and virtue whereof was like a lively sap dispensed from the Royal Root into those several Branches of Government, which made them bear the fruits of Peace, and justice, and safety to the people.  
The motion of Rule, was like a natural motion, derived from the head unto the members, by those legal Officers which were as the Nerves and Sinews of this body, propagated from thence into the several Regions and parts thereof.  
And the Scales and weights and the mensures of justice were the same unto all sorts, without any open or professed inequality, when the eyes of the judges were fixed not on the Persons, but their Causes, without such diversification of the sacred & inviolable rules of right, as now, according to the several inclinations of parties and interests. There was not then as now one measure for a Cavalier, to yield him nothing, though his case be never so clear and just, and another for a Parliamenteer, to yield any thing he will stand for, though his pretences and colours be never so weak. Men were not then wracked and gored between the two horns of that unreasonable Dilemma, nor crushed to pieces in the press of that Pharaohtick and unconscionable oppression, under which the poor loyal party, many of them suffer at this day, (and many more would suffer, were it not for the mercy of some good men, that they have to deal with, and such whose hearts God hath made tender towards them in these hard times) to be laid open, to have all their debts exacted with all severity by their Creditors, and in the mean time to be utterly disabled for the recovery of their own, or the enjoyment of their estates; Whereby they should be furnished to pay that which is required of them; which is much worse than to require men to make Brick without straw. It was not so with us heretofore.  
But now, the Ornament and Defence of the Royal Crown is cast down; and that gracious and pious Prince that adorned it, is now sent away from the Throne of his Majesty, to be the ornament of a jail or Prison; of whom we may say more truly than he of Socrates, Carolus carcerem intravit ignominiam loco detracturus; King Charles by being so long a Prisoner, hath taken away the ignorminy and reproach of imprisonment; and I might perhaps be pardoned, if I should say that it may be looked upon hereafter rather as a reward than as a punishment; and truly it may be considered by those that are the Authors thereof, that it is no good way of Reformation, to bring the Prisons into too much credit, unless they mean to set up their own trade by it, and to encourage men to rob, and steal, and to murder, on purpose that they may have the reward of a jail or Prison. But to go on, now in stead of a just and legal Authority, that awful Bond that lays hold upon the very soul, an illegal and usurped power is set up, which a rectified Conscience so fare disclaims, that it accounts it a sin to submit unto it, and there is like to be little peace or settled order in that rule, where obedience itself is a transgression. Strength and outward force may prevail for a while, and make slaves mor than subjects of a people; it may bind their carcases, but it is Authority that rules the heart, and that is none where it is not just. The great comfort and encouragement of every duty unto man, is when it strikes through them unto God. This is it that doth at once secure, and sanctify and sweeten our performances. Where Intrusion and usurpation is, there all these are wanting unto the soul. What hope then is there that an usurped Dominion, should either recover or maintain a settled concord in this Nation, where it is opposed by so many branches of just Interests against it, and cannot in any likelihood be held up but by great oppressions of the people, which must needs make the yoke thereof too irksome to be borne either with long Peace, or Patience.  
The Laws of the Kingdom are obstructed and intercepted, those true conceptions are stifled and destroyed by the adulterate superfetations of Ordinances. The Great and once awful and venerable Court of Parliament, that was the womb of our wholesome Laws, is degenerated into Factions, and become the Seminary of Sedition; and instead of being the great Counsel of the King, is become his enemy; and whilst that which was ordained for the Physic of the Kingdom, is enforced upon us for a perpetual Diet (as it usually falls out) it is become mortal unto the body, and in stead of curing hath multiplied our Maladies. Punishments are inflicted without mercy, not only for no offences, but for acts of righteousness. Transgressions are made without any Laws forbidding them; more than the corrupted rules of some men's unsanctified Consciences.  
The method of justice and Government is confounded; and instead of the lawful Officers and Instruments of Government, they being removed, Changelings are thrust into their places, without any legal or authentical delegation from the fountain of justice and Authority, whose want of Commission, poisons their administrations, and whilst they execute one murderer, they commit another therein.  
A stone and a stone, and an Ephah and an Epha, are become too perpetual an abomination to the Lord in this notion, and in this ruin and devastation of Government, All the Duties both to God and man, both of the first and the second Table, of piety towards him, and justice and charity to our Neighbours, of chastity, temperance, and Christian sobriety in ourselves, how are they fallen and trampled under foot? and indeed how should it be otherwise? when the hedge of the vineyard is broken down, what beast of the field, or wild Boar of the Forest can w●nt an admittance to forage & waste it? When the foundations of the Earth are out of course, what hope is there of any soundness or integrity to be left? The Sun is scarce more necessary to the world, than a lawful and settled government is to a people; And if the Sun be Eclipsed it is held to be the forerunner of sad Eclipses of our inferior Comforts: and so we have found the Eclipse of our Politic Sun in the State.  
And lastly for our Honour and reputation; Alas! How should that stay, when all these are gone? It is a blessing, which if it be true, is but the splendour of other perfections; and therefore when they are vanished, it must likely run after them: Or if it stay behind, it is but a shadow in shed of light. What Credit is to rich men, or Riches, such is Honour or Reputation to other Excellencies. And we may here remember the old Verse:  

Quantum quisque suâ nummorum servat in ar,  
Tantum habet & fidei—   
When wealth and riches take their journey, credit useth not to remain at home. And since Peace, Liberty, and the nurse of both and of all other blessings, Government, have left us, our reputation is become but a fading flower.  
We were once the Glory, who are now the shame, the scorn, and reproach of other nations. Our brightness is clouded, our splendour is obscured. We whose name heretofore for comeliness and beauty in Religion, made Rome to blush as it were in all her pride, to see Truth in this Church, like a Diamond richly set in the gold of excellent Order and decency, to outshine all that sophistical lustre of their gaudy and glaring superstition. We whose fame for Valour and Prowess hath heretofore put such Agues into the greatest of our bordering Kingdoms, whose renown for learning and knowledge in the Liberal Sciences, and in the Laws Divine and Humane, made us so much the Athens and Academy of the World. We? Ah! what a We are we now become? How are we made the mocking-stock of our Adversaries? ROME laughs at us, to see our grave and comely Matron (for such was our Church) spoiled of her decent and seemly ornaments, and clothed in the garments of madness, and in the rags of Confusion and desolation; To behold that precious Gem of holy truth which we embraced, rend out of the Gold, and cast under foot into the Dunghill; To see our field that bore such fruitful Crops, and our Valleys that stood so thick with Corn, that they did even laugh and sing, even with the good Corn of wholesome and sound Doctrines, to be overgrown now with the Thorns and Briars of Heretical opinions, and mad Factions and Divisions. There, there say they, so would we have it, whilst the Calamities of our Church are their game and pastime, and as once it was said of Tire in her ruin. Is. 23.7. so we may conceive them crying out scornfully against us, Is this your joyous City? and is this the temple of truth and holiness? Is this the Fortress of the divine. Oracles? the great Castle and Champion of the reformed Religion? See now what is become of their Reformation? where now is that excellent building which they had set up? Oh how bravely it burns and consumes in the flamer of those fires which themselves have kindled in it? Oh what sport it is to see it? How it warms us, how it revives us! Thus they delight themselves with our frenzies, and strengthen themselves by our confusions and desolations. But Lord how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph? How long shall they utter and speak hard things? and the workers of iniquity host themselves? Lord look upon our reproach and ignominy, and restore us for thy mercy's sake: Let not them that are our enemies wrongfully rejoice over us, neither let them wink with their eyes, that hate us without a cause. They have opened their mouth wide against us, and have said Aha, Aha, our eye hath seen it. This thou hast seen, O Lord, keep not silence, O Lord be not fare from us. Stir up thyself, and awake to our judgement, even to our cause, our God and our Lord.  
Our bordering Nations that heretofore feared us, and honoured us, how do they now despise, or pity us? whilst our samed Valour and Prowess, is degenerated into treachery and baseness; and the glorious noon of our Learning and Knowledge is overspread with a cloud of stupidity and ignorance?  
And all these losses are accompanied with many other, with decay in trade, of husbandry, and what not?  
But I have done with this long and sad contemplation of our miseries, although I doubt not but your daily observations, and the perpetual sense of that variety of pressures that are upon us, may inform you that I have left many sores untouched. But thus fare I have endeavoured to show you the streams of our evils; and now I come to discover the fountain of them. I have hitherto set before you some symptoms of our maladies; it remains now that I should lay open the root of them, that so we may proceed unto the cures and remedies. And here I have a world of matter before me: But I have been too prodigal of my paper already, and therefore dare not launch out into these deeps. Besides that, necessity is urgent upon me in divers respects for a conclusion.  
Take therefore for that which is behind these several Theses.  
The first is this; That the general fountain of all these our miseries and caldmities, are the general Corruptions, Backesliding, and Pollutions that are amongst us in this Nation.  
The Assertion is evident.  
1. Because sin is the causa sine qua non, The cause without which there is no affliction. There was never any but one that was punished without sin, and that was Christ, and even he was punished for sin.  
This might further appear from the goodness of God, who can meditate no evil to his poor creatures, made after his own Image, if not engaged thereto in justice. God was all love and mercy, till sinne kindled a flame of fury and wrath in him, and yet that is a flame of love too; for it is his very love unto goodness that incenseth him against sin. No cause in God without sin; no cause in the creature without sin. Affliction cometh not forth of the Dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the Ground. Job 5.6.  
2. From the nature and use of afflictions, as they are either punishments, or chastisements, or trials.  
Were there no sin, there would be no Punishments.  
Were there no Diseases, there needed no medicines. Where there are no errors, there need no corrections.  
Where there are no falsifications, there eye no use of trials. If there were no corrupt money, or base Metals, the Touchstone might be thrown away.  
3. From the clear expressions of the Scripture.  
1. Those that place the fountain of our Destructions, and our Calamities in ourselves. Hos. 13.9. O Israel thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help.  
2. Those that more plainly lay the charge upon our sins, Psalm 107.17. Fools because of their transgressions; and because of their sins are afflicted. See jer. 2.19. and a multitude of other places.  
3. Those wherein God threatens affliction, all which threaten are either explicitly, or implicitly brought in by sins. See Deut. 28, etc.  
4. Those wherein we find the people of God acknowledging sin as the root of their Calamities, as Psalm 38.3. There is no soundness in my flesh, because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones, because of my sin. Where we have the descent and pedigree as it were of afflictions and judgements set before us. The first root is sin; that enkindleth God's anger, and that breaks forth into judgements, etc. God is the first cause of all good and blessing. But the Devil and our corruptions are before him in the production of evil, and the curse. He is the Author indeed of these two, and the first cause of all that is good, and of being in them; but as they are evil, they are first from Satan and sin. For God sends afflictions not as an instituter of nature, but rather as a revenging judge, or as a healing Physician etc. Therefore this is opus alienum, the first spring of this motion is in some sense not in God; that is to say, in regard of the evil that is therein.  
5. Those wherein the spirit argues from calamities to repentance and reformation; as a means of removal, ubi negatio est causa negationis, ibi affirmatio est causa affirmationis.  
6. Those places, where we find God's practice herein recorded.  
It was for the sin of Adam, that he was cast out of Paradise, made subject to the Curse, to death and damnation, and that the creature was cursed as his utensils and furniture, Gen. 3.  
It was for the bloody sin of Cain, that he was cursed from the earth, and made a fugitive, and a vagahond, a Rogue upon the face thereof. Gen. 4.  
It was for the general corruptions, and depravations of the old World, that it was destroyed by the wrath of God in the Deluge: First, the fountains of the deep were broken up, in a flood of their hellish sins and impieties, and then the windows of heaven were opened to overwhelm them with a Deluge of Destruction, and so Abyssus Abyssum invocat, one deep calleth another. See Gen. 7.11.  
There was a Fire of horrid and unnatural lusts, blown up and nourished by those fuellers of Lust, Pride, and fullness of Bread, and abundance of idleness in Sodom, etc. before the fire from heaven came down and consumed them unto ashes, etc. Gen. 19 Ezek. 16.49.  
And from such and many other places we may conclude, That it is from our sins, our great, our horrid, our crying, our national sins, our universal corruptions, and desertions of God, that these great Evils are befallen us in the Church and State.  
Especially from our hay nous contempt of the Gospel, and of the divine worship and ordinances, and the profanations of his House and Service.  
And for the contempt of that Government which he hath set over us, and the violating the Authority of Christ, from whom it is derived. A sin that is indeed the womb of universal Corruption and Confusion; and however it may be painted over with false colours and pretences, invented by worldly and depraved minds, to deceive themselves and others withal, yet it will appear one day in its own Colours, when those that have brought forth and nursed this monster, will (if they repent not) be afraid to look upon it, etc.  
For these high despites done unto God's holy and gracious ordinances; and for those general and national sins of Perjury, Sacrilege, Extortion, Profanation: for those Adulteries and beastly pollutions that have over-flowed amongst us; and an innumerable company of other sins, are these sad and heavy messengers sent unto us.  
For the Injustice, Bribery, Partiality, Carelessness, and Cowardice of the Magistrates.  
For the Ambition, Covetousness, Idleness, Luxury, Contentiousness, Vain glory, Pusillanimity, Temporising, Treachery, Falsehearte●nesse, and scandalousness of too many of us of the Ministry.  
For the betraying of Innocency and Justice in the Lawyers, their Plead against the truth, and selling the righteous for a pair of shoes.  
For the looseness, the Blasphemies and horrid execrations, the open and professed drunkenness & lust, & utter contempt of God and the duties of piety on the one side.  
For the Pride, the Faction, the Hypocrisy, the uncharitableness, the bloody crueity and oppression, the Disobedience and Rebellion, the disorderly walking, the Perjuries and secret corruptions of another side.  
For the Atheism and irreligion that is on all sides.  
For the Falsehood and injustice of the Tradesmen, and others in their deal and contracts; their false lights, false weights, and measures, and other deceits, whereby they make a trade of injustice.  
For the murmur and unthankfulness, & face-grindings, & Tithe-stealings of the Husband men, Cornemasters, and others.  
For the Pride and impudent shamelesseness, and wantonness, and vanity of the Women of our age and nation, openly professed and written before the eyes of all men as it were, in the scandalous and unseemly nakedness of their Bodies, and in those Witchcrafts of Satan, those hellish Characters and Charms wherewith their faces are bepatched and bespotted; those Diagrams of the Devil, upon which he reads infernal jectures of Lust, unto the libidinous and luxurious youth, and other people.  
For the dissolution of all order, and rules, and relations. amongst us. For the harshness and untenderness of some Husbands to their wives, and the foolish and indiscreet fondness of others.  
For the stubbornness, and disobedience, unreverence, and uncompliancy of Wives unto their Husbands: And for the unfaith. fullness of both one toward another, against those sacred bonds of Marriage, and that holy Ordinance of God.  
For the carelessness of Parents of their children, especially in respect of their spiritual good, neglecting to bring them up in the fear and in the nurture of the Lord, and in the instruction of salvation; their heathenish cruelty unto the souls of their progeny, who can be content to damn their own for them to get them a temporal inheritance here by their appressions and injustices, but take no care to provide either for them or themselves, in respect of their eternal inheritance in heaven; Too clear an evidence of their heathenish hearts, however they may be in the profession of Christianity.  
For the disobedience and undutifulness of Children to their Parents: The Viper that is begotten even of that corruption of their Parents, The Scorpion of their own breeding and bosom, whereby God justly punisheth them for their carelessness of their Children, making a wicked and rebellious son oftentimes to be the scourge of careless and irreligious Parents.  
For the Injustice of Masters, and their unmercifulness. And for the stubbornness, negligence, unfaithfulness, eye-service; the undutiful insolences, and the filching Roberies, Tale-bearing, and treacheries of Servants.  
For these, and for that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, that swarm and miscellany, that Augean stable of all sorts of corruptions, wherewith this Land of ours doth stink in the Nostrils of the Almighty, together with that lukewarmness that is in the best of us, which hath made him ready to abominate us, as we may justly fear, and to spew us out of his mouth. For these things the land mourneth, and yet how few are there that give themselves to godly mourning for the land? Yea all our sins have a share in this sad business, every man must accuse himself.  
And as these are the mothers and the wombs, so they are the nurses of our miseries; the hinderers and impediments of our relief and remedy.  
These are the winds that blast our prayers, and our fastings, and turn them into sin; so that they become a means not to the abatement of our miseries, but to the increasing of the heap of our iniquities: and what a wretched case is that Patient in, in whom all the Physic that is administered takes part with the disease, and the remedies themselves become new Maladies.  
This is our sad condition; so that we may conclude this point with that of the Prophet, Is. 59.1, 2. Behold the Lords hand is not shortened, that it cannot seve, neither is his ear heavy that it cannot hear. But our iniquities have separated between us and our God, and our sins have hid his face from us.  
These, even our sins are the fountains of our Calamities, perditio tua ex te, thy destruction is from thyself, is God's voice unto England now, as well as to Israel heretofore.  
Thus we see our diseases in the stream and in the fountain, in the symptoms and in the roots; and indeed the Fountain is much more bitter than the stream, the roots much more poisonous and deadly than the branches; our sins are our greatest miseries and judgements.  
But is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no Physician there? Hath the Lord that wounded us no healing for us?  
Yes, There is a Physician that can heal us; and it is but one, and that is God. There is a Balm that can cure us, and this is but one neither; and that's his mercy.  
God hath wounded us for our sins; And it is he only that can heal us. He can do it, for he is omnipotent, and can do all things; he hath omnipotent mercy, as well as omnipotent justice; yea if there be, or could be any difference in his Attributes, his mercy would seem to have the better of it, and to be the stronger of the two. He pulleth down, and buildeth up; and it is as easy with him to raise, as to demolish: He increaseth the Nations and destroyeth them: He enlargeth the Nations, and straightneth them again, Job 12.23. If he cut off, or shut up, or gather together, than who can hinder him? He that made the World out of nothing, by his mere word, can by the same word restore us from all that nothing, that misery and confusion whereinto we are fallen. Though we are dead and dry like the bones in the Valley, Ezek. 37.1, 2. yet he can make these bones live; he can make a noise, and a shaking for recovery, as well as he hath made a noise and a shaking heretofore for ruin. He can put us into an healthful ague, as well as he hath done into a sickly and destructive one; He can make them come together again bone unto his bone, by repairing the breaches and divisions in the Church and State, which is as it were the skin and the covering; He can make the sinews and the flesh to come upon them, by restoring the Laws, which are as it were the sinews of the State, and by resetling the order and freedom of trades, and vocations therein, which are as it were the Muscles and Fillings of this body; He can cover them again with skin, by re-enforcing the Government, which is as it were the skin and the covering of a nation under God, to keep all safe within, and to preserve it from outward violence, even with the fair and beautiful skin of a Royal Monarchy, wherewith this Nation was once so amiable. Yea, he can raise up the spirit of true Prophecy, and make the quickening wind of his holy Spirit, to breath upon the dead members of this Church, that they may live, by the restoring of the purity and freedom of his Ordinances, and the infusion of his graces. Yea, though a people be even dead and buried, and even ready to stink in the Grave with Lazarus; though they be dissolved into dirt, nay into a very nothing: yet he can open their graves, and cause them to come forth out of their graves, and recreate them out of their dust, and of their nothing make them a better something than ever they were; more glorious in their resurrection, than they ever were in their former constitution. He that shall do this for the world at the latter day, can do the like for us or any other decayed parts thereof every day.  
He that commanded the storms and the tempests, and the unruly Waves and Billows of the Sea, in the midst of their highest Quarrels and Contentions, and with one small word reconciled them into a sudden Calm, can as easily quiet the storms and the tempests, the unruly surges and billows of men's minds and affections amongst us, and can turn all our divisions into a pleasant calm of Christian Charity in the Church, and civil concord and unity in the State.  
He hath medicines for the most desperate diseases, he hath remedies for all our sicknesses, his Word is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, that can cure them all.  
He can do it; That is comfortable: and yet this will not I fear bring us unto him. It is too true, that we too seldom go to God but out of stark need, as long as we can find any shadows to skulk under in the creature; we rarely think of laying hold upon the substance which is in God; few there be that make him their choice: If we fly to him, it is commonly for a Refuge; Till we be convinced of the emptiness and helplessenesse of outward aides, we are for the most part strangers unto God. We must therefore be further instructed, that as God is able to help us; so there is none else able; that there is no possibility of obtaining a true and sole recovery from our miseries and decays, but from him. And this is a truth so clear and evident, that it is the monstrous blindness of our corruption that we do not see it.  
It is established upon three firm foundations: First, upon Natural Reason. Secondly, upon the irrefragable evidence of Scripture. Thirdly, upon Common experience.  
First, it is a principle written upon our hearts in the Chatact●● of reason.  
Which reacheth us that God being thesest couse, as the essences of the Creatnres, so all their motions are dependant upon him, as they cannot be, so they cannot work without him: All their motions are swayed and overruled by him, so that the creatures can give no help but by his commission; they are all empty Channels, unless they be filled unto us by the streams of his goodness. If he give not the Word of help and health unto them, all that they can do will rather harm us than relieve us. His power and goodness is the sinew and the strength of them all: Therefore if God be not present unto us in them with that, they will all prove but Broken Reeds.  
Secondly, the Scripture is full of this Doctrine: there we find this principle acknowledged by the King of Israel, in the Discipline of the Famine whereby that Lecture was imprinted on him as it seems, 2 Kings 6.27. If the Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the Barn floor, or out of the Winepress? But what he could not see perhaps but in the time of that actual failing of the creature, The Spirit of God teacheth us to acknowledge in its greatest fullness, and that what ever promises it makes, it can perform nothing without God.  
First, it is set down in the general rule, james 1.17. Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, etc. The blessings that are administered unto us by the Creatures, are but as so many rays of light conveyed unto us from that Father of lights by them; If he intercept his influence, they are nothing but darkness and misery: and if all good is from him, there can be no good obtained without him. He is all-sufficient without the creature, but they are altoget her insufficient, yea deficient without God; without him all their wisdom is dotage, all their plots and contrivances are madness, all their strength is weakness, all their fidelity is treachery, and all their riches is extreme beggary. Nay they are so far from being helps unto us, that they prove many times our greatest impediments, like saul's Armour unto David, 1 Sam. 17.38, 39 Therefore God tells Gedeon, Judges 7.2. The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands. And there you may see God's reason too, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me saying, mine own hand hath saved me. Observe Gods dealing in the progress of that story, and profit by it, it may afford us excellent matter for our meditation.  
And see what is recorded concerning Vzziah, 2 Chron. 26.14, 15. He was marvellously helped till he was strong: But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction, etc.  
You may stand and admire the working of this principle in another way upon our gracious King at this time, whilst he had Armies and much outward strength, he came down; for indeed their wickedness rendered them unworthy to be a Guard for so pious a Prince, and much more to be the instruments of God's mercy to him and to his people. But since he hath been stripped of all those outward helps, how wonderfully hath God been seen in the Mount? So that his Motto may be like that of Saint Paul, When I am weak then am I strong. Insomuch, that I must confess that I am almost afraid of his recruiting Armies, lest by their irregular violences, and their former impieties, and miscarriages, they prove to the interruption of the gracious work that God hath begun for him, and his poor people. I beseech God give them grace to beware of it. But I hope their former miscarriages will in struck them that they may not make themselves guilty of a double ruin.  
This conclusion is yet further confirmed, Job 9.12, 13. Behold he taketh away, who can hinder him, and who will say unto him, What dost thou? If God will not withdraw his Anger, the proud helpers do stoop under him.  
But generals are too wide to chain 〈◊〉 our unruly thoughts and affections for the most part.  
The Lord therefore descends to particulars for our instruction, to show us that there is no kind of relief that can be had without him; there is no medicine in all the creatures to cure us of the smallest evil, in any kind, unless the Lord every them and make them beneficial to us by his goodness.  
1. There is no defence without him; for the shields of the earth belong unto the Lord. Psal. 47.9.  
2. No safety or victory in the greatest strength of Armies without him: Without me (saith God) they shall bow down under the Prisoners, and fall under the slain, Isa. 10.4.  
Whilst the people of jerusalem were disarmed of God, it was to no purpose for them to fend to Egypt for help. For though ye had smitten the whole. Army of the Chaldeans than fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they arise up every one in his tent, and burn this City, Jerem. 37.10. But if the Lord once engage himself in the business, nothing can stand against a people. Zachariah 9.12, 13, 14. Turn ye to the strong hold ye prisoners of hope, (that strong hold I conceive is the strength of God) even to day do I declare that I will render double unto thee: When I have bend judah for me, filled the Bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons oh Zion against thy sons o Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man: Then the Lord shall be seen over them, and his Arrow shall go forth as the lightning, and the Lord God shall blow the Trumpet, and shall go with whirlwinds of the South: Then the Lord shall defend them, and the Lord God shall save them. See Verse 15, 16. An excellent place, a rich Mine of Meditation.  
3. There is no wisdom nor counsel without him, Job 5.12, 13, 14. He disappointeth the devices of the crafty: He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: They meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope in the noonday as in the night.  
Prov. 21.30. There is no wisdom nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord. And whatsoever is without God is against him.  
No Associations can do good without him. See Isaiah 8.9, 10.  
Walls and Fortifications are to no purpose, Isaiah 22.8, 9, 10, etc.  
The sounds of Rams horns shall be as good as the Batteries of the greatest Rams, or the shot of the greatest Cannon against Hiericho, if the Lords strength be not the cement of the stones thereof. Iosh. 6.20.  
There is no nourishing virtue in the creatures without him. Matth. 4.4. Man shall not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.  
There is no Security, no Prosperity; no success in any Action, any Operation, or Enterprise, without the blessing of the Lord.  
Except the Lord build the House, they labour in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the City, the Watchman waketh but in vain, etc. Psalm 127.  
What seems to be attributed unto Chance, Eccles. 9.11. being spoken as is thought in the person of a carnal man, (perhaps to convince such an one from his own principles) is without doubt the prerogative of God, who is equally the great Master both of contingent and regular events; for there is nothing contingent in regard of the first cause; The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor yet bread to the wise, etc. Eccl. 9.11.  
There is no peace nor indeed any good to be had but from him, Isaiah 45.7. I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace and create evil, I the Lord do all these things.  
The Scripture flows with this kind of instruction.  
And the voice of Reason and Scripture is subscribed by Experience.  
The experiments are innumerable that History affords to this purpose.  
We need go no farther than to those evidences which have been given us in our late miscarriages.  
We see our Wisdom hath forsaken us, and the contrivances of our great Counsellors have proved plots of destruction, our policies have served but to improve our miseries, to cheat us farther and farther into the power of Mischief and Desolation. On the one side, our gracious King, the glory of our strength under God, is imprisoned, and he that should help us, is not able to help himself: God hath suffered so good a King to fall into such a condition, perhaps to teach us this lesson that I am now pressing upon you, I pray God we may learn it quickly for his sake. Our Armies, though they were strong and powerful, and had the great comfort and encouragement of a righteous Cause; yet through miscarriage in the managing thereof, and for want of engaging God with them in the work; yea through their disingaging of him by their wickedness and horrid impieties, they have been defeated and brought to nothing. I pray God this may be remembered hereafter.  
On the other side, the Armies in which so many have trusted, and which they have been at such cost to set up and maintain, instead of helping them, have become their Oppressors; the edge of their Swords hath been turned toward themselves, and their own force threatneth them with ruin.  
The Money and Wealth of the City and Kingdom hath purchased chased us no deliverance at all, but hath rather served for the hire of our calamities.  
All the Pillars on which we have leaned are broken, as it were, on all sides; and we have no Foundation left us to rest ourselves upon, on earth.  
Oh then now let us learn from all this, that there is no help but in God. If we have our recovery we must have it from heaven, and from his hand. No Drug will help us but Manus Christi.  
If we ever have Peace we must have it from him. He is the Prince of peace, and the God of peace.  
Though the whole World should conspire to do us good and to relieve us; yet if the Lord come not in to the work it will be in vain.  
Let us therefore learn wisdom by our former follies, and do not now relapse into your old errors again.  
There is much gaping after help from this and from that, from the Scots, and from the Welsh, and from I know not whom; and indeed these may be instrumental helps, and it will be wonderful in God to make them so. But all these will deceive us, unless God be brought in for us; unless he be with us, as good they were all against us; They will neither prove faithful unless God hold them, nor helpful unless God strengthen and prosper them.  
Let us look upon them therefore as the returning glimpses of God's mercy unto us, as his proffers and invitations, to make us seek unto him: But let us take heed that we place not our hope in them, nor in any creature. It is the common Dilemma of humane folly and perverseness, that where no outward help appeareth it is apt to despair of help from God; and we will trust him no farther than we can see him in the means: but they that are of this mind, if they truly search into their condition, will find perhaps, that they trust not in God, but in the means.  
And again, when outward help doth begin to show itself, we are presently too apt to forget our dependence upon God, and to withdraw our expectations from him, and to set up that means for an Idol in his Throne, by placing our hope and confidence therein.  
I pray God deliver us from both these extremes; and teach us in all the varieties and changes of humane things to keep ourselves unmovably fixed upon this Rock; That our help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth. Psal. 21.2.  
But it is a great question that comes in the fourth place, and would require more space than I have allowed me to resolve it fully. What course may be taken to engage God on our side, and to obtain help and relief from him.  
First, let me entreat you all to be firmly fixed upon this, and to let it seize upon your affections as well as your judgements, that if ever we be relieved it must be God that must relieve us.  
And then take in this conclusion for your direction:  
That there is no way to obtain help and deliverance from God, but by Humiliation, Repentance, and faithful Prayer unto him.  
This only will do it, and this will do it.  
I must divide, and be brief.  
I shall premise only this premonition: I deny not but God may grant outward deliverances, & outward blessings where they are not sought of him in this way, for divers ends that are known unto his heavenly wisdom. He doth sometimes take off judgements from the wicked, that he may render them so much the more unexcusable, and sometimes to give them the reward of some outward Services, and sometimes for the sake of the righteous that live amongst them; as God made an offer to Abraham of sparing Sodom, if there had been Ten Righteous in the City: and sometimes that by them he may correct and chastise his children; sometimes to make room for some greater Judgements, as Isa. 14.29. That the Serpent's root may bring forth a Cockatrice; and sometimes to leave men to themselves, and to give them over as in a desperate condition: as a Physician withdraws himself from the administration of Physic when he finds the Disease invincible unto the means: So God speaks of Israel, Isa. 1.5. Why should you be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more. As the Husbandman gives over the Ploughing and the Harrowing of that ground that will not by all his Husbandry be reclaimed from barrenness, and Weeds. And I beseech God deliver us from such a deliverance. We ought to pray unto God that he will not withdraw his Corrections from us until he hath ●one the work of Grace upon us.  
But my meaning is this: First, That we have no way to engage God unto deliverance, no way for us assuredly to obtain it at his hands, but by that Course that I have prescribed: And secondly, That God useth not to give a merciful, and a comfortable deliverance unto any but those that seek unto him in that way. It is a fearful thing when God removes his judgements before we remove our Sins; when the case is with us as Reverend Gildas in his Epistle recordeth it of the Britons, not to their comfort but their terror, A while ceased (saith he) the attempts of our enemies, but yet not ceased the wickedness of our Countrymen, our Foes lest our People, but our People lest not their Iniquities; and this was no good presage, and I pray God it prove not our case. There is cause enough for us to tremble at the very thought of the departures of Calamities from us, if we consider how little they have wrought upon us.  
But to the purpose, Take it in these four Branches.  
First, there is no obtaining of mercy and favour from God, which is the Fountain of all our comfortable and true blessings and deliverances, but by Humiliation for sin past. Secondly, Repentance, or Conversion from sin unto God. Third- Prayer. And fourthly, Faith, which must present them all unto God in Christ.  
And all these in their efficacy depend upon one another; No Conversion without Humiliation, no Prayer without Repentance, no effectual Prayer or Repentance without Faith.  
First, no reconciling of God, nor obtaining of his favour and mercy, without humiliation for sin past.  
See how God threatens the people of the Jews for want of this, jer. 44.10, 11, etc. They are not humbled even unto this day, neither have they feared, nor walked in my Law, nor in my Statutes that I set before you, and before your Fathers; what follows? Therefore saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, behold I will set my face against you for evil, and to cut off all judah, etc.  
See Isa. 22.12, 13. And many other places, where God lays the cause of the continuance and increase of his fury upon the want of this. And if we search the whole Scripture, and the History of God's deal with the several people of the world, we shall never find that God was ever reconciled to any without this. And God is no Changeling, He is uniform in his Actions, He is the same God still as he was then, hates Sin as much now as ever he did, nothing can reconcile him unto Sin; The Blood of Christ could not reconcile him unto Sin, though it reconciled him unto Sinners; and therefore as long as we are at peace with Sin, and at peace with ourselves in Sin, there is no peace to be had with God: His answer will be to all our Petitions for peace like that Answer of jehu unto joram, 2 Kings 9.22. Is it peace jehu? (saith he) And he answered, What peace so long as the whoredoms of thy mother jezabel and her witchcrafts are so many? Such hath the Answer of God been a long time unto this Nation, and such will it ever be until we are humbled under his hand for our Sins. It is our peace that hinders our peace, the dead and dull peace of our security, that hinders the peace of unity; our peace with our Sins hinders our peace with God; we have had indeed feigned Humiliations, Iezebels Fasts, But we have not been exercised in true Humiliation and Fasting, and therefore we return without a blessing; we have often indeed moved the question as it were unto God, but he hath answered us as jehu did him in a manner, in his effectual and operative word, in the continuance and increase of our afflictions, What peace, as long as the Impieties, and Iniquities of England are so many, and there is so little humiliation for them? It is the very proper and immediate end for which God sends affliction, that he may make Sin bitter unto us, that that bitterness may produce a sanctified grief, etc. See jer. 2.19. and 4.18.  
Indeed there can be no peace with God without Humiliation for sin, because without this can be no Repentance or Conversion from Sin, for this is the Prologue and the Usher unto Repentance. It is as it were the womb, or rather the travel and labour of the soul whereby Repentance is brought forth. 2 Cor. 7.10. For godly sorrow worketh Repentance to Salvation, not to be repent of.  
So that no Humiliation, no Repentance or Conversion; for that I conceive the Apostle there means by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as he there differenceth it from godly sorrow. It is the change of the heart which is Conversion: And as without Humiliation there is no Repentance, so without Repentance or Conversion there is no Reconciliation to God, and so no merciful, no true and comfortable deliverance to be obtained.  
That is the second Thesis, or proposition, That there is none to be had without Conversion.  
Sin in the foul is like jonah in the Ship, until the rebellious Prophet be cast out, the storm will not cease: And unless this Rebel of Sin be cast out of the soul by a true and serious Conversion unto God, a forsaking of all our sins, and cleaving unto God, the storms of his fury and indignation will be up against us, and if we hear them or feel them not, it is because we are in a dead sleep; yea, we are then many times in greatest danger of them when we feel them least. This tempest is oft most violent when it appears a Calm, and it is a great affliction to be without affliction.  
What should I stand to prove this? The Scripture is every where almost embroidered with this Doctrine; take a place or two for the present.  
See how God threatens not only the continuance, but the multiplication of Judgements upon Israel? Amos 4. What a Chain of calamities he makes for them, and what a heavy weight of judgement he hangeth at the end of it, from the 6. unto the 13. verse, I have given you cleanness of teeth in all your Cities, and want of bread in all your places, yet have you not returned unto me saith the Lord. & c? There the Lord deals with them as they use to do with unruly Prisoners, hangs first the Irons of one affliction upon them, and when those will not tame them, than he hangs more and more upon them, and if none will do, at last he brings them to execution; So there he sent Famine upon them, to make them return, but they would not turn: Then he sends Drowth after the Famine, and Blasting and Mildew and the Palmerworm after the Drowth, and the Pestilence after these, and the Sword with the Pestilence, and the Fire after the Sword, as so many Messengers one after another, to fetch home those Prodigals to their Father's house; but when none of these will do, he threatens them with a Judgement without a name as it were, Therefore thus will I do unto thee O Israel: and because I will do thus unto thee prepare to meet thy God O Israel. If you have a desire to know what this Judgement is, I conceive you may find it in the next chapter, there the Prophet is singing as it were the Dirge, and celebrating the sad funeral of Israel, Chap. 9.1, 2. Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a Lamentation, oh house of Israel. The virgin of Israel is fallen, she shall no more arise, she is forsaken upon her Land, there is none to raise her up: Let this impenitent and secure Nation of ours read this and tremble; And let them read what the Psalmist saith, Psal. 7.12. If a man will not turn he will whet his sword.  
And what a Commentary our blessed Saviour makes upon the slaughter of the Galileans, and of those upon whom the Tower in Siloam fell, Luk. 13. and the same gloss will hold upon all those sad Rubrics of Blood and ruin that have befallen others before us in this Nation; and upon all other black and mournful stories of God's Judgements that are recorded of our own people or others. The waters of the old world; The fire of Sodom and Gomorrah; The desolations of jerusalem; The ruins of Babylon; The late devastations of poor Germany, and Ireland; And the destructions that have befallen so many thousands in this Kingdom; They all seem to cry out unto us in that voice of our Saviour there, Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish: Ye shall all perish as well as they, though perhaps not in the same manner; if ye escape affliction here, ye shall be paid to the full with all arrears and interest in eternal damnation hereafter.  
It is the method of mercy, first to remove sin, and then to remove judgement: Conversion is put before healing, Isa. 6.10. Lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their cares, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. Observe the order, first there is Illumination, than Conversion, then healing of affliction. jer. 30.17. I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds. First, health from sin, and then health from affliction. See Isa. 19.22. and 57.18, 19, 20, 21.  
God must needs hate us, as long as we are in love with sin.  
An impenitent and unconverted heart is shut out from God's favour, and from his mercy; It must needs be so, for he is shut out from Prayer: Prayer is the Key wherewith God hath appointed us to open the treasures of mercy unto us. Now as there is no Repentance or Conversion from sin without Humiliation for sin: So there is no Prayer, I mean no acceptable Prayer without Repentance. We are so far from any assurance of receiving, that God doth not admit us to be Petitioners without it. See Isa. 1.11. 12, 13, 15, 16. jer. 7.8. The Sacrifice of the wicked is an abomimination to the Lord: but the prayer of the upright is his delight: Prov. 15.8. See Prov. 28.9. Psal. 66.18. If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me. It is in vain for us to cry unto God as long as we continue in our sins, and at enmity with God; that blasts all our Petitions, jer. 30.15. Why criest thou for thine affliction? (saith God to Israel) Thy sorrow is incurable for the multitude of thine iniquities, because thy sins were increased I have done these things unto thee,  
These two must indeed help forwards one another, we must Repent, that we may pray, and we must Pray, that we may Repent. As our body warms our , and our  preserve the heat of our bodies; If there were no warmth in our bodies, our  would not warm us; Clothe a cold Carcase never so much, it will not make it warm: so unless we repent, Prayer will do us no good. Now Prayer is the means that God hath ordained for us to obtain help at his hand by, Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you: Mat. 7.7. Call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. Psal. 50 15. If we will not ask deliverance we are like to go without it; All our fight and warring will do no good: james 4.2. Ye lust and have not, ye kill and desire to have, and cannot obtain, ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.  
Prayer is the Bucket of the Soul whereby we are to draw water out of the wells of Salvation; the Chain whereby we are to bind God, as Moses seems to have done, Exod. 32.10. Let me alone (saith God to Moses) that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them in a moment; As if God could not consume if Moses would Pray. These are the surest weapons against our Enemies; joshua cannot prevail in the Field, unless Moses hands be lift up upon the Mount. These are the Arms and Sinews of a Christian, whereby he is to wrestle with God like jacob, and to wrest the blessing out of his hands; Haec vis Deo grata est, saith Tertullian, God loves to be thus overcome by his People; This is the Mathooke whereby we must dig into the Golden Mines of God's blessings; we must ask if we mean to have.  
But it must be a right Prayer, a faithful Prayer; nothing acceptable to God without Faith; Neither Contrition, nor Conversion, not Supplication, can be prevalent, unless they be all offered up, and presented by faith; Without faith it is impossible to please God, Heb. 11.6. See the excellent scale of the Apostle, Rom. 10.13, 14. First he placeth Prayer at the very top of blessing, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But then mark how Prayer gets up, how it climbs unto God's Treasury, How shall they call on him on whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe on him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a Preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent? Faith is the Ladder of jacob, or rather Christ is the Ladder, and Faith is the hands and feet whereby the Angels of our Prayers get up unto God, and procure the Angels of his blessings to descend down again upon us; As Saint james speaketh of Wisdom, so we may say of every blessing: of peace, of deliverance, of all: If any man lack them, let him ask of God, who giveth unto all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and they shall be given him, to wit as fare as it is a gift: as fare as it is fit and convenient for God's glory, for the good of the Church, and for his own good. But then mark, Let him ask in faith nothing wavering, for he that wavereth is like a wave of the Sea, driven with the wind and tossed: As the wave is lifted up toward heaven but falleth down again presently without attaining unto it, so is the motion of a man towards God in Prayer without faith. Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord, that is to say, he can promise himself nothing by such a Prayer. Note every thinking to obtain by Prayer is not Faith, there is a confidence which is an impudent presumption, that is not it. That we mistake not, note the Acts of Faith and its Object, and its ground; First, we must believe that God is, an Atheist cannot pray. Secondly, we must believe that God is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, an Epicure cannot pray. To this latter it is necessary first to believe God's wisdom, that he knows our wants. Secondly, His power, that he is able to relieve us. But many there be that are wise enough, and able enough, that have no good will; Therefore we must in the third place believe that God hath a good will towards us to do it. But how can we believe that, when we are all in ourselves sinners, and his enemies, have nothing in us to engage his love or his good will, but are full of provocations to his wrath? It is necessary therefore in the fourth place that Faith lay hold upon the reconciliation between God and us in Christ jesus; we must therefore believe that Christ hath satisfied for our sins, and justified us by his obedience; And that God hath opened unto us his Exchequer, his Office of mercy in Christ; that he hath given Christ to die for us, and doth accept us in Christ, and for Christ's death and righteousness sake; and that we being accepted, and reconciled by Christ, our Services, our Offerings, our Prayers, our Praises, and all, are accepted in and for him, as God accepted Abel and his Offering. The ground of all this is God's truth in his promise, in the Scriptures: we must believe this to be God's Word, and that offers itself unto our faith in a multitude of Arguments; In the Prophecies fulfilled, In the spirituality and purity of the doctrine, In the perfection thereof for all persons, and callings, and cases; In the weakness, and the simplicity of the Instruments, whereby the work is declared not to be of them, but of God: For as is the man so is his strength; no Agent can work above its faculty; simple men could not possibly of their own store produce such wonderful wisdom; they could not have that wisdom from Satan; the wisdom is too pure, and they were too holy, and too honest; therefore either from good Angels, or from God: If from good Angels, they must needs have it from God, otherwise they were false in presenting it as his, & then they should not be Angels but Devils; if must therefore be from God, and then it will follow that it must be immediately from God by inspiration and illumination of the Spirit, at least in the greatest part of it, (though some were by the ministration of Angels, Gal. 3.19. Heb. 2.2.) Because it witnesseth so of itself, 1 Tim. 3.16. This is confirmed by the wonderful unity & agreement of so various and several Authors in several times and places, and by the very seeming differences, which will show it to be no packed & contrived unity. By the impartiality of Scripture, & the different ways thereof from the impostures of humane policy, setting down the gross slips and falls of the eminentest instruments and professors of that truth, which humane policy would never have done; by the very height and mysteriousnes of the Doctrine. Tertull de Carn. Christ. Credibile est, quia ineptum est, certum est, qui a impossibile est.  
By these and many other Arguments, faith is engaged to believe it to be God's word, and then the promises to be his promises, we must then necessarily believe them to be true; for truth is a perfection, which the perfectest being which is God cannot want. So then Faith must believe the Promises. The sum of all is in Christ, for all the Promises of God are yea and amen in Christ jesus.  
Faith lays hold first upon the Promises of Christ, that we are reconciled unto God by Christ, and so have access to him, & that his ear is at our command (be it spoken with reverence) in Christ; and that though we are Sinners, yet he is our Advocate, and the Propitiation for our sins, Faith first must lay hold upon Christ, fly to Christ, seize upon Christ by adherence, and rolling ourselves upon him for our peace with God and Salvation, embracing him and his merits and righteousness, as the only and the sure means thereof; And then we may and must believe that God is ready to do all things for us, that we shall ask of him in the name, and by the Mediation of Christ, building upon that Promise of Christ, joh. 16.23. And that of the Apostle, Rom. 8.32. He that spared not his own Son, but gave him up to die for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? This we must believe God is willing to do for Christ's sake for us, seeking it of him in Christ, in his good time, and in such measure and manner as shall be best pleasing to him, and most for his glory, the true good of the whole Body of the Church, and the true good of that member that asketh of him: Not that we are bound to believe that we shall receive every particular thing that we ask of God, for God doth sometimes deny out of mercy, (Though we should keep our selves as close as we can unto the Promise in our Prayers, and then we may be sure to speed well) But That God doth lend a gracious ear to our Petitions, we coming to him in Christ, and by Christ (we must look to that;) And that he will give such returns unto them as he shall know to be best. Much more might be said, and profitably said too in this Subject; But if it please God I may have another occasion to enlarge upon these. This is sufficient I hope here to show the necessity of Faith to make Prayer and all duties acceptable to God. He that comes without faith comes without Christ, and then he is not like to speed: for as joseph said to his Brethren concerning Benjamin, so God unto us, Except we bring Christ jesus with us, we shall not see his face. He is the great Master of requests, from whose hand God receives all our Petitions; He is our Advocate; He is our high Priest by whom we are to offer up all our spiritual Sacrifices, the Sacrifices of a broken spirit in humiliation, Psalm. 51.17. The Sacrifices of righteousness in Conversion from the ways of sin to the ways of righteousness, Psalm. 4.5. The Sacrifice or Incense of Prayer, Psal. 141.2. He is the Priest, and he is the Temple, and he is the Altar, and he is the Sacrifice of all our Sacrifices, that propitiateth God to us and them all, and his merit is the Incense that perfumeth our Prayers and all other our Offerings. See Revel. 8.3. and therefore it must be faithful Prayer.  
But I have done with this Point, only give me leave now to present my hearty and humble request unto all the people of these distressed Nations, that they will now at length leave doting upon things that cannot help, and depend no longer upon earthly and transitory aides, after so many miscarriages of our carnal confidence, whereby God hath knocked our fingers, as it were, to make us lose our holt from those false dependences, and that they will now betake themselves speedily and earnestly unto God. By these ways which are here prescribed. I forbidden you not, neither doth God forbid, but doth both permit and require that that you should make use of all honest and lawful outward succours, which he in his good providence shall administer unto us, for God will not have us to be idle beggars; And it is a good rule that I have read somewhere, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. David must go forth with his Army against the Philistines at the hearing of the sound of going in the tops of the Mulberry trees; Though that were the sign that God gave him of his going before him to smite them, 1 Chron. 14.15. It is the honour that God is pleased to do us, to make us serve him with our endeavours in the gracious works of his mercies towards us. There is a time indeed when God bids a people stand still and see the salvation of the Lord: But that is usually when means is not to be had: and God hath been wonderful in this unto his Majesty, and the suffering Party of this Kingdom of late, if we have eyes to observe it; But where means are offered, they must not be neglected lest we despise the providence of the Almighty. It is not for us to put God to miracles, nor to cast ourselves down from the Pinnacle of the Temple, in a bold presumption of his sending of Angels to support us, when we may have the benefit of a pair of stairs to help us down; that is none of our ways wherein God hath promised us protection, Psalm. 91.11. The devil knew this well enough it is like, and therefore it was perhaps that he mangled that verse of Scripture in the temptation of our Saviour, Matth. 4.6. God in the barren wilderness made the Clouds the barn or granary of the people as it were, and sent them Manna from heaven, and turned the Rock into a River in that dry and thirsty Land: But when they came into the Land of Canaan where there was Corn in the Land, those miraculous granaries of heaven were shut up; neither do we read of any melting Rock about jordan. Our blessed Saviour in those wonderful miracles of the Loaves, though he was as well able to create as to multiply, yet he despised not the few Loaves and Fishes that were to be had, nor would he suffer the fragments to be lost; we ought to be good husbands and thrifty of God's power and providence, and not think to lavish it away in wonders when we please. Whatsoever we ask at God's hand we must endeavour to procure too by the use of God's means, otherwise we deny ourselves what we ask of him, and he offers unto us; When thou askest grace use the means of grace; If thou desirest to be freed from sin, avoid occasions and temptations, otherwise thou temptest both God and the Devil to, and there is no great need of that. If we ask bread at God's hands we must labour for it too with our own, lest God subscribe the rule of the Apostle unto us, He that will not labour let him not eat. The reason why we fail so much in our Petitions, is not because God is hard unto us, but because we are hard unto ourselves: Therefore remember we are bound in conscience to use all lawful means for our deliverance, and to bless that God that shall afford us any. Stir up yourselves therefore in the name of God, up and be doing in all just and honourable ways for the deliverance of our gracious King, and our distressed Country, from those great oppressions and persecutions that are exercised against them, and do not through sloth and Cowardice make yourselves answerable unto God for all those traitorous cruelties that are practised upon the Lords Anointed, and for your own ruin and destruction; But take heed of trusting in the means, or in yourselves, but in God only; And let it be your principal and first care to engage him on our side, and then we need not care who is against us. Away then speedily unto him every one of you, with hearts truly humbled for your sins past: with sincere and serious resolutions of amendment of life, with earnest and fervent Prayer and Supplication unto our Almighty helper, at the Throne of Grace, offering up ourselves and our requests unto him in the true faith of Christ jesus, that the Lord may now look toward us again with a favourable eye: And that he may apply the Balsams of his heavenly mercies unto the rankled and gangrened wounds of these bleeding and languishing Nations. Consider the miscries of your Picus and Gracious Prince. Consider the growing desolations of your Countries. Consider the most wretched devastations of Truth, Religion, and the Church of God. Cast an eye upon those clouds that are yet gathered about us, upon those farther judgements that threaten us. Call to mind the mournful and sad condition of your Cities, of your Families, and the ruin that hangs over yourselves, your Wives, your Children. Remember the streams and the rivers of the Blood of your Friends and Countrymen. Let all those distractions and confusions that have overspread these Nations come before your eyes; And apply yourselves with all earnest importunity to the God of mercy for relief. Your King calls for it, your Country calls for it, your poor dishevelled mother the Church calls for it; The regard of your our own lives, your Liberties, your Safety, your Religion, of your Honour and Reputation calls for it. Your sins and all our sins have kindled these flames, let your penitent tears, and earnest and faithful Prayers endeavour to quench them. The anger of the Lord incensed by our iniquities is the root of all these miseries, let us seek to appease his anger by the incense of our fervent devotions. God is a powerful God, and is able to help us; He is a merciful God, and willing to relieve and secure all those that turn unto him with penitent hearts, The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, yea unto all such as call upon him faithfully Methinks we may hear him clucking us unto him, as A Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings, that he may hid us there; oh let us run unto him! Me thinks we may see him spreading out his arms, and stretching out his hands unto us, as he did once unto Israel, that he may reach us unto himself, and embrace us in our return; oh let us not stand out against his mercy to our own ruin! When the Prodigal child in the Parable returned, how ready was the good father to go forth and meet him? how did he fall upon his neck, and kissed him? Oh let us then feed no longer upon the Husks with the Swine, upon the empty shells of created helps by relying upon them, but let us go to our Father, our heavenly Father, our merciful Father, and say unto him in the bitterness of our souls, and the compunction of our spirits, Father we have sinned against heaven and against thee, and are no more worthy to be called thy Children. Let us now at length lay aside our strifes, our divisions, our wicked, and foolish, and frantic, and worldly contentions, about shadows, and trifles, and impertinences, And let us all join together to quench the fires that are kindled in our houses about our ears. Consider how long God hath waited for this; He hath been seven years now upon the matter preaching this Lecture unto us. It hath lost many thousands of lives to teach it us. Oh let us now learn it then, and practise it, lest we answer for all that blood that hath been shed. Take heed you weary not out the patience of the Almighty, but let his long suffering lead you to repentance, lest his despised mercy be turned into the greater fury, and you be made to pay a heavy interest, for all his for bearance, in eternal destruction. Oh delay not the time, lest the Decree of utter subversion come forth against us and there be no remedy. We must seek to him if ever we be relieved, let us do it quickly that we may be speedily relieved; let us do it quickly lest it be too late; away with procrastinations, Illud modò & modò non habet modum; There is no end of our anons, & too morrows, if we yield unto our Tempter, and our corrupt hearts. Seek the Lord whilst he may be found, call upon him whilst he is near. Plough up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord. Oh make haste, for the day declineth, the shadows of the Evening are stretched out, the Morning cometh and also the Night, if you will return, return, come.  
But especially let me bespeak you, my beloved Brethren, and fellow sufferers, unto whom I desire to empty out my soul in this Exhortation. You that are the Loyal people of the Land, whom God hath so long disciplined under the yoke of the oppression of your enemies; Let not all that pruning, and digging about you prove in vain, lest he break out at length against you in a fare greater judgement. Oh despise not the correction of the Lord, nor cast his reproofs behind your back; deceive not yourselves with vain hopes; Trust not to the righteousness of your cause: Alas have we forgotten so soon how our wickedness hath betrayed it once already? And Sin is as great a Traitor still as ever. joshua and Israel had a good cause, and a good Commission even from God himself, and had received great pledges of the Almighty's favour; The Sea divides asunder to give them passage, and what was a Wall unto them, was a Sepulchre unto their enemies; The Mountains skipped like Ramms, and the little Hills like young Sheep, as it were, before them; The Walls of jericho fall down at the noise of them, and instead of being a fence for their Adversaries, become a pavement unto them. These, and a thousand more favours God had done for them; and yet though their cause was never so good, and their Commission never so authentical, and though all these privileges were bestowed upon them, yet we know what one Achan did amongst them. See the Story, joshuah 7. Alas my Brethren, how many Achans are there amongst us! we may even tremble to think on it. I love you too well to flatter you in this. Israel was God's people, and Midian was his Enemy, and yet when the Children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. Let your own sad experience make you wise; you see whither your Sins have brought you and your Cause, and your gracious King. Take heed you run not again into the same error for which you have already suffered so much, and do actually suffer. God hath put you to the Trial once again whether you will receive mercy or no, by making new offers of deliverance unto you; let not your sins now stand in the way to divert his mercies from you. Do not run away from God by your iniquities, when he is coming toward you in his goodness. Oh I beseech you be humbled; be reform; let us have no more of your Oaths and Blasphemies, and horrid Execrations; Your Dammees, and your Sinke-mees; I fear there are some of your number now cursing & banning in Hell for it, for all their Loyalty, and their righteous Cause; and how shall they escape, think we, that love damnation so well as to pray for it? It is the monster and prodigy of Corruption, that the Devil should so besot any soul.  
Let us have no more of your swinish Drunkenness, nor your riotous revel, nor your brutish Lusts.  
No more of your contemning of God, and his Truth, and his Worship, of his Ministers, and his Ordinances: You see God will not be contemned; I pray you consider it hereafter, lest if you miscarry again you miscarry without recovery, and your King, and the Church, and these whole Nations fall with you: Oh endeavour I beseech you to make amends for former miscarriages.  
Do not think you can do any thing without God: leave him out of he business no more.  
Trust not to the Scots; Trust not to the Welsh; though I hope they will prove faithful; Trust not to your strength, your forces, your friends; Trust not to the people; All these will come to nought without God; Trust in God, take him along with you in all your ways; Consult with him in his Word, let him be Precedent of your Counsels of War, and take the rules of justice and Piety from him. Since there must be yet more War, remember this.  
Bethink yourselves of your former sins, and forsake them; Enter into a true, and a holy Covenant with God, (you cannot think I mean the solemn League and Covenant) but enter into a Covenant of righteousness, of holiness and obedience with God; dedicate and consecrated yourselves unto him, and then the Lord will be with you; Be careful to fear God, as well as honour the King; yea let the fear of God be the bond of your obedience to his Anointed, else it is worth nothing; we must submit to the King for the Lords sake: and then we must needs submit to the Lord for his own sake. If you be Traitors to your God, you will be likewise to your King: You know my meaning, your impieties and vile courses have betrayed him once already; I speak not of you all, no, God forbidden I should wrong that happy combination of Loyalty and Religion, that hath shined in so many of you so gloriously, I acknowledge it, I honour it, I rejoice to think of it, I could even kiss the dust of their feet: But let me beseech them to increase more and more. And for others, I beseech them to take better Courses; I beseech them for their own sake, for their soul's sake, for their lives sake, for their distressed and pious King's sake, for their Country's sake, for the poor tottered and forsaken Churches sake, yea for God's sake. If beseeching will not do, But oh that it would! If not, I must take the boldness to require them, to command them in the name of God, The great, and glorious, and terrible Lord God: In the name of Christ jesus, (we have power to do it) In that name at which the Devils tremble; To conjure them, As they will answer at the dreadful day of judgement for all the misery that may befall their King; The ruin and destruction that may yet farther befall their Country; for the dishonour of righteousness, and the miscarriage of that holy Cause which they have to manage; for the reproach of Religion and the Truth, and the countenance of wickedness and falsehood, and the utter devastation of this Church which may follow upon it: That they give themselves to Humiliation and Repentance, and to the practice of faithful and earnest Prayer and Supplication to God. The God of heaven work it upon you all, and make this poor, and plain, but very friendly advice, acceptable unto you my dear friends and Brethren, and fellow sufferers, that you may receive it as a message sent unto you from God for your good: I might say much more, and multiply arguments, but I must not.  
There remaineth yet one thing to make my building answerable to my platform, to speak some few words of direction for the right performance of these works, and I have done, they must be but a few, the Lord supply what shall be wanting.  
1. In general to all.  
1. Let us all set upon a serious search and trial of our hearts and ways, according to that advice of the Prophet in the like case, Lam. 3.39, 40.  
Let us take the survey of our former thoughts, of our Words, and of our Actions.  
Of the substance, of the circumstances, and aggravations of our sins, of our omissions, commissions, and repetitions of the same sins.  
Of our failings in the end of our obedience, in not aiming at God's glory in our performances, but rather sacrificing to our own glory, and to our worldly and wicked purposes, which hath polluted our best Actions.  
Of our failing in the rule of obedience.  
In the matter, and in the manner, and in the measure, etc. Let us examine ourselves, and judge ourselves, not by the customs of the world, nor by the opinions of men, nor by the humours of the times, nor by the corrupt imaginations and partial affections of our own hearts: But setting ourselves before the tribunal, and at the Bar of our Consciences, as before the tribunal of God; Let us sift ourselves by the Law of God, and consider wherein we have failed, either in matter of piety towards God, or in matter of justice and charity to one another, or in matter of Sobriety, and Purity, and Chastity, in ourselves; Trying our souls, and putting Interrogatories to our consciences how we have lived in respect of every several Commandment.  
And when we have found out our sins, let us condemn and judge ourselves for them, acknowledging them unto God with compunction of Spirit, considering what a glorious and powerful, and what a gracious and merciful God we have offended: What a tender Saviour we have dishonoured; what a holy Law we have transgressed; what precious souls we have endangered; what a glorious inheritance we have forfeited; what horror of hell and eternal damnation we have deserved; what reproach we have brought upon the name of Christ, and upon the profession of the Gospel, and what ruin and destruction we have provoked hereby upon ourselves and others, upon the King, the Church, and the Commonwealth, etc.  
Secondly, Let this set us upon a loathing of sin, and of our silves for sin, after the pattern of holy job. job 42.6.  
Thirdly, Let this put us upon our slight from sin. And upon the pursuit of righteousness. Seeking unto God for pardon for what is past, with hope in his mercy toward us in Christ jesus, and imploring the gracious assistance of his holy spirit for the time to come, that we may be able to resist sin, and to cleave unto him in holiness.  
Fourthly, Let us set ourselves upon the diligent and conscionable use of the means of grace, in reading the Scriptures, and meditating frequently on them; Hearing the word with reverence and godly fear; & examining all our thoughts, words, and actions thereby, keeping this resolution as an unreversible fixed Law in our hearts, not to allow ourselves in any thing that is displeasing to God, though it bring never so much pleasure, or profit, or seeming honour with it; withal we must exercise ourselves in the pious and frequent receiving of the Sacrament, the neglect whereof, as it may be well suspected to be one of the great floudgates of iniquity and impiety amongst us, so the restoring of the Christian and frequent use, with the due administration thereof, would likely be a great means to recover holiness amongst us.  
Fifthly, we must apply ourselves to some honest business, and some good employments, (Idleness being the great harbinger of sin, the devil being like a great and exacting Lord of a manor, laying claim to all the woste,) and to a Christian watchfulness over ourselves, prudently avoiding the occasions of sin, and endeavouring to foresee, and provide against temptations. It would be very helpful I conceive, every Evening to make even with God (the English word Evening me thinks may put us in mind of it, and perhaps that may be the reason of the name,) by turning Pythagorases rule into Christianity: Examining ourselves always before we sleep concerning our thoughts and demeanour that day, with some such questions as the Philosopher's verse doth imply, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉; Where I have been? What I have done? What duties I should have done that day and have omitted. And seeking pardon and grace for the future, and strengthening ourselves against our sins with holy resolutions. And if every morning we would bethink ourselves what temptations we may fall into that day, and if we can, contrive prudently the avoidance of them: if not, to desire God's help, and the grace of his Spirit to arm us against them.  
Sixthly, It will behoove us to bend ourselves most against those sins unto which we are most inclined, and against our master-sinnes.  
Seventhly, To be wary of our Society, and as much as we may to avoid evil Company, and to associate ourselves with those that are good; evil communication corrupts good manners.  
Eighthly, To meditate often of the presence of God, who is with us every where, seeing all our most secret thoughts, hearing our most whispering words, and observing all our most private actions, See Psal. 139. and meditate upon it. To contemplate of the hour of death, the frailty of life, the vanity of the world, the profitableness of righteousness, having the promises of this life, and that which is to come; of the all-sufficiency of God and Christ, of the day of judgement, of the joys of heaven, and the pains of hell; of eternity, and above all, of God's love toward us in Christ jesus: of his Passion, Resurrection, Ascension; of his Kingdom, Priesthood, and Glory; and of the glorious patterns of his holy life.  
Ninthly, Be frequent and fervent in Suppplications to God for the King, and his Family, the Church, the Kingdoms, for the obtaining of a remedy to our miseries and desolations, with submission to his Will, and regard unto his glory. And let all be offered up with a firm faith in Christ Jesus, resting upon God's mercy toward us in him.  
For a help unto these Duties, I do not undertake to prescribe any thing in this kind in particular; but if I might without offence give my advice, I would advise all good Christians that wish well to the King, & Church, and Kingdom, to give themselves to a private weekly Fast, once a week at the least during these miseries, to be employed in earnest Supplication to God for pardon of the sins, and the removal of his judgements, from the King, and his people, and these Nations, and for the obtaining of grace and holiness, and in other holy duties, agreeable thereunto.  
Now for the Loyal Party in particular, I have only thus much to say.  
1. To entreat them to get honest, pious, & able Ministers amongst them, that may instruct them, and guide them in the ways of God, and assist them with prayer and Supplication.  
2. That they make it their principal care to set up Religion in their Camps, and to keep up a pious discipline amongst the Soldiers, in case they shall have more to do in that way.  
3. That they take heed of violence and revengeful thoughts, which may engage God against them; and that they meditate not cruelty or retaliation: But that their endeavours be fixed upon the honour of God, and directed to the good of the King, and the Church and Kingdom, with a resolution to be regulated and guided by his Majesty, as they ought, and not to take upon them to be the carvers of their own reparations, nor seeking to return evil for evil, for the private injuries they have received, but observing that golden rule, of the Apostle, Let your moderation be known unto all men, that they may not by their fury and violence both displease God, and overturn the business they shall have to manage; but that by their meekness, and patience, and Christian carriage, they may stop the reviling mouths of their adversaries, and show themselves to be sincere Christians, as well as Loyal Subjects. The Lord of strength, and wisdom, and grace, and mercy, Arm us with his Strength, direct us by his Wisdom, sanctify us with his Grace, and Crown us with his Mercy, Through him who is the Lord of all Power, and Wisdom, and Grace, and Mercy, even Christ jesus our Lord, Amen.   

A HELP FOR HUMILIATION.  
O Lord the Great and dreadful God, keeping the Covenant & mercy to them that love thee, and to them that keep thy Commandments; And a God of judgement and fury, even a consuming fire unto thine enemies: Bow down thine ears, O Lord, and hear, open thine eyes, O Lord, and see the great afflictions and miseries of thy poor and wretched people, who are assembled before thee this day to call upon thee for mercy Stir up our hearts we besseech thee, that we may seek thy face and obtain thy pity & compassion towards us. O Lord 〈◊〉 God, we do not come before thee in any trust or confidence in our own righteousness, but in the multitude 〈◊〉 thy mercies towards us 〈◊〉 Christ Jesus, in whom the haste promised us a gracious access unto thee, who is both ●● Priest and our Sacrifice, to make an atonement betwixt thee and us: by whose hand we desire to offer up unto thee the sacrifices, not of Bullocks and Goats, but of troubled spirits, and broken and contrite hearts, which thou hast assured us thou wilt not despise. We confess O Lord, that we have sinned and committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled even by departing from thy Precepts, and from thy judgements, neither have we hearkened unto thy Servants which spoke in thy name to our Kings, our Princes, and our Fathers, and to all the people of the Land; We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God to walk in thy Laws which thou hast set before us by thy Servants the Prophets, neither the terrors of Sinai, nor the comforts of Zion, neither the threaten of Moses, nor the gracious Promises of Christ have wrought upon our stubborn souls to make us forsake our sins in the fear of the one, nor to embrace righteousness in the hope of the other. Thou hast assayed many times to draw us unto thee by the Cords of love in great mercies and blessings which thou hast showered down upon us; Thou hast given us the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth; Thou hast opened the Treasures of thy bounty unto us in the plenty and abundance of the fruits of the ground; glorified thyself in wonderful deliverances of us from the violence and conspiracies of our adversaries; Thou hast been a shadowunto us against the heat, and a shelter against the storm; Thou hast strengthened the bars of our gates, and made peace in all our borders; and to these and many other mercies thou hast added that which is above all, in settling the true Religion among us, and making the light of the Gospel to shine upon us: the splendour whereof made us unto the greatest part of the world beside, as the dwellings of Israel unto the rest of the Land of Egypt where light was given by the privilege of thy goodness when all the rest of the Land was overspread with a black night of palpable darkness; And for all these thy mercies we have returned unto thee no other recompense but rebellion & disobedience, most scornfully and unthankefully, most impiously and insolently have we thrown thy blessings in thy face, and fought against thee with thine own mercies by abusing them to the dishonour of thy great and glorious name; Our prosperity hath made us fat with jesurun, and we have kicked against thee our God. In the strength that we have received continually from thy bounty we have continually rebelled against thee. Thy liberality unto us in the rich supply of thy Creatures hath been made by us the furniture of gluttony and drunkenness: the incentives of lust and uncleanness: the wardrobe of pride and vanity; whilst we have neglected to bestow them upon those holy purposes for which thou gavest them, in relieving of thy poor members, and in the maintenance promotion, and ornament of thy holy service: we have filled ourselves with costly and intemperate diet to the robbing of thee our God, the destruction of our bodies, the disabling of our souls for the performance of holy duties unto thee: yea even to the debasing of our very natures as it were, turning ourselves into brutish and unreasonable Creatures, to the damage not only of our Piety & Christianity, but even of our very being and humanity itself: whilst thy Son Christ Jesus hath stood hungry and thirsty at our doors in his poor distressed and afflicted Members, left destitute not only of our succour or relief, but even of our pity and compassion. We have clothed ourselves like the rich man in the Gospel with fine Linen, with rich and sumptuous attire, without any due regard unto our estates or callings whilst thy Son Christ Jesus in his poor Members hath stood stood quivering and quaking with cold and nakedness, being left by us a prey both to torment and disgrace: We ourselves have dwelled in seiled houses; to the splendour and ornament whereof we have engaged the riches both of Art and Nature, whilst we have suffered thy house, the place wherein thine honour dwelleth to lie waste, and shared it betwixt sordidness, deformity and ruin, to the reproach of thy service, and scandal of Religion; yea O Lord we have not so much as taken care for the maintenance of their bodies that feed our souls; we have muzzled the Ox that treadeth out the Corn, and rob thee our God in tithes and offerings; the meagrenesse and poverty of many thy poor Ministers that spend themselves in labour for the salvation of our souls, do in too too many places of this Land testify against us.  
Those glorious deliverances which thou hast given us from our enemies have but rendered us so much the more potent and active enemies unto thee as if thy preservation of us had been no blessing, but rather an offence and injury unto us. Our long and lasting peace hath been made by us but a long and lasting opportunity of sin, and in our freedom from enemies upon earth, we have most impiously fought against heaven and thee our God.  
And that we might fill up the measure of our unthankfulness, and make it equal unto the measure of thy goodness (if it were possible) by the contempt and abuse of all sorts of thy mercies, we have scorned and trampled upon all thy spiritual blessings; We have turned the very grace of God into wantonness; we have made thy very Gospel the savour of death unto death unto ourselves, by resisting and refusing the gracious offers of salvation which thou hast made unto us in Christ Jesus: whilst thy promises of Grace have been used by us as incitements and encouragements to sin, and upon the very ground and foundation of thy most incomprehensible goodness towards us, we have built up the Babel of confusion, the cursed building of disobedience and impiety against thee; yea O Lord there are too too many of us that have trodden under foot the Son of God, & have counted the blood of the Covenant wherewith we have been sanctified an unholy thing; and have done despite unto the Spirit of grace, whilst they have made a mock of Religion and Piety; to the great disheartening of the work of thy service; the horrible dishonour of thy Majesty; to the deplorable scandal of our Christian profession; and to the almost (O Lord that it might be no more) inevitable ruin and damnation of their own souls.  
Thus, thus, O Lord our God have we requited thee for all thy goodness and mercy towards us; and the more gracious thou hast showed thyself unto us, the more wicked and sinful have we been against thee.  
Thou hast made us a pleasant and fruitful Land, even as the Land of Sodom and Gomorrah which was as the Garden of God; And we have (it may be feared) outdone the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah: their sins were pride and idleness, and fullness of bread, together with horrid and unnatural lusts; and which of these sins have not been committed in our Land? Yea many more sins not inferior unto these have sent up their cry unto heaven against us: and it is the wonder of thy mercy and forbearance that thou hast not long ere this sent down fire from heaven upon us to have consumed our whole Nation into ashes; we have tasted deeper of the Cup of thy mercies then Israel, and yet the measure of our sins (as we may justly fear) hath been no way less than the sins of unthankful Israel; yea we have justified both jerusalem and Samaria by our iniquities, and therefore it were most just in thee to give us up to desolation as thou hast done them.  
But O Lord our God, thou hast not so left us off: when thy mercies would not work upon us, thou hast assayed us with thy bitter chastisements and corrections, that thou mightest thereby have whipped us from our sins; when Cordials and pleasant medicines would not heal us, thou hast used the bitter pills, and irksome purgatives of calamities and afflictions; thou hast applied the lance unto our swelling sores, by suffering thy wrath to grow hot against us in great and many miseries that thou hast sent upon us; Thou hast pruned us and dressed us by the sharp instruments of thy chastisements, that we might be reclaimed from our wildness and barrenness and yield forth the fruits of obedience unto thee; Sometimes thou hast sent thy destroying Angel amongst us, with his sword drawn against us in the Plague and Pestilence, whereby many thousands of us have been hurried into the pit of destruction, that the plague of our bodies might have cured us of the Plague of our hearts; otherwhiles the heavens have become brass unto us, and the earth iron; The Creatures have refused to yield their fruit to the sustenance of such unthankful wretches, that thou mightest have cured the diseases that we had contracted by our fullness, by the contrary medicines of scarcity and want; and so have reduced us to an healthful temper of humility and obedience unto thee: proclaiming thereby as it were a general and necessary fast unto us in the house of nature, that we might have made a virtue of that necessity in the exercise of repentance; Sometimes thou hast affrighted and amazed us with prodigies in the Creatures, by wonderful and unwonted changes in the several parts and operations of the universe, by rare and unusual Comets in the heavens, and in the air, by fire from heaven sent upon our Churches and dwellings; thou hast shot thy thunderbolts and hailstones against us; the earth hath trembled and quaked under us, as not being able to bear the weight and burden of our sins; and the waters have broken forth upon us by sudden deluges to our destruction, to mind us of our great pollutions whereby our iniquities have over slowed against thee; yea they have altered their courses in their ebbings and flow, to admonish us of our unnatural motions in our sins; and when none of these things would prevail, thou hast drawn out the Sword of our neighbour nations against us; and because that would not work upon us, thou hast now for a long time put the spirit of frenzy and madness into our hearts, and armed us with fury against ourselves, making us to become the executioners of thy just wrath upon our own Nation, by sheathing our swords in our own bowels; thou hast divided us asunder, & dashtus in pieces one against another, that by our enmity with one another thou mightst have scourged us to the embracement of peace & reconciliation with thee; thou hast put out the glory of our Nation and cast our Crown down to the ground; thou hast raised up a rebellion amongst the people against thine anointed, and suffered them to prevail in their wickedness, that thou mightest thereby chastise us for our manifold Rebellions against thee our God. The Pillars of that happy Government (which thou hadstset up amongst us) are broken; thy Sanctuaries profaned and demolished; the light of thy truth is eclipsed and clouded by the foggy and poisonous mists of many Heresies, Blasphemies, and Corruptions; and the Order and beauty of thy holy Service is continually interrupted and defaced.  
Thou hast besieged us with the Armies of thy Fury on every side; Thou hast shut us up unto misery and affliction Thou hast ●ndled a fire in the Forest of our Carmell which hath consumed the green tree and the dry, the flame thereof is not quenched, and our Faces are burnt therein: A Sword, o Lord, a Sword is sharpened, and also surbished, it is sharpened, and hath made a sore slaughter amongst us; it is furbished, that it may glitter, it contemneth the rod of thy Son: as every Tree, thou hast given forth a Commission unto it to devour the Inhabitants of the Land; our blood, o Lord, hath run like water; our children are fatherless; our wives are widows; there is a Conspiracy of the Prophets in the midst of us, like a roaring Lion ravening the Prey, they have devoured Souls; our Substance is snatched from us by Rapine and Violence, our Cities have been surprised by Treachery and Oppression; Thou hast made the enemy to possess our houses, and our holy places they have defiled; Destruction cometh, and we have sought Peace, and there is none; Mischief is come upon Mischief, and Rumour upon Rumour; The Law is perished from the Priest, and Council from the Ancients; Thou hast set up wicked and ungodly men to rule over us, thou hast cursed our blessings unto us; The King mourneth, and the Prince is clothed with desolation, and the hands of the people of the land are troubled: These things, o Lord, and much more hast thou done unto us; Thou hast made our own wickedness to correct us, and our back-slidings to reprove us, that we might know & see, that it is an evil thing and bitter that we have forsaken the Lord our God, and that thy fear is not in us; from the Crown of the head to the sole of the foot there is no soundness in us; and yet, o Lord our God, we have not humbled ourselves under thy mighty hand; we have not turned unto thee that smitest us, thou hast wounded us and we have not grieved, thou hast afflicted us and we have not laid it to heart; the spirit of drunkenness and slumber is upon us, so that we have not relented at thy chastisements; we have neither been sensible of thy judgements, nor lamented our sins, nor sought unto thee for mercy as we should have done, nor forsaken our iniquities: But in the very midst of the fire of thine indignation we have increased our impieties against thee, and triumphed in our Pollutions, and our abominable Transgressions; thou hast called us to weeping and to mourning, but behold joy and gladness; slaying of Oxen, and killing of sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine, the voice of the desperate Epicure is in the hearts of too many of us (let us eat and drink, for to morrow we shall die;) although all this be come upon us, yet we still continue in our sins: thy Name is continually dishonoured amongst us by wicked and fearful Oaths and Blasphemies: thy service neglected and trampled on by Profaneness; We have said it is in vain to serve the Lord, or what profit is it that, we should keep his Ordinances, or walk mournfully before the Lord of Hosts? We call the proud happy, and they that work wickedness are set up, yea they that tempt God are even delivered; We accounted thy Worship a dishonourable thing, and esteem thy Service as a thing of nought: We have loathed the heavenly Manna of thy Word, and corrupted thy sacred Truth, to turn it into a Plea for our very sins, and to make it a Cloak for seditious and ungodly practices.  
The holy Seals of thy grace and mercy which thou hast ordained for us in the blessed Sacraments have been corrupted and rejected by us. (Too too many of us have sworn unto iniquity, and made wicked Oaths and Covenants to bind us unto sin, and the works of Satan, whilst we have broken our holy Covenant with thee our God.) Thy holy Sabbaths are continually profaned; the joyful solemnities of thy people abolished and rejected; Rebellion and Disobedience is become a Virtue; Murder and Bloodshed is taken for a work of Piety; Rapine and Injustice pleadeth Privilege; Gluttony and Drunkenness, Adultery and Uncleanness are esteemed matters of allowable merriment: yea the subject of our Boasting and Glory, and to reprove them is taken for sauciness and absurdity; Carnal Confidence hath set up the arm of flesh, and disarmed us of our trust in thee: And Covetousness hath made gold our hope, and we have said unto the wedge of Gold, thou art our Confidence; Idolatry and Superstition, Hypocrisy, Vainglory, and Heartlessenesse hath polluted and our Fast and Prayers, turned thy face away from our Services: Schism and Faction hath broken the bonds of holy Communion amongst the people in the Church: envy and malice hath set us on fire against one another: Pride and Vanity hath still the dominion over us: Usury and Sacrilege are established by Law amongst us: unjust gain is taken for godliness: Perjury is used for Wisdom and Policy: Our hearts are estranged from thee, and from heavenly things, and set upon the vanities of this present world, and the sinful pleasures of the Flesh; and all these Mischiefs and Corruptions are bred in the womb, and nourished in the lap of that spiritual ignorance and blindness that is in us: Thou, o Lord our God, hast a Controversy with the Inhabitants of the Land, because there is no Truth, nor Mercy, nor Knowledge of God in the Land; by swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing Adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood: hence it is, o Lord, that thou continuest still to plead with us in judgement, and that thy hand is stretched out still: Hence it is that thou still withholdest peace from us, that thou hast stopped the Current of thy favour towards us, and hast delivered us up into the hands of our Enemies. Lord we acknowledge that thou art just in this and all thy dealing with us; Yea, O Lord, we acknowledge thou art merciful therein unto us, that thou hast not long ago given us up to a total ruin and desolation, and suffered us at once to have been devoured by our enemies: Thou hast not dealt with us, O Lord, after our sins, but hast punished us less than we have deserved, and hast sweetened thy Corrections with many blessings which thou hast yet continued unto us; in that thou hast preserved us a remnant, and hast yet given us our lives for a prey; in that thou hast preserved unto so many of us our Liberties, and enlarged thyself unto us in the supplies of thy providence in the respite of thy judgements, and hopes of further mercies.  
O Lord our God, we beseech thee pardon and forgive us all those grievous and horrid offences which have exposed us to thy great and heavy judgements, and made us unworthy of thy mercies: Break our Hearts with true and hearty sorrow and contrition for them all: wash and cleanse us from them with the precious blood of thy dear Son: let the cry of that blood which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel drown the cry of all our iniquities, that they may not incense thine anger any more against us; Cloth us we beseech thee with the Garment of thy Son's Righteousness, that our Iniquities may not appear before thee; turn us, O good Lord, and so shall we be turned: convert us and we shall be converted: Help us all, we beseech thee to renew our Covenant of Obedience unto thee, that thou mayst renew thy Covenant of Mercy towards us. Oh let us now at this very time break all the bonds of Corruption in our souls, that we may not from henceforth allow ourselves in any sin; raise up our Affections to thee our God, and sanctify us unto thee by thy Holy Spirit, that thy Service, and thy Glory may be precious unto us, that our lives and safety may be precious unto thee; Let Swearing and Blasphemy be turned into Prayers and Praises unto thee our God: Uncleanness and Intemperance into Sobriety and Chastity: Violence and Injustice, into Righteousness and Honesty: Profaneness into Piety: Disobedience into Loyalty: Cruelty and Murder into Mercy and Compassion: Pride into Humility: Idolatry and Superstition into Purity and Worship: Schism and Faction into Unity and Concord; Let Hypocrisy be changed into Sincerity: and desire of Vainglory into an earnest seeking of thy Glory; let Malice, and Emulation, and Strife be turned into the holy Flames of Brotherly Love and Christian Affection; let the sordid love of the World, and the impure flames of fleshly Desires, be turned into the holy Fires of Divine Love toward thee our God, and to things that are above, where Christ Jesus sitteth at thy right hand; Let not Usury, nor Sacrilege, nor Perjury, nor any other horrid Iniquities curse this Land of ours any more. And that all these happy Changes may be wrought in us, let the gross blindness of our minds be healed by the precious eyesalve of thy holy Spirit, and thy heavenly light, that so thou being reconciled unto us, our wars may be turned into an holy, well-grounded and lasting peace: our Confusion into Order and Beauty: our sadness and discontent into joy and cheerfulness: that thine Anointed may be restored unto his power and Majesty, to rule thy people according to thy will; that all our Calamities may be redressed, thy Judgements removed, thy blessings restored, continued and increased unto us: And that the glorious light of thy Gospel may be more and more resplendent amongst us to guide us in thy ways, and in the purity of thy worship.  
O Lord, according to all thy righteousness, which is thy mercy, we beseech thee let thine anger cease from ns, for we are not able to bear thine indignation, O let thy fury be turned away from this Nation, which hath been heretofore thy holy mountain; Because for our sins and the iniquities of our fathers we are become a reproach unto those that are round about us; now therefore oh our God hear the prayer of thy servants and their supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy Sanctuary which is desolate for the Lords sake; O our God incline thine ear and hear, open thine eyes and behold our desolations, and the people that are called by thy name: for we do not present our. Supplications before thee for our righteousness but for thy great mercies; O Lord hear, O Lord forgive, O Lord hearken and do, defer not for thine own sake, oh our God, for thy people are called by thy name; oh let the sentence of mercy come forth now from thy presence: and call in those Commissions of vengeance and indignation which thou hast given forth against us; oh make us to hear the voice of joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice; Oh comfort us again now after the time that thou hast plagued us, and for the years wherein we have suffered adversity: show thy servants thy work, and their children thy glory, and let the glorious Majesty of the Lord our God be upon us: Oh take off the indignation of thine anger from the King, and from the Priest, and from all the people of the Land; let the Magistrates rule in righteousness, the Ministers guide in holiness, all the Members of this Nation live peaceably, and religiously and honesty in their vocations, keeping themselves within those bounds and limits of their callings which are proper unto them: Let them study to be quiet, and to do their own business, and keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace: teach them to fear the Lord and the King, and not to meddle with those that are given to change; restore unto us the joyful solemnities of thy worship, and vindicate thy portion from those Sacrilegious hands, that have rob thee of the encouragements and supportance of thy Service; that we may yet again, and ever more and more serve thee our God in unity and truth, and glorify thy name for thy mercies from generation to generation, through Jesus Christ our Lord, To whom with thee O Father, and thy holy Spirit, one Almighty, Eternal, and most glorious God, be all honour and glory, and blessing and praise, from hence forth and for ever, Amen.   

Psalms for Humiliation and Imploration of God's Mercy, etc.  

Psalm 6.1.  
O Lord rebuke us not in thine Anger: neither chasten us in thine hot Displeasure.  
Have mercy upon us, O Lord, for we are weak: O Lord heal us, for our bones are vexed.  
Our souls also are sore troubled: But thou, O Lord, how long?  
Return, O Lord, deliver our souls: O save us for thy mercy's sake.  
For in death there is no remembrance of thee: In the grave who shall give thanks unto thee?  
Psalm 7.9. O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, but establish the just. For thou, O Lord, tryest the hearts and reins.  
Psalm. 9.9. Be thou a refuge for the oppressed: even a refuge in these times of trouble; Thou that liftest us up from the Gates of Death.  
Psalm 9.19. Arise, O Lord, let not man prevail, break thou the power of the Enemy for the presumption of them that hate thee increaseth yet daily. Put them in fear O Lord, that they may know themselves to be but men.  
Psalm 10.13. Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God? He hath said in his heart thou wilt not require it.  
Verse 14. Thou hast seen it, for thou beholdest mischiefs and spite to requite it with thy hand: The poor committeth himself unto thee, thou art the helper of the fatherless.  
Verse 15. Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man: seek out his wickedness till thou find none.  
Verse 18. Judge thou the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress. Amen.   

Another Psalm.  
Psalm 12.1.  
Help Lord for the godly man ceaseth, for the faithful fail from among the children of men.  
Verse 2. They speak vanity every one with his neighbour with flattering lips and a double heart do they speak.  
Verse 4. They have said, with our tongue will we prevail our lips are our own, who 〈◊〉 Lord over us?  
Verse 5. For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, arise now (O Lord) according to thy word, and set him in safety from him that puffeth at him.  
Psalm 13.3. Consider and hear us O Lord our God: lighten our eyes lest we sleep the sleep of death.  
Ver. 4. Lest our enemies say, we have prevailed against them, and those that trouble us, rejoice when we are moved.  
Psalm 17.3 Let our sentence come forth from thy presence, let thine eyes behold the thing that is equal.  
Vers. 5. Hold thou up our go in thy paths that our footsteps slip not.  
Vers. 6. We have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear us, O God: incline thine care unto us and hear our speech.  
Vers. 7. Show thy marvellous loving kindness, oh thou that savest by thy right hand them which put their trust in thee from them that rise up against them.  
Ver. 8. Keep us as the Apple of the eye, hid us under theshadow of thy wings; from the wicked that oppress us, from our deadly enemies who compass us about.  
Vers. 13. Arise O Lord, disappoint them, cast them down, deliver our souls from the wicked which are thy sword.  
Vers. 14. From men which are thy hand O Lord, from men of the world which have their portion in this life, and whose bellies thou fillest with thine hid treasure.  
Vers. 15. As for us we will behold thy face in righteousness we shall be satisfied, when we awake, with thy likeness.   

Another Psalm.  
Psalm 51.1, etc.  
HAve mercy upon us, oh God according to thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out our transgressions: Wash us throughly from our iniquities, and cleanse us from our sins, for we acknowledge our transgressions, and our sins are ever before us.  
Against thee have we sinned, and done evil in thy sight; That thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, and clear when thou judgest.  
Behold we are shapen in iniquity, and in sin have out mothers conceived us; we have sinned with our fathers, we have done amiss and dealt wickedly.  
Neh. 9.16. We and our fathers have dealt proudly, we have hardened our necks, and have not hearkened to thy Commandments: We have refused to obey, neither have we been mindful of the wonders that thou didst for us and our Nation.  
How thou hast brought us out of darkness into thy light: How thou chasedst away the fogs of Error and Superstition, and causedst the glory of thy truth to shine amongst us.  
Psal. 84.11. How thou our God hast been a Sun and a shield unto us.  
Psal. 66.12. How thou hast carried us through fire and water, and hast delivered us from the Enemy's hand.  
How thou brakedst the Ships of the Sea, and scatteredst the Armadas of our Enemies upon the waters.  
How thou armedst the very Elements to fight against our Adversaries: And drewest forth the Storms and the Tempests in array, to chastise the pride and insolency of our foes, and to turn the destruction upon themselves which they intended against us.  
How thou hast defeated the devilish devises of the wicked, and disappointed the hellish plots and conspiracies of the ungodly.  
When the lot of destruction was cast upon us, and the deep design thereof was even ready to blow us up.  
When the contrivers thereof thought all things sure, and that they were safe under the cloud of their dark counsels, and were ready to triumph in the success of their cruelty.  
When the time of our expected overthrow was even come, and they were gaping to swallow us up at once unto ruin.  
Psal. 78.65. Then thou Lord awakedst as one out of sleep, & as a Giant refreshed with wine.  
Thou discoveredst the covering of their mischievous intentions, and broughtest their designs of darkness unto light.  
Psal. 18.12. At the brightness of thy presence the clouds removed, and their secret wickedness was laid open to our view.  
Thou unfoldedst the riddle of their hidden impiety, and madest us to understand the mystery of their iniquity; so Thou overthrewest the enterprise of ruin that was against us.  
Thou savedst us from the mouth of destruction, and madest the pit that our adversaries had digged, to swallow up themselves.  
Thou gavest them shame for the wicked joy that they expected, & suffered'st them not to triumph in the blood of thy people.  
Psal. 124.7. Our souls escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler, the snare was broken and we were delivered.  
Psal. 106.12. Then believed we thy Word and sung thy Praise.  
Ver. 13. But we soon forgot thy works, and waited not for thy counsel.  
Ver. 21. We forgot God our Saviour, which had done so great things for us.  
22. Wondrous things in the Land of our habitation, and fearful things upon the great Sea.  
Psal. 78.32. For all this we sinned still, and believed not for his wondrous works.  
Ver. 41. We turned bacl, and tempted God, and limited the holy One of Israel.  
We turned bacl and dealt unfaithfully, we turned aside like a deceitful bow.  
Psal. 78.5. etc. Thou establishedst thy Testimony in our Jacob, and appointedst thy Gospel in our Israel, which thou commandest our Fathers that they should make them known to us their children.  
That the Generations to come might know them, even the children that should be borne: who should arise and declare them to their children.  
That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God but keep his Commandments.  
And might not be as their Fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.  
But we have not regarded the mighty works that thou hast done nor the wonders that thou hast wrought for us.  
For all this, we have sinned yet more against thee, and have lightly esteemed the rock of our Salvation.  
Psal. 80.8. Thou broughtest us as a Vine out of the Egypt of Popery, and plantedst it in a very fruitful hill.  
Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the Land.  
The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly Cedars.  
Thou wateredst it with showers from above, and enrichedst it with the River of thy goodness, and blessedst the springing of it.  
Thou causedst the beams of thy heavenly light to shine upon it.  
That it might grow and prosper and bear fruit abundantly, and that thou mightest bless the increase thereof.  
Isa. 5.2. Thou fencedst it with the wall of thy divine protection and providence, and didst set the hedge of an happy government about it.  
Thou gathered stout the stones thereof, by removing the offences, that they might not hinder the growth thereof.  
Thou prunedst it, & diggedst about it, and dungedst the root thereof with the fat soil of thine earthly blessings.  
Isa. 5.4. And what could have been done more unto thy Vinyard, that thou hast not done in it?  
But we quickly turned into the degenerate plant of a strange Vine unto thee, and when thou lookedst for grapes we brought forth wild Grapes.  
Therefore thou hast now taken away the hedge thereof, and it is eaten up, thou hast broken down the wall thereof and it is trodden down.  
It is laid waste, and blasted with the burning wind of thy displeasure.  
It is become a place of Briers and Thorns: A Land of darkness and of the shadow of death.  
Isa. 34.11. The Cormorant and the Bitterne possess it, the Owl and the Raven dwell in it, and thou hast stretched out upon it the Line of Confusion, and the stones of emptiness.  
Psal. 80.14. But return we beseech thee O God of Hosts, look down from heaven, behold and visit this Vine.  
And the Vineyard which thine own right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.  
It is burnt with fire, it is cut down, and we perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.  
Let thine hand be upon the man of thy right hand; upon the Son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself, So will not we go bacl from thee, quicken us and we will call upon thy name.  
Turn us again O Lord God of Hosts, show the light of thy countenance and we shall be whole.   

Another Prayer for these Kingdoms.  
O Most glorious and gracious Lord God, who rulest and governest all things; Thine are all the Kingdoms of the world, and all the Nations of the earth are in thy power and at thy disposing: Thou buildest them that they may stand, and thou plantest them that they may grow, and whilst thou waterest them they flourish, and at the blast of the breath of thy displeasure they fade away, and come to nothing; whilst thou blessest them they are blessed, when thou cursest them they are weak and consumed; Look down, I beseech thee, upon these poor Nations that lie weltering before thee in their blood, & in their sins; that are entangled in the net, and perplexed in the Labyrinth of their great transgressions and miseries, and cannot tell how to get out. O Lord our God, I beseech thee take pity upon us, and grant us a release; Thou hast the sovereign medicines with thee that can heal both our sins and miseries, we are unworthy of thy mercy, but thou art a God that delightest in mercy, and the more undeserved it is, the greater is thy glory; nothing is too hard for thee, no malady so desperate, no sickness so incurable, as to outbid either thy wisdom or goodness; they are both glorified, but neither can be puzzled or hindered by the extremities of our conditions. It is thy property, and thy divine peculiar work to help when there is no help to be found; woe have been struggling, and striving, O Lord, a long time to get out of the toil of our afflictions, but all in vain; The more we strive the farther still we are engaged in the mischief; wheresoever we run thine arrows stick fast in us, & the poison thereof drinketh up our spirits; thy terrors set themselves in array against us; all our hopes in the Creatures have deceived us, They have proved unto us but false conceptions; they have brought forth nothing but wind; we have waited for help but we have found none. And therefore now O Lord we come to thee, beseeching thee our God to have mercy upon us, that what all the strength in the world cannot work for us, nor all the wisdom in the world contrive for us, we may yet obtain from thee our God.  
But alas how should we obtain any thing at thy hands, when there are such loud cries and clamours of our great and horrid sins and iniquities against us?  
How shouldst thou draw near unto us that do continually run away from thee, and fly from thy mercy by our impenitency and wickedness, even whilst we ask mercy at thy hands?  
How shouldest thou but abhor and abominate us, that by our filthy and noy some iniquities have made our whole Land even to stink in thy nostrils? O Lord our God we confess there is nothing in us that can challenge thy favour, or bespeak any relief from thee;  
If it be thy pleasure to destroy us, to consume us with all thy plagues, and damn us all, even our whole Nation, to the bottomless pit of hell, we have nothing to reply or object against thee; it is no more than our iniquities call for: But we beseech thee O Lord to be gracious unto us; all that we can do is to beg it at thy hands, to beseech thy pardon, to implore thy compassion, to plead unto thee thy gracious Promises in Christ, and the Merits of thy Son, whereby thou hast engaged thyself that what we ask in his Name we shall receive. Thou hast opened unto us a gate of mercy in him, he hath purchased a Pardon for us with his own Blood; He is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world; and thou hast opened in him a fountain of Grace to sanctify our natures, and reform our sins. That the clouds may be removed, and thy light and grace may shine upon us; We desire therefore to relinquish ourselves, to disclaim ourselves, and to come unto thee in and by Christ Jesus, beseeching thee for his sake to save our poor sinful Nations; O deal not with us after our iniquities, but according to the greatness of thy mercy think thou upon us, O Lord for thy goodness. O Lord forgive our great and horrid offences that have provoked thy wrath against us.  
O cleanse our filthy and polluted souls, rinse us in those Rivers that flowed from thy Son in the Garden, and upon the Cross.  
Perfume us with thy holiness.  
Adorn us and sanctify us with the graces of thy spirit.  
Give us clean hearts, and pure affections, and holy, and Christian lives and Conversations.  
O Lord forgive us that thou mayest reform us, and reform us that thou mayest heal us.  
O grant us broken and contrite hearts, humbled spirits, and melting souls, that we may mourn for our sins past.  
Grant us those Spiritual groans and sighs that may pierce even into thy Bowels, by the Merits and Mediation of Christ Jesus, that they may be moved in compassion toward us.  
Grant us clean souls, and renewed consciences, that we may speedily and hearty forsake all our wicked, sinful, and abominable courses, whereby we have inflamed thee our gracious God against ourselves, our King, and People.  
Rouse us up from our carnal security, that we may seek speedily and earnestly unto thee our God, who for our sins art justly displeased.  
O be gracious, be gracious unto us, be favourable O Lord, be favourable unto thy people, and let us not be brought to confusion, give us not up to destruction and desolation, for the Lords sake.  
Call back thy Judgements and Plagues, that thou hast sent forth against us.  
The Pestilence, and the Dearth, and the devouring Sword that hath so long drunk up the blood of the people; Call bacl that spirit of corruption and confusion, of division and distraction that hath beone sent forth into these Lands, and make up a happy union and peace amongst us for the Lord Jesus his sake; Call bacl that spirit of rebellion and oppression, of cruelty and rapine that hath seized upon the hearts of so many of this Nation, and reduce them into the ways of obedience and righteousness.  
Send forth the spirit of truth, of peace, of righteousness, of mercy, of loyalty and obedience into all our hearts, that we may be restored to a happy and prosperous condition.  
Lord restore the King and deliver him, Lord preserve his Queen, Children, and Family; Lord have pity upon His distressed People, upon the Prisoners, and the outcasts, and the poor persecuted Subjects of this Land, and deliver them from the fury and the cruelty of their Adversaries.  
Lord direct, guide, sanctify, and prosper all the Loyal Armies, and those faithful people that are engaged in the cause of thine Anointed and his people; let not their sins, nor our sins stand between thy mercy and them, or us.  
Lord be merciful to our Enemies, make their hearts to relent, forgive them, and convert them, and preserve them if it be thy blessed will, reconcile us all to thee, that we may be reconciled to one another.  
Or if they shall still continue in their wickedness, Lord suffer them not to prosper therein, suffer them to prevail no more against thy Substitute, and thine Ordinance, to oppress no more, to kill and murder thy poor People no more, but bring them down O Lord we beseech thee, for thine infinite mercy's sake.  
O Lord hear us, O Lord help us, O Lord relieve and secure us, O deliver us, and be merciful to our sins for thy Son Christ Jesus his sake; to whom with thee and the holy Ghost be all honour and glory world without end, Amen.   

A short Prayer to be used upon the undertaking of any just design or enterprise for peace.  
O Lord I bless thy holy name for that good motion which thou hast put into our hearts for the procurement of peace unto these Nations. I confess O Lord I am not worthy to be an instrument of so great a blessing, neither is there any strength or wisdom in me thy poor Creature, that I should be able to manage so excellent a work; but thou art the God that pardonest sins, And art pleased to make use of weak and worthless means, that the glory may be so much the more thine.  
I beseech thee be thou glorified in us thy Servants, pardon our sins, heal our infirmities, supply us with wisdom and thy strength, and assist us by thy spirit, make us to set up thy glory before us, and sincerely to seek the good of thy Church and people.  
Show us the ways that are conducible thereunto, and conduct us, and speed us therein, and give a happy issue thereunto, to the glory of thy Name, to the comfort of thine Anointed and all his People, to the furtherance of thy Gospel, and to the good of me and mine, etc. and of these whole Nations, through Jesus Christ our Lord.   

A Prayer for the restoring of an happy and settled Government in this Nation.  
O Lord God who rulest and governest all things by thy Son Christ Jesus; and hast ordained Magistracy, and the power of Government amongst men, as a ray or branch of that supreme authority in Christ Jesus, to be the guardian under thee, of peace and righteousness among thy people; The foundation of humane society; The Pillar of the world; The shield of thy people, and of all the blessings that they enjoy; And of all other Governments hast most approved in thy holy Word, of that excellent form of royal Monarchy, as that which is the most lively Image of thy rule, and the most fruitful Channel of safety and peace and felicity unto a people; Weblesse and magnify thy holy Name for this thy great and holy Ordinance, whereby thou hast so provided for the fecurity and preservation of thy poor Creatures. And more particularly we bless thy holy Name for that comfortable portion which thou hast given unto this Nation heretofore in this thy blessing, and in the benefits thereof, in setting over us Kings and Princes to take the charge of the Government of this Land, whereby thou hast been pleased for so long a time to preserve this Nation of ours in peace, and plenty, and prosperity, and happiness; We confess O Lord that there never was any the least merit in us that could challenge the least part unto us of so great a blessing; whilst we had it, we did not prise it, nor esteem it as we ought to have done, neither did we walk worthy in any measure of so great a favour from thee our God: But under the covert and shadow of this thine holy Ordinance we have conspired against thee, and have committed great impieties to the dishonour of thy Name: And by these our sins we have most wickedly forfeited our title and interest in such thy goodness, which forfeiture of our sins, thou hast most justly taken, by letting lose the spirits of sedition and Rebellion, of division and faction, like tempestuous whirlwinds upon the face of these Nations, which have overturned the frame of rule and order amongst us, and have battered down the Throne of thine Anointed, and changed our happy Monarchy into Anarchy and confusion: and in the ruins of this thine excellent Ordinance, the wastes and decays of all other blessings are befallen us; the purity the order and beauty of Religion; the equal and upright administration of justice; Innocency of life, and honesty of conversation; All the obligations of natural, civil, and Christian endearments, the offices of love, neighbourhood, and charity; and together with these, our outward peace, our safety, our security, our plenty, our Trade and Traffic, our liberty, and what not? have received their great and deplorable impairements, by that great eclipse of Sovereignty in these Kingdoms; and now we are become as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things that have no ruler over them, spoiling, and devouring, and destroying one another, raging, and madding, and suming against one another, thrusting one another out of their rights and possessions, reproaching, and defaming, and worrying one another with such monstrous and merciless cruelty as is not to be found amongst the most savage and wildest Creatures in the world, much less, is answerable in any degree, either to the meekness of Christians, or the sobriety and equanimity of reasonable men and Christians.  
This O Lord is the sad and wretched condition that we are in: And unless there be some timely remedy, our house that is thus divided must needs fall, and our Kingdom that is thus set against itself must needs be brought unto utter desolation; But Lord who is it that can cure us of this our great and manifold malady? Who is it that can water the dying root of this our Tree? That can repair the mouldered foundation of this our Building? It is thou only O Lord our God that canst do it; unless thou help us nothing can help us; unless thou be merciful unto us, we shall have no mercy upon ourselves; Lord we are falling into the precipice of destruction, if thou catch us not with the Arms of thy mercy, we shall be broken and dashed in pieces: we are overwbelmed in the flood of our fins and miseries, if thou hold us not by thy heavenly hand we must needs be drowned and choked in the deluge; send down thine hand from above and deliver us out of the deep waters. Thou canst whensoever it shall please thee put a stop unto our raging calamities, and snatch us out of the jaws of that ruin which hath seized us; Let it be thy heavenly pleasure we beseech thee to look down in thy tender pity upon the great confusions and desolations of this Kingdom, and to command some deliverances for us; we are here before thee, O Lord God, as a company of poor weatherbeaten sheep scattered upon the mountains without a Shepherd, ready to become the prey unto every wild and savage beast; Oh thou great Shepherd of the sheep, seek thy flock and gather them unto thyself; we are before thee like a poor tossed and tottered Vessel without a Pilot, ready to dash in pieces upon every wave, and to split upon every Rock, to be made the mockery, the game, and the pastime of these violent and contrary winds that are risen amongst us; Lord save us or else we perish; O restore our Shepherd unto us, and enfold us again within the defence of that happy Monarchy which thou hadst placed over us; Yea, Lord be thou both our Shepherd and our fold to keep us safe under the guard of thy providence, that the evening Wolves, and the ranging Bears may no more ravish and devour the poor people: raise up again the Throne, re-embellish the Crown, and cement and strengthen the broken Sceptre of this Kingdom, that Piety, and Justice may be revived, and Peace, and Prosperity with all other blessings may be restored unto this Nation; reinforce we beseech thee those wholesome Laws and constitutions which have been heretofore the Conduits of so much security and happiness unto this Land. A bolish we beseech thee all unlawful and usurped power, and cancel all Arbitrary, unjust and Tyrannical Ordinances, and set up that true and legitimate Government again in this Nation which hath heretofore been so fruitful in blessings unto our Land; Give wisdom, and fortitude, and the spirit of Government unto thine Anointed, and all those that shall be sent of him, that they may be able to wield this thy great Ordinance, and to manage it to thy glory and the good of thy people, to the punishment of evil doers, and to the praise of them that do well; And put the spirit of subjection and obedience into the hearts of the people of this Land; that they may yield a willing, a conscionable, and cheerful submission thereunto as unto the Lord, and not unto men, looking upon the Authority of the Magistrate as upon a sacred stream flowing unto them from the heavenly fountain of thy divine power, that they may reverence it, and as an instrument of thy mercy and great goodness unto them that they may embrace it, that no unquiet or distempered motions may hereafter be raised amongst us in this Nation, from private and wicked interests, or from ambitious & turbulent spirits, to disturb the happy peace and tranquillity of thy people, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.   

A Prayer for the King.  
O Lord thou righteous Judge of heaven and earth, who hast committed all power unto thy Son Christ Jesus both in heaven and earth, and hast revived the rays of his supreme Authority and Majesty unto Kings and Princes, whom thou hast ordained to be the Rulers and Governors of thy people, to the end that we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.  
We beseech thee look down in mercy upon the Person of thine Anointed, our gracious King (the light of our eyes, and the breath of our nostrils) who suffereth at this time for the sins of us and these Nations under the cruelty and oppression of seditious and wicked men. Consider his Enemies how many they are, and what a tyrannous hatred they bear against him. Consider O Lord how low they have brought him; what great bondage and affliction they have laid upon him; how they have imprisoned his Person, rob him of his revenue, killed and massacred his Loyal and faithful People, bereft him of the comforts of his Queen, and Children, left him destitute of the solace of his friends, abridged him of the attendance of his Servants, disappointed him of the advice of his Counsel, deprived him of the benefit of thine Ordinances, shut him up from thy House and the Assemblies of thy People, blasphemed him with vile and false reproaches, spoiled him of his just power and greatness, and profaned his Crown down unto the ground, and attempted by hellish conspiracies to take away his life.  
These things have they done O Lord to the great dishonour of thy Name, and to the great discomfort and destruction of thy people.  
And in so doing they have rebelled against thee our God, trampled upon thy Laws, violated thine Ordinance, broken their Oaths and Protestations, and that very Covenant which themselves contrived and imposed upon others of the people of the Land.  
This thou hast seen O Lord, and yet thou holdest thy peace, whilst they triumph in their wickedness against thee.  
And because thou keepest silence, they have though wickedly, that thou wert even such a one as themselves, and have strengthened themselves in their prosperous impieties.  
But Lord how long wilt thou look upon this?  
Sir up thyself O God, against those that magnify themselves in so many, and so great impieties against thee.  
Be thou glorious in the vindication of thine own Ordinance; cloth thyself with thy might and thy strength, for the relief and deliverance of thine Anointed.  
Plead thou with them that strive with him, and fight thou against them that fight against him: lay hold upon the shield and buckler, and stand up to help him; bring forth the Spear and stop the way against them that persecute him, and say unto his soul that thou art his Salvation.  
Pardon his sins, and the transgressions of his people, and let not the sins of his Forefathers come into thy remembrance, but dispel them all from before thy presence as a cloud by the beams of thy heavenly goodness, drown them in the bottomless pit of thy mercy that they may no longer hinder thy favour from thy Servant, but make thou the light of thy countenance to shine upon him.  
Remember his patience, his meekness, his humility, his mercy, his love that he beareth unto thy House, to thy Ministry, to thy Worship, and Ordinances, his zeal to thy glory, his devotion to thee his God; And let all those holy Sacrifices that he hath offered up unto thee through thy Son be accepted in thy sight for Christ Jesus his sake.  
Remember all those Prayers and Supplications that have been daily made to thee in his behalf, and let them not return empty from thy Throne; Oh let it be thy pleasure to command mercies for him.  
Be thou unto him a Pillar to support him in all his trials a Shield to defend him in all his dangers; a Treasure to supply him in all his necessities; a Comforter to relieve him in all his distresses; a Counsellor to advise him in all his perplexities; And let thy extraordinary mercies, and the heavenly influences and breathe of thy divine Spirit supply unto him the want of the outward means of thy Word, thy Sacraments, and thy public Worship.  
Oh let not his precious soul suffer through the wickedness of those that oppress him, but feed thou him from thine own hand, and by the ministration of thy heavenly Ministers in those straits and solitude that he is in, even with the choice delicates of thy heavenly Table.  
Be thou with him in trouble, to keep him from miscarrying; and compass him about with songs of deliverance; as thou hast furnished him hitherto with thine excellent gifts of Patience, and Wisdom, and Christian fortitude, and hast made him in spite of all his Adversaries, and even to the shame and confusion of his malicious persecuters, a glorious example of Christian constancy unto his people; so Lord establish unto him every good gift which thou hast wrought in him, and increase all thy spiritual graces in his foul that the splendour thereof may break forth more and more through the clouds of his calamities, to the amazement and astonishment of his rebellious enemies.  
Arm him more and more with an unchangeable love unto thy Truth, and to thy Service, to thy Church, and to thy people, that neither the subtle and deceitful insinuations of any false judases, nor the terrors or menaces of any insolent Rabshakahs may shake him from those pious and Christian resolutions which thou hast been pleased to put into his heart.  
Set a guard of thy heavenly host continually about his Sacred Person, that no wicked assasinates may dare to approach unto him, and that the Son of violence may not hurt him.  
Discover and defeat all hellish plots and devilish conspiracies that may be against him, and blast them all with the breath of thy displeasure; O prepare thy loving mercy and thy faithfulness that they may preserve him.  
Break thou his bonds asunder by thy strength: make thou the doors of his Prison to fly open.  
Soften the hard and flinty hearts of those that are the Authors and instruments of his restraint and misery, that they may relent towards him if it be thy blessed will, or else affright them with the terrors of their evil consciences, and strike them with trembling and fear that they may not be able to pursue their cruelties.  
O Lord preserve his Fame and Honour from the scourge of those malicious and traitorous Tongues, whose sport it is to speak evil of Dignities, and to blaspheme the footsteps of thine Anointed.  
Make thou his righteousness as clear as the light, and his upright dealing as the noon day.  
O Lord restore him to the bosom of his Queen, to the comfort of his Children, of his Friends, of his Servants, of his Revenue.  
Restore him to the joyful Assemblies of thy People, to the Comforts of thy house and of thy holy ordinances.  
Preserve his Life, enlarge his straits, repair his honour, re-establish his Throne in peace, in truth, in holiness and righteousness amongst us.  
Bring him forth now at length like Gold out of the fire of his long afflictions, precious and glorious in the eyes of God and men.  
But thou O Lord deal with us according to thy name, for great is thy mercy.  
O Lord arise for the deliverance of thine Anointed for the Lord jesus his sake, Amen.   

A Prayer for Peace in the Church und State.  
O Lord, thou God of Peace, and Author of Unity, Look down we beseech thee in thy tender pity upon the miserable distractions, and bloody divisions of this our Church and Kingdom of England; who, by our sinful separation of ourselves from thee our God, are fallen in pieces from one another. Thou, O God, art the centre of Unity, and we are like unto so many crooked lines that are fallen from thee our Centre by our sinful and corrupt affections; straiten us again we beseech thee by thy grace, that being reconciled unto thee, we may be joined together in thee, and reconciled to one another, That we may be one as thou art one.  
Unite our judgements in the harmony of thy truth; and unite our affections in the sympathy of thy love.  
Take away the spirit of discord from amongst us, and put thy spirit of love and amity into our hearts, that we may keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.  
That as there is one body, and one spirit, and as we are called in one hope of our Calling, as there is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all those that are true Christians: so we may be by that one spirit united and compacted in that one body, joined together in that one hope, unanimously subjected unto that one Lord; That we may perfectly consent in that one Faith, be quickened together by that one Baptism; That we may be the united children of thee, that one God and Father of all; that thou who art above us all by thy glory and greatness, and through us all by thy divine power and efficacy, mayest be in us all by thy heavenly grace, and by thy spiritual life, and saving consolations.  
Rain down the celestial dews, and the cooling showers of thy blessing upon our scorched and inflamed souls, that may quench those hellish fires and unsanctified heats of envy, and wrath, and malice, and fury, of emulation, and strife, and debate, and misguided zeal, which have burnt asunder the bonds of amity amongst us.  
And enkindle the holy flames of divine love and fervent devotion towards thee, and of Christian charity and brotherly affection to one another in our hearts; that we may put on at the elect of God, holy, and beloved; bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, If any man hath a quarrel against another, even as Christ hath forgiven us. And above all these things, that we may put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness; that so speaking the truth in love, we may grow up together into him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ.  
Give us the grace of self-denial, that we may not seek our own, but every man another's welfare.  
Break off our hearts from our private interests, and give us public spirits, that we may all labour for the common good, and be ready to sacrifice all our particular advantages in the things of this world unto thee our God, for the procurement and maintenance of the public peace and preservation. Deliver us from the slavery of those earthly affections which divide us from thee, and from one another, and give us heavenly minds which will unite us unto one another in thee our heavenly Father.  
Unite us under one rule of sound Doctrine, and pure, and orderly Worship in the Church; That all siding, and partiality, and contradiction, and admiring of men's persons because of advantage, and all tyrannising over men's consciences, may be wholly banished, that we may seek after the things that make for peace, and wherewith one may edify another.  
Teach them that are strong to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to despise them, nor to offend them, but to be render over them as over the poor feeble members of the same body, and as over the little children and spiritual infants in thy Family.  
Teach them that are weak, not to judge those that are strong, but to labour to attain unto strength with them.  
Let not them that are wise contemn the simple: nor those that are simple envy those that are wise. Let not him that standeth trample upon him that is fallen, but endeavour to raise him up in the spirit of meekness, considering that he also may be tempted.  
Nor let him that is fallen reject the help of him that standeth, but receive it thankfully that he may be restored by it.  
Teach them that are in high estate, not to scorn or to oppress the brother of low degree.  
And them that are in a low estate to be content with their condition, and not to emulate or behave themselves proudly against these that are honourable.  
Suffer not the rich to despise the poor, knowing that that is to reproach their Maker; but rather make them willing to relieve them. Nor suffer the poor to murmur against those that are rich; nor let their eye be evil because thou art good. Let not the subject intrude into the Office of the Magistrate, nor the inferior Officer into the station of the superior. But keep every member of this Church and State within those bounds and limits which thou hast set them; make them to study to be quiet, and to do their own business.  
Make us all to be like affectioned one toward another: To weep with them that weep, and rejoice with them that rejoice: To remember them that are in bonds as bound with them, and them that are in adversity as being ourselves also in the body. And that the disjointed bones of this distracted State may be set again by thy goodness, O Lord reduce us all under obedience to thine Anointed, our gracious and pious Sovereign; Under one righteous and just Law and government. Banish from amongst us all war, and bloodshed, and sedition, and consusion. Suffer us no longer to be the devourers of one another, but rather make us ready to lay down our lives for one another. That so all our unhappy divisions and differences being composed, we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life in all holiness and honesty. And let the peace of God rule in our hearts, to which me are called in one body, through jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.    

A Prayer for the members of the HOUSES, and of the ARMY.  
O Most glorious God, who by the precept and example of thy dear Son hast taught us to pray for our enemies, oppressors and persecutors: We hearty beseech thee look down in thy mercy upon the sad and wretched condition of those Members of the Houses of Parliament and the Army, who have thus long gone astray from thee, and have through thy just judgement upon us for our sins been the instruments of injustice and oppression unto the people of this Nation. Lord we know there hath nothing befallen us by them, but what thou in the counsel of thy divine wisdom hast fore-appointed and ordained for us, and is fare less than our sins have deserved from thee, and thou hast assured us that all things shall work together for the good of those that love thee our God. It is not therefore for us O Lord our God, to murmur against thy will, or to resist thy good pleasure, but to acknow ledge thy justice, and admire thy mercy, in that thou hast been pleased to correct us so gently, and to punish us so fare less than our deservings. Neither dare we to fall into any furious or revengeful thoughts against our adversaries, although they have been thus cruel unto us: But as thy son hath taught us, so we desire to put it in practice, beseeching thee that thou wilt take pity upon them, and that thou wilt be pleased now at length to sosten their hearts, and to open their eyes; That they pursue no further their works of violence and rebellion; but that having a true sense of their great iniquities, and being truly humbled before thee for their sins, they may lay hold upon thy gracious offers of mercy toward them in Christ Jesus, and leaving all their evil and seditious courses, may return unto thee their God, their obedience unto their Sovereign, and to the affections of justice and charity toward their Brethren: That upon their unfeigned repentance thou mayest receive them into thy favour, and that their souls may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Lord, we know thou art a God, thou art able to do all things: Thou stillest the raging of the Sea, the noise of the ways, and the madness of the people: Thou canst tame the fiercensse of the most savage Lions, and make the Wolf to dwell with the Lamb, and the Leopard to lie down with the Kid: Thou canst cause the fire to forget its fury and rage, and thou refrainest the wrath of man: Thou by the power and might of thy grace didst meet Saul in the midst of the very heat and violence of his persecuting zeal, and didst turn him into a Paul, a meek and faithful servant unto thee, and madest him of an enemy, to become not only a member of thy Church, but also a glorious fellow-sufferer with thy people.  
Lord show the like power of thy mercy and grace unto these our persecutors, smite them to the ground with an apprehension of their great cruelties and bloody oppressions, that they have exercised against thy poor Church and people; and raise them up again in the apprehensions of thy tender love and goodness in Christ Jesus. Thou who hast pardon for the greatest sinners that come unto thee with penitent hearts, and a firm belief in thy Son Christ Jesus: as thou pardonedst Paul, so Lord pardon them: As thou convertedst Paul, so Lord convert them, etc. and let them not pursue the destruction of their own souls. If it be thy blessed will O Lord, bring them home unto thy fold: Let not their successes beguile them any more, nor any evil engagements detain them in their sins: Suffer them no more to set up their carnal policies against thy spiritual and heavenly wisdom; but bring down every high thought in them unto obedience to thy heavenly Word; make them to know that there is no shame but to be wicked, and that their greatest honour will be to forsake their sins, and to return speedily and entirely unto thee their God. O Lord break in sunder those chains of corruption, whereby they are held from thee, and deliver them out of the snares of the Devil.  
O quench the fire of that malice and rage which is enkindled in them against us thy poor people, and inflame them with Christian affections towards us again.  
As for us, O Lord, make us patiently to endure what thy fatherly hand shall be pleased to inflict upon us, whether by them or by any other means, and give us always a readiness of heart to forgive all those injuries that they have done unto us, and to embrace an hearty reconciliation with them, whensoever they shall be moved by thy grace to give over their unjust cruelties against us: and Lord lay not those sins unto their charge. Grant this O Lord for Jesus Christ his sake. Amen. * ⁎ *   

A Sum of divers principal things contained in this Book.  

1. AN Introduction consisting of various incitements unto Humiliation and seeking of God.  
2. A discovery of the sad condition of the present estate of the Church and Commonwealth of England.  
First, In a parallel thereof with the miserable condition of the Jews, set forth in the Lamentations of jeremy. pag. 57  
Secondly, In a more peculiar and express delineation of the cerruptions, depravations and devastations thereof, illustrated by the consideration of our former happy condition in matter of Religion, of Peace, of Liberty, of Government, of honour and reputation.  
First, in point of Religion, and things conducing thereunto. pag. 91  
1. Of Corruptions on the rule of Religion. pag. 99  
2. In the manage of the work of Instruction. pag. 110  
1. By seaucing Doctrines. Ibid  
2. By running from one extreme to another. pag. 124  
3. By uncharitable censures of moderat● spirits. pag. 124  
4. By the spirit of contradiction, and tyrannising over the consciences of men. pag. 127  
5. By partiality and prejudice, etc. The evil fruits whereof are described. p. 128  
6. Pulpits and Presses made marts of division. p. 141  
7. Hunting after applause. p. 148  
8. Pusillanimity and lukewarmness in the Ministry: where, an exhortation to Christian con-age. p. 155  
9 Neglect of Catechism. p. 159  
2. Of corruptions about the Sacraments, 

1. Of Baptism. p. 190  
2. Of the Lord's Supper. Ibid    
3. In abolition of Excommunication. p. 194  
4. In rejecting the grave and learned Ministry, and putting up youths and raw novices to be the guides of the people. p. 196  
And Lay men without any lawful calling. p. 29  
A discussion of that point at large, of popular Elections, etc. p. ●52  
Of the ordination of Ministers the Apostolic call way. p. 278  
5. In the sacrilegious taking away of the revenues of the Church, as Tithes, etc. where the Question about Tithes, and of things devated to God's Service is discussed. p. 293  
6. In Conventicles, and unreverent carriage in the Church, abolition of forms of Prayer, and the evil effects thereof. p. 361  
7. In matter of Church government, the sad causes and sountaines thereof. p. 373  
A discovery of the miseries and Corruptions of the civil State.  
1. In matter of Peace. p. 388  
2. In matter of Liberty. p. 399  
3. In matter of civil Government. p. 415  
4. In matter of Honour and Reputation. p. 429  
Of the sonntaine of these calamities, which is the great wickedness of this Nation, p. 437  
God the only Physician. p. 454  
No way to obtain deliverance from God but by Humiliation for sin. p. 484 

Conversion from sin. p. 490  
Prayer. p. 497  
Faith in Christ jesus. p. 501    
The conclusion, with exhortation to the Kingdom in general. p. 514  
To the suffering Party, p. 527  
Directions concerning the exercise of the said daties. p. 535    

An help to Humiliation.  

1. A Confession and Supplication laying open the sins and miseries of this Nation, and imploring God's mercy. p. 1  
2. Certain Psalms for that purpose; 

The first. p. 41  
The second. p. 44  
The third. p. 46    
3. Another Prayer for these Kingdoms. p. 59  
4. A short Prayer to be used upon the undertaking of any just design or enterprise for peace. p. 72  
5. A Prayer for the restoring of a happy and setted Government in this Nation. p. 74.  
6. A Prayer for the King. p. 86  
7. A Prayer for Peace in the Church and State. p 99  
8. A Prayer for the two Houses. p. 109   
FINIS.