ERRORS And INDURATION, ARE The Great Sins and the Great Judgements of the Time.  
Preached in a SERMON Before the Right Honourable House of PEERS, in the Abbey-Church at Westminster, July 30. 1645. the day of the Monthly Fast:  
By ROBERT BAILIFF, Minister at Glasgow.  2 Thess. 2.10, 11, 12. Because they received not the love of the Truth, that they might be saved; God shall send them strong delusions that they should believe a Lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the Truth. Matth. 7.15. Beware of false Prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Matth. 15.14. Let them alone, they be blind Leaders of the Blind: and if the Blind lead the Blind, both shall fall into the Ditch. 
London, Printed by R. Raworth, for Samuel Gellibrand, at the Brasen-Serpent in Paul's Churchyard. 1645.   

Die Jovis, 31 Julii, 1645.  
ORdered by the Lords in Parliament, That Master Bailiff, who preached yesterday before the Lords of Parliament in the Abbey-Church Westminster, it being the day of the Public Fast, is hereby thanked for the great pains he took in his Sermon, and desired to print and publish the same; which is to be printed by none but such as shall be authorized by the said Master Bailiff.  
Job. Brown, Cler. Parliamentorum.   

Ido appoint Samuel Gellibrand to print my Sermon.  
ROBERT BAILIFF.   

FOR The Equitable READER.  
HOwsoever I have not adventured to offer unto the Right Honourable House of Peers any Dedicatory Epistle, having taken up already so much of their precious time, in their patiented and favourable audience of my (prolix enough) Sermon: Yet presuming upon thy courtesy, who shalt be willing to read the subsequent Notes of that which to their Honours was preached, without any variation; I have made bold to speak in thy ears (as the custom is) some words of a Preface.  
At the first instant of my calling to this service, the words of my Text were cast into my mind, where they remained without my least inclination towards any other, till I had delivered from them what followeth. I have been for a long time in the opinion, that Error and Induration are, albeit not the only, yet among the principal, both sins and miseries of this time and place.  
Hardness of heart is ever a sin, 
The sinfulness of Induration.  but then most sinful, when most unseasonable. If ever there was a time to weep, this must be it, when not only the mouth of the Lord from his Word is calling, but his hand also from the Heaven is drawing us to it. He is a stubborn child, from whose eye the rod of the Father can draw no water: It is a hard stone which the hammer cannot break: It is a piece of unnatural metal which the fire cannot dissolve. And yet this is the complaint of the best discerning Christians every where, That though the Lord at this instant be dealing with us by the rod, the hammer, the fire of his judgements; we are so far from heart-melting, that in this extraordinary and untimous hardness of our heart, more of the wrath and judicial hand of God doth appear, then in any, or in all our judgements beside.  
This plague of the Lord, on the spirits not only of the World, but of many his dear children, aught to be the subject of our deepest groans, and loudest cries to the Heaven, whence alone the remedy of this our spirits disease can come: For there is but one Father, and one Lord, and one Physician of the spirits of men. My weak endeavours towards this great Cure, must be fruitless, till his hand make the application of these prescriptions, which with all the faithfulness and care I was able for the time, I have collected only out of the book of his own method of Physic.  
As for the other evil of Error; 
Error no less sinful than ●ice.  it hath been the study and work of some here and elsewhere to extenuate the sinfulness thereof, and to arm the conscience of all they could persuade, against the sense of its burden; as if the conscience ought to be impenetrable and secure from all Wounds which vice and fleshly lusts do not inflict. But I believe, if Error and Vice were Well weighed in the balance of the Sanctuary, though you put to vice the grossest aggravations, whereby the passions of the soul, and actions of the body make it justly abominable: yet if you Will allow to Error but the grains of its ordinary circumstances, especially that one of our Text, Induration, its most familiar companion; it will be found to have such a weight of malignity, that if betwixt the two any inequality do appear, the sinfulness of the last will prae-ponder.  
The intoxication of the spirit of the mind by the venom of Error, is as much contrary to the Divine Nature and Will, is as much hateful to the Spirit of light and truth, and as evidently damnable, as the corruption of the will, and inferior affections, or any member of the body with whatsoever vice, or more bodily transgression. I hope I have proved this by places of Scripture unanswerable.  
Whence it necessarily followeth, that it is more, 
Toleration of errors, a grievous sin.  at lest no less unlawful for a Christian State to give any liberty or toleration to Errors, then to set up in every City and Parish of their Dominions, Bordels for Uncleanness, Stages for Plays, and Lists for Duels. That a liberty for Errors is no less hateful to God, no less hurtful to men, than a freedom without any punishment, Without any discouragement, for all men, when and wheresoever they pleased, to kill, to steal, to rob, to commit adultery, or to do any of these mischiefs, which are most repugnant to the Civil law, and destructive of humane society.  
But that which my Text points at in Errors, 
The errors of our time appear to be judicial.  is not so much their sinfulness, as their judgement; That God in his wrath had given over that people to error. If ever the plague of erring from the ways of truth was sent upon a land, it seems this day to lie upon us. The Finger of God in this our judgement, is demonstrable by divers Characters, imprinted upon the face of our present Errors, above all that in ordinary (and not judicial Errors) useth to appear. I point at four eminent singularities in them: Their various multiplicity, Their palpable evidence, Their incredible increase, and in the midst of universal complaints against them, A total neglect of their cure.  
First, their variety is prodigious; 
1 By their variety.  I cannot say that all which stand in the ancient Hereseologies of Philastrius, Epiphanius, or Augustine, can be found among us, or Were ever to be found upon Earth in any one age: But this may be confidently averred, That more Errors have set up their head, and shown their misshapen countenances lately here, then in any one place of the world this day are known. I add, that there is not any Error spoken of in the places most infamous for that evil, whether Amsterdam, or Pole, or Transilvania, and if you please to join all the three in one, but all are among us, and divers more, then in any of the places mentioned were ever heard of.  
Their evidence in this to me seems palpable; 
2 By their grossness.  that however at their first appearance they did waken a great expectation, by their fair promises of New-Light, of New-found-truths', of New-wayes leading to extraordinary piety: 
The new-light of all our Innovators is nothing but old darkness.  yet after a little inspection and commerce to uningaged and im-prejudicate minds, they are found to be no other, but the very same dead carcases of old Heresies and Schisines, which by the happy labours of the Reformed Divines in this and other Churches, lay buried in their grave of oblivion and abomination, till their late infaust resurrection.  
That new Canterburian-Protestantisme which the other day so much bewitched the Court and Country, 
So it is in the Canterburians  is now seen to have been nothing but masked Popery, but a high path-royall way to Rome, a School of Idolatry, Heresy, Treachery, and merciless bloodshed.  
These gospel-truths, 
The Antinomians.  these sweet Sermons of Freegrace, that setting up of naked Christ on his Throne, which hath seduced so many thousands of well-meaning souls, do now appear in their own colours, and to any common eye may be seen to be nothing but the gross Antinomy of the old Libertines.  
These innocent scruples of tender consciences only about the grounds of Pedobaptisme, 
The Anabaptists.  whither have they now led some millions, not of the worst of our people? See we not, that without any leave so much as asked of the Magistrate, very great numbers of Churches are erected by them, of formal and avowed Anabaptists.  
These specious and popular Invectives against Tyranny and Persecution; 
The Libertines.  those plausible Harangues for a liberty only to examine, without prejudice, what was proponed under the name of a Divine Truth; whether, at last, hath it carried multitudes who esteem themselves among the most rational of men? Have they not opened, in the midst of our streets, the old Pantheon of Paganish Rome; resolutely asserting an absolute Freedom for Turks, Jews, Pagans, Papists, and if there be any worse Religions, not only to live in all quietness among us, but to be permitted, without any Discouragement, to follow their Consciences; and so to employ themselves daily, in the most advantageous places; private or public, with so much art and diligence as they can use, to draw all the world toward their wicked Professions?  
And not to run out upon all the rest of our old renewed Errors, that so much-extolled Independency, 
The Independents.  wherein many Religious souls for the time do wander, which is the chief hand that opened at first, and keepeth open to this day the door to all the other Errors that plague us: What is it else but a Limb, or rather, 
Apologet. Nar.  the large half of the Body of old Brownism? as it's own Patrons confess, a middle way betwixt the Reformed Churches and the Brownists; the same Way which Morellius (seduced by the Dutch Anabaptists) did labour to bring into FRANCE; but by B●za and Sadaell, in two General Assemblies, it was so fully confuted, that to this day all the Churches there do d●test it: Yet Bolton and Brown would needs bring it into ENGLAND.  
These two are the known Fathers of English Independency; men whose Inventions cannot be much loved, for their author's sake, when they are well known. Among all the Protestant Divines that ever ENGLAND bred, 
Robinson's Justif. p. 50.  I doubt if any have been more scandalous either in life or death, than the two former, as their chief followers are forced to acknowledge. Few Prelatical men have gone beyond Brown in Profanity, from his Youth to his Old-age: And Judas himself was no more abominable than Bolton in his death.  
I have oft marvelled how the Invention of so infamous Authors could be entertained by men of understanding, especially since God did openly brand that their Conception with the Marks of his Displeasure, not only in its Birth, but in all the passages of its Life, wherever yet it hath set foot on ground.  
The fruits of Bolton and Brown's Independency at Amsterdam have been so eminently scandalous, 
Apologet. Nar.  that its own friends can find no cover of excuse for them.  
The Divisions and Rents that sprang from the same root when it was planted in some better ground, 
Edward's Antapol.  at Arnhem and Rotterdam, have been no less unhappy and bitter.  
But that which demonstrates the Genuine Nature of this Plant, is its fruits in New-England, where, without any Encumbrance from without or from within, having all the Advantages Civil and Ecclesiastic which could be wished; it got leave to put out its full strength: In a short time there, it brought forth such a multitude of gross Heresies and Divisions, as did threaten not the Churches alone, but the Civil State also with a total Ruin.  
If our Hopes of it here may be much better, for any of its fruits which yet we have tasted, wise men will pronounce.  
The third Character wherewith the Finger of God hath stigmatised the Errors of this place, 
5. By their increase.  is, Their Incredible increase: It can hardly be shown where Error, in so short a time, hath made so great a Conquest: For however, as I am informed, all the Fowls that yet have made their Nest in the last Branch whereof we did speak, may easily be numbered, being no ways so many as some would make them; yet if ye look upon the whole Tree in all its Branches, it will be found to have drawn under its shadow a marvellous multitude of Creatures. These last four years, it seems, more people here have made Apostasy to one Error or other, of their own accord, without the violence of any Persecution, then in all the Reformed Churches together for an hundred years and above. Error of itself is of no such conquering strength, did not the Justice of God give men over to be captivated by its Delusions.  
The fourth Demonstration of a Divine Judgement in our Errors, 
4. By men's neglect of their Cure.  is this, That though they have been universally acknowledged and regretted, yet to this day their effectual Cure hath been well near universally neglected. It is now not Months, but Years, since upon the faithful Warning of the Lords Messengers, all men, every where, have joined to acknowledge and to profess their displeasure at the spreading of Error over the face of this Land: No Societies wore full of these Complaints than the three most Considerable, The two Honourable Houses, and The Reverend Assembly: But yet, after all these Regrates, What real stop hath been made to the Current of this overflowing Deluge?  
These are a great part of our Judgements; 
Our comfort and hope.  which the godly, in the days of Humiliation, and when else their hearts are loosed to mourn, do deplore. Yet here is our Comfort, That, in answer to our Supplications, the Lord hath stirred up the hearts of those who have power effectually to mind that which we are confident will prove the Remedy of these and many more of our present Evils; I mean, The setting up, without further Delay, of the Lords Government in his own House, over all the Land.  
The whole Government being transmitted from the Assembly, and looked upon by both Houses with a gracious Aspect, and sundry Votes already past upon the chief parts thereof; it is certainly expected, that in a very short time the whole Frame shall be erected, and not only be accompanied with the joyful Acclamations of this Land, and of all the Churches abroad; but also filled with so much Grace and Power from the presence of the Lord, as shall prove an heavenly Attractive, without any need of humane violence, to draw the spirits of those who for the time do most dissent and oppose, to its admiration and love. Waiting and praying for the sight of that happy day,  
I rest, Thy Servant, in the Lord, R. B.   

A Sermon preached before the Right Honourable the House of Lords, July 30. 1645.  ISAI. 63.17. Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our hearts from thy fear? Return for thy servants sake, the Tribes of thine Inheritance. 
IN this and the two next Chapters, 
The Division of the Chapter.  we have a heavenly Conference and Dialogue betwixt Christ and the Church of Israel, in the time of her affliction in Babel.  
The Dialogue hath Three or Six parts: Three Questions of the Church, and Three Answers of Christ.  
In the first verse of this Chapter, 
The first Pars.  we have the first Question and Answer. The Church, about that time of the Captivity to which this part of the Prophecy relateth, was much oppressed with many Enemies. God, after all his wrath, gins to arise, and take order with them who long had deyoured her; especially with Edom, the nearest and most bitter Enemy of Jacob. When she sees the sudden and unexpected Vengeance on Edom, admiring who could be the author and worker of it, she proposes the Question, Who he was that had destroyed Bozra, the principal City of the Edomites, and was marching in his great and glorious strength from the Land of Edom, the service there being ended, to other of the Enemy's Countries.  
Unto the Church's Interrogation, Christ answers, That it was he himself, who now, by his works, was demonstrating the truth of his ancient promises, and showing the might of his power to save his people from the Enemy's oppression.  
Observe, 
The Doctrine.  When the Church hath wrestled long with her enemies, and is ready to faint and give over; on a sudden, Christ, the King and Captain of the Host of Israel, comes down, and breaks the strength of the prevailing enemy; to the Church her great admiration.  
The second part of the Dialogue is in the next five verses. 
The second part of the Chapter.  The Church finding it was her Lord and God who was begun to take vengeance on her enemies; before he go, she is desirous of more conference with him, and proposes a second Question, Wherefore his Garments were red, as if he had been treading a Press of red wine?  
The Lords Answer is, That the set time of his Vengeance upon her Enemies was come: That though her strength was gone, and among all her friends there was none able to stand against her foes; yet he alone would do it, and by his own Arm had destroyed already some of them with so great a slaughter, that all his glorious Raiment was stained with the blood of the slain.  
Hence observe, 
The first Doctrine.  first, When the condition of the Church is most desperate upon earth, then is the day and hour of her certain redress from heaven.  
The Church, 
The second.  deserted of herself and all men else, hath one fast friend, who alone is worth many Ten thousands, able to draw her out of all deeps.  
In the day of the Lords anger, 
The third.  woe to all the enemies of the Church. When the Lord gins to trample them in the Winepress of his Indignation; if there were no more but the dashing of their bodies in pieces, the watering of the ground with their blood, and the staining of the garments of their killers therewith; if no more followed, it were well to them: But they must drink after death in the Cup of the everlasting fury of the Almighty, as John comments it, Rev. 14.10. They shall be tormented with fire and brimstone for ever and ever.  
In the third part of the Dialogue from the seventh verse, 
The Subdivision of the third part.  the Church finding her Deliverance sensibly begun, but not accomplished (for though Edom was destroyed, yet Babel was sitting like a Queen over the Nations, and most over the rubbish of desclate Jerusalem) she turns herself to her present Redeemer, and most humbly supplicates him to perfect what he had begun, To deliver her fully from the great burdens both of sin and misery that yet lay upon her. This Prayer is set down in the remnant of this Chapter, and all the next; whereunto a large and gracious Answer is returned by Christ in the 65 Chapter, thorough the whole.  
The first part of the Prayer is Thanksgiving, 
Its first member.  from the seventh to the fifteenth.  
To prepare their hearts for petitioning, they lay out before the Lord the great goodness which he of old had bestowed on the house of Israel, his wonders in Egypt, his glorious works at the Red Sea and in the Wilderness, the constancy of his kindness, notwithstanding their Rebellion and vexing of his Spirit: Though sometime he punished them for their sins, yet he never left them, for the glory of his Name, and the Multitude of his mercies: Not only Moses his Shepherd, but the Angel of his Presence went before them: He was afflicted in all their afflictions; he bore them, and carried them in his arms all these days of old thorough that howling Wilderness. This is the Church's Preface to her subsequent Prayer.  
Hence observe, first, 
The first Doctrine.  Thanksgiving is the meetest usher which a Petitioner can have to the Throne of Grace. Praise perfumes the lips of a Supplicant; it sweetens, it softens, it opens the heart of a Seeker, and fits it singularly to receive all its desires from God.  
The kindness of God in the days of Moses, 
The second.  and the most ancient times, is the Church's Inheritance to the world's end. All the favours of God registered in Scripture, all the gracious experiments of the Saints in any time, in any place, are our Patrimony, serving as ruled Cases, to strengthen our Faith, Hope and Patience in the days of our adversity.  
The sins of many persons, 
The third.  remove not the favour of God from an elect Nation. There is no interruption of the course of mercy towards a People, by the destruction of many particular persons. Great Vengeance may be upon Thousands, the carcases of Ten Thousands may fall in the Wilderness, even of Moses himself, and many of the Shepherds both of Church and State; and yet the Lord may graciously march on before his People, till he have settled them and his Ark in peace on his holy mountain.  
The Prayer consists of Petitions, 
The second member.  Complaints, Confessions of sin, Professions of faith, intertexed one with another, as the holy passions of the Supplicants hearts do mix them.  
In the fifteenth verse, 
The matter of the 15 verse.  there is a Petition backed with a Complaint. The Lord for a long time had left his People to the outrages of their Enemies, he had as it were left the earth, gone up to the heaven, and miskent all that the Enemy had done to his People: Now therefore they petition that he might be pleased to look down upon them from his holy and glorious Throne in the heaven. For this is the strange faith of the Church, That she is persuaded so far of the power and goodness of her God, at that very time when he hath left her to sink in misery for her offences; that even then, if he would but look back to her, in never so far a distance; if from the very heaven, the place of his retiring, he would behold her on the earth overwhelmed with misery; she is hopeful, if she come but in the sight of her gracious Lord, he would not fail to take pity upon her, and deliver her.  
To this Petition, a Complaint is subjoined, of the restraint and withdrawing of God's ancient favours: Sometimes his zeal and strength had been employed in her defence, his mercies, the tender bowels of his compassions, had been extended towards her; but now all sense of such favours were away.  
This complaint, lest it should irritate, 
The matter of the sixteenth.  is presently corrected in the sixteenth Verse, with a fair profession of Faith, ●bove and against all present sense, however the beams of God's loving countenance did not then shine upon them, as at some other time; yet they profess their certain persuasion, that God was their Father: Though Abraham and Israel, and all their bodily Progenitors should cast them away, as unworthy to be counted their children; yet they did believe, that their everlasting and unchangeable God would not cast them off, but deal with them as children, notwithstanding of all their misdeserving.  
As for the words in hand in the seventeenth Verse, 
The division of the Text.  the Church goes on to pour out her spirit before him, whom she believes to be her Father, in the midst of all her afflictions, in a new complaint and petition. The complaint hath two parts, and the petition is backed with a twofold Reason: The first part of the complaint is in these words, O Lord, why hast thou made us err from thy ways? the second part in these, Why hast thou hardened our hearts from thy fear? The petition is, that he would return after his long absence. The first reason, They were his servants; the second, They were his inheritance. Let us consider severally, the mind and use of every part.  
As for the first part of the complaint, 
The Exposition of the first pars.  four things in it would be exponed: First, What are the ways of the Lord. Secondly, What it is to err from his ways. Thirdly, How God makes men err from his way. Fourthly; How the Church complains of this divine action. Three of these particulars are easy, and may be dispatched in a word; but in the fourth there is no little difficulty.  
For the first; 
What are the ways of God.  God's ways here, are his Commandments, full of holiness and righteousness; they are called Gods ways, because of their similitude with his nature, that is, holy, righteous, and true: All his Commandments, and conversation, are according to the straight rule of his eternal, and essential holiness, righteousness and truth. Secondly, Because they are his Law and Prescription, his will prescribes them as a way to his creatures to walk in. Thirdly, Because of his presence therein, in that way he is to be found: He is graciously present, and doth countenance all that walk into it. Fourthly, Because of their end; they lead to God, they are the straight way, wherein the godly walk, till they come to the glorious palace above.  
The second point, 
What it is to err from these ways.  To err from these ways, is to sin, as it is expressed Psal. 119.8, 10. To wander from God's Commandments. When we leave God's way, and run out on the right hand, or the left, to the ways of our own blind mind, and corrupted heart; our false opinions against God's truth; our wicked inclinations and actions against his holy nature, and revealed will; all of this kind is our erring from his ways.  
But the great difficulty is in the third, 
How God makes men to err.  How the Lord causes us to err from his way: This would seem to make God the cause and author of sin, which is a horrid blasphemy against many Scriptures, and all reason. To eschew this huge, great, and intolerable inconvenience, sundry famous interpreters do translate the original otherways then we read it; Not, Why hast thou made or caused us to err? but, Why hast thou suffered or permitted us to err? So Junius an excellent translator: And many hundred years before him, the Chaldee Paraphrast did render it, Why hast thou cast us away to err from thy ways? This interpretation is approved by very Learned and Orthodox Divines, who bring this reason for it, That the Hebrew word here, is not simply in the active form, not in Kal, but, as they speak, in Hiphil, whose signification oftentimes is not to make or cause, but to permit.  
Indeed, this translation does eschew fully the difficulty; 
The Grammatical solution of some great men is not selid.  yet we dare not venture upon it; for as it seems it were to make too bold with the Scripture. The Septuagens, the ancient Latin, the French, the Dutch, the Italian, and many more, reads it just as our English, Why hast thou made us to err from thy ways? The Grammatical reason alleged, hath no strength in this place; for be it so, that Hebrew Verbs in Hiphil, sometime have a permissive, and not an active sense; though this in any word is very rare, and the examples alleged, are very questionable; yet for the Hiphil of the word in hand, we deny that ever it can be so exponed. A number of places of Scripture may be produced where Hithah must be actively exponed, as here our translators read it; but not one, if it be not this in question, can be brought where it may be exponed of a mere permission, without some agency and operation upon the erring and seduced person. We dare not trust the solving of so weighty a difficulty upon such a mere Grammatication.  
Holding therefore to our vulgar translation, 
The matter of a sinful action must be distinguished from its form.  How does God cause us to err, and yet is not the Author of our errors? For the understanding hereof, we must distinguish sin, and the actions of God about sin. In sin there are two things, albeit inseparably joined, yet essentially distinct; The matter and form, the act and its pravity; the one is naturally good, the other morally evil: This is visible in two actions whose matter is the same, but the forms much different: For example, the stoning of Naboth, and the stoning of Achan; the substance of the actions, the casting of the stones at both, was the same; but the forms was much different: The casting at an innocent man, and at a man condemned by God, and all Israel; the one form makes the stoning of Naboth an act of unjust murder, the other form makes the stoning of Achan, an act of just punishment.  
The acts, not of God's will and decrees, 
Three acts of Gods effectual providence about sin.  for such concern not the words in hand, but of his actual providence about the matter and form of sin, are many: The most considerable of these to us, for opening of our Text, are three: His concourse, his efficacious permission, his judicial tradition, so to speak.  
For the first, 
1 An active concourse in the substance of the action.  the Lord hath an actual, yea, an active concourse; and if you will, an efficiency in every act of sin, so far as concerns the substance or matter of the sinful action; for in him we live, we move, and have all our being, in the most sinful action, the matter of the act being a positive entity, it must be a naturally-good thing, and have its existence from the first and universal mover, the fountain of all Being: Without this kind of efficiency and concourse, Shimei could not have moved his tongue to curse David, nor Doeg drawn his sword to have killed the Priests: When God denies this kind of concourse, sin is necessarily stopped: When he removes the life of the two Captains, they cannot oppress Eliah. When God leaves the life, but takes away the sight from the Sodomites at Lot's door, and the power from the arm of Jeroboam, their sin is impedite. When by suspending of his operation, he takes away the will from David to kill Nabal, though both life and power remained, the sin is marred. But for such kind of working in the sinner, and cooperation with the sinful act, Sin uses not to be ascribed to God, more than the generation of living Creatures, to the motion and influence of the Heavens; for effects are denominate from the second and particular causes, not from the first and universal, though their efficiency and concourse be never so necessary and certain.  
The next action of God about sin is, 
2 An efficacious permission of the sinfulness of the act.  his efficacious permission; This for its object, hath not only the matter and substance of the sinful act, but its very form, its pravity, its anomy, its sinfulness: This malignant quality is a moral evil, and so cannot be of God, who is goodness itself; it's a privation and defect, and so the cause of it is not efficient, but deficient. If we would render the cause of a lame man's crooked walking, we behoved to distinguish betwixt the walking, and its crookedness: The walking we would ascribe to the motive power of the man's soul, and to the instruments of motion in his body; but the crookedness of it, to the defect and hurt of some instrument of motion, not to the soul, or to the faculty, or to the instrument of motion, but only to some defect of the instrument. So the sinfulness of sin is to be ascribed not to any efficiency of God, but to the deficiency of man's will, which now is sinful, and before sin, was weak, as being made of nothing, and so able to change itself from good to evil; but however, the sinfulness of sin cannot be charged on Gods either efficiency or deficiency, yet it must exist by his free permission; for nothing can have any existence in the world, any being in the dominion of God, without the leave and permission of the great Lord and Master of the World.  
That action of God which in respect of sin is called a permission, in regard of the sinner is a desertion: 
This is really one thing with desertion.  This considered, will help to clear that which is the hardest knot in this matter; the efficacy that is said to be in the permission, and yet without all efficiency of the permitter, in the sinfulness permitted.  
This matter which naturally is exceeding dark, will be best seen in similitudes: When the Sun goes down, the darkness of the night necessarily doth follow; when the Sun declines towards the Southern signs of the Zediack, the Winter blasts certainly do come on; the Sun the fountain of light and heat, in propriety of speech, cannot be called the cause of the night's darkness, or of the Winter's cold; yet these, as ordinary and necessary consequents, are usually ascribed to the Sun's removal. Hot water removed from the fire, becomes incontinent cold: A ruinous Wall, when its props are removed, falls quickly to the ground: The coldness of the water flows not from the fire, but from its own nature; the falling of the Wall comes from the natural heaviness of the stones, which, without the impediment of a supporter, makes them to fall downward. It is so with God and man; when he withdraws, we become dark as midnight, cold like Ice, we fall to the ground.  
These effects necessarily follow his desertion, but not as effects, only as consequents; their proper cause, is neither in God, nor his removal; but in our nature, which of itself, since the fall, is full of these malign qualities.  
This kind of providence about our sins, is expressed in words of the active form, of blinding the eyes, and hardening the heart: Not that the Lord infuses any darkness or hardness in the heart, which is not its own; but because upon the removing of his illuminating and softening Spirit, the natural blindness and hardness of man's spirit, lurking before, doth then appear.  
The third action of God about sin, 
God's third action, is, a Judicial Tradition.  is that which I did call, a Judicial Tradition, when God, as a just Judge, punishes sin by sin; when he gives over men not only to their own heart, but to the devil and his instruments to be tempted, seduced and drawn away to commit wickedness with greediness. However all the sinful actions be immediately the works of the sinner alone, and the upstirring to these actions be from the devil and his instruments, laying arguments, objects and occasions, as baits and snares, in the way of the sinner; yet God, as a just Judge, sending out Satan and men as his executioners and making way for men's own lusts to break out on the objects set before them: For these acts of Judgement, both in our Text, and oft elsewhere in Scripture, the cause of men's sins, not as they are sins, but as punishments of sin, is ascribed to him, 2 Thess. 2.10. Because they received not the love of the truth, God shall send them strong delusions to believe a lie. He was to send on them The Man of sin, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and with all deceivableness. The committing of the sin is ascribed to the sinner, who believes the lie; the tempting to it, is ascribed to Satan and his Antichristian Instruments; the sending out both of Satan and Antichrist, the giving over to delusion, is ascribed to God the righteous Judge, by these means punishing former sins. Rom. 1.18, 21, 24, 26, 28. The wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness of men; because, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God: wherefore God gave them up also to uncleanness. For this cause God gave them up to vile affections. God gave them over to a reprobate mind. The sinful acts flow from the reprobate minds and vile affections of the sinners; yet God the Judge is thrice said to give them up to these their own sins. Rom. 11.8. God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear to this day. Let their Table be a snare, a stumbling-block, and a recompense to them: Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see. 2 Chron. 18.22. The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy Prophets. Many such places there are, where God, as a righteous Judge, is made to give over sinners to the devil, to other wicked men, to themselves, to be led in more and greater sins, as punishments of the former.  
Thus far Protestant Divines do go; 
Protestants are unjustly accused for making God the author of sin.  and all the acts which any of them ascribe to God about the causation of sin, may be referred to one of the three named: All which stands well with the holiness of his Nature, and extreme contrariety to sin. The Papists and Arminians do slander us most unjustly, as if we did blaspheme the holy Lord, in making him the author of sin: All of us ever have abhorred such Doctrine: We never ascribed to God more acts of providence about sin, than the most clamorous of our enemies themselves expressly have done. The three forenamed acts, by Bellarmine and Arminius are attributed to God, in as ample and unadvised expressions as ever fell from the Pen of any of our approved Divines.  
I grant, the Libertines of old, 
This is the blasphemy of the Libertines, and of M. Archers book, justly burnt therefore.  and their children the Antinomians this day, do cast out on this subject many abominable Blasphemies: but these were ever detested by all Orthodox Protestants, as the vomit of the father of all lies and blasphemies; which makes us the more to marvel what these men can mean, who lately here, under the name of M. Archer a famous Independent in his time, have printed the worst and grossest of these Blasphemies. Surely, if such kind of Doctrine be entertained by any of that Party, our Disputations will not stand long at Church-Government; but the world will be confirmed in that opinion which some wise men long ago have given out, That Independency was not so much loved for itself, as for somewhat else, A liberty, without censure, to vent such Doctrines as the conscience of Orthedox Divines will never be able to hear with patience. But in this I will not enter: The zeal of the whole Assembly and both the Honourable Houses against the blasphemous Heresies of that infamous Book, doth quiet and secure our minds herein.  
The fourth word to be exponed, 
Why doth the Church complain of these acts of God about her sins?  is the Interrogation and Complaint, Why hast thou made us to err? The Church being now before God, and laying hold on his fatherly compassions, pours out before him the troubles of her heart. That which troubled them most, was their sins and obstinacy in Rebellion, which they complain to the Lord had befallen them in his great wrath, through his deserting of them, and giving them over to be led away by their own lusts, and Satan's tentations. This part of God's wrath upon them, in punishing their sins with more blindness, and making them err farther from his ways, was their greatest misery, the true cause of all their outward plagues, and a greater plague than all the rest; as we may see in the sixth of this Prophecy, where the Lord, for contempt of the Prophet's Ministry, doth punish the body of that people with Spiritual Judgements, and makes their heart fatter, their mind blinder than before: And from this Spiritual evil, he makes all their Temporal desolation to flow, as out of its proper Fountain. Of this misery the people here complain to God, not to lay their sins off themselves, on the Lord; but to witness their deep sense of them, as coming on them through God's just desertion, and deserved judgement: Not to upbraid the Lord with their miseries, but to spread them out before his feet, as their only hope from whose hand alone they expected a remedy. 
The first Doctrine. The godly pour out all their complaints in God's bosom.   
From the words thus exponed, observe, first, The children of God, in their worst estate, are so familiar with their heavenly Father, as to pour out in his bosom the complaints of whatever misery lies upon them. At this time, as appears by the words both before and after, the people's condition was exceeding hard. We are all as an unclean thing; our iniquities, as the wind, have taken us away. Thou hast hid thy face from us, and consumed us, because of our iniquities. His zeal, strength and merciful bowels seemed to be restrained towards them; yet they come before him: and that which troubled them most, their wand'ring from his ways, they spread it out before his feet, as the matter of their chiefest complaint.  
The truth of the Doctrine may be seen, Lam. 4.1. 
The Proof hereof.  Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us; consider and behold our reproach. In all the Chapter, and the whole Book, there is a familiar complaining to the Lord of all their miseries. Moses and Aaron, in all their tribulation, run to the door of the Tabernacle. Jacob, at the side of the ford Jabbuk, in his great fray for Esau, betook himself to weep and pray. David, in his present danger of stoning by his own men, comforted himself in God. Hezekiah spread out before the Lord the railing of Rabshakeh; and, after his desperate sickness, turned himself to the wall to pour out his heart to God. The examples of this practice are innumerable.  
The Reason of it is, The Saint's interest in God: 
The Reason.  He is their Father. Poor children in distress, whither shall they go, but to their father? Neither sin nor misery will annul that more than natural relation, that supernatural Paternity and Filiation. Though God cloth himself with a cloud in his anger; yet faith will make the soul, with Moses, run thorough the fire and darkness to him. The Prodigal, in the midst of his misery, resolves to return to his father. The Spirit of Adoption, in our hardest times, will make us cry, Abba, Father. This reason is used in the same place, ver. 16. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us. Vers. 19 We are thine; thou never bearest rule over them. The next Chapter, vers. 8. But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people.  
The Use is for our Encouragement to continue this practice with all earnestness and perseverance. 
The Use.  If there be any means to draw down a blessing from the heavens on a distressed Nation, it is the prayer of the Saints: This is the hand that hath drawn up this sinking Land from the pit of ruin; that hath set our feet on that Rock of safety whereon now we stand. Whatever difficulties are yet before us, by this means, or none else, will they be gotten overcome: Though all other should give over this holy exercise of Fasting and Praying, or turn it in a sinful and provoking formality; yet it behoves us to keep it on foot, remembering both the express command of the Lord, Call on me in the day of thy trouble, I shall deliver thee, Psal. 50. Lam. 2.19. Arise, cry out in the night, in the beginning of the watches pour out your hearts like water, before the face of the Lord; Lift up your hands towards him. And your own visible experience: As no people have sown more plentifully this precious seed; so none have already reaped more evident fruits thereof: Be not weary of this good work, until all our desires be accomplished.  
In the next place observe, 
The second Doctrine. Sins are heavier than afflictions. The Proof.  That the chief part of the Saints complaint to God, is of their wander from his ways. Their sins are heavier to them, than all their afflictions.  
This is proved from divers Scriptures, Psal. 38. When the Prophet's trouble was great, Nothing sound in his flesh, The Arrows of the Lord sticking in him, God's hand pressing him sore; yet the chief burden whereof he complains, was his sins, verse 4. Mine iniquities are gone over my head as an heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. Psal. 40.12. Innumerable evils have compassed me about, but mine iniquities have taken hold on me; for them he was not able to look out, his heart failed him: Daniel c. 9 complains of the heavy wrath and curse that was poured out on Jerusalem, and of so great afflictions as had befallen to no Nation under Heaven; yet the first, chief, and longest part of his complaint is, of the sins of their Kings, of their Princes, of their Priests, and whole Land.  
The reason of the Doctrine, 
The Reason.  Sin is the greatest evil, it's the fountain of afflictions: Affliction cometh not out of the dust; trouble springeth not out of the ground: Sin is the root of it. Also sin is most contrary to the nature of God: Wrath and trouble, even the greatest, the very torments of Hell, are not so; for they are according to his justice. The godly therefore, who weigh things aright in the just balance of the Sanctuary, esteem their sins much heavier, and more grievous evils, than any they can suffer for them.  
The use is for our instruction: 
The Use.  Let our complaints be rightly ordered, and our sorrows rightly placed: Beware to spend the most, or best of thy sense, on thy sufferings: Beware to pour out the vehemency of thy passion, the bitterest of thy sorrows on calamities, either private or public. The first fruits, the flower, the firstborn of thy grief, must be reserved for the chief evil. The natural and kindly children of God, will have more sorrow at their heart for the sins of the Land, then for the desolations thereof: What ever poverty, disgrace, pain, can befall their person, the very wrath of God, suppose the torments of Hell, will not be so heavy, so bitter, so troublesome to them, as their sins, the cause of all these evils.  
The third observation, 
The third Doctrine. God's hand in our sins, increaseth their bitterness. An Objection answered.  Gods punishing and judicial hand in our sins, is their aggravation, and increase of their bitterness: For this is the head of the Church's complaint, That God had caused them to err from his ways.  
It is true, the Saints in Scripture draw comfort from some acts of God's mercy about sin, as from his gracious directing of its act to a good end. Upon this ground Joseph comforts his Brethren, that not they, but God had sent him down to Egypt: That their felling of him, which they intended for evil, God had ordered it so, that it did become the mean of all their preservation. Also God's prediction of sin in sundry Scriptures, is made a ground of contentment: All this was done, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, is a common place of comfort against the treason of Judas, and the wickedness of the Jews. Likewise the Apostles, Acts 4. quiet their mind on this meditation, That God in his eternal counsel, had determined what Herod and Pilate in time had done in crucifying of Christ. Of such acts of God's mercy about our sins, we speak not, be they temporal, be they eternal; but of the acts of his justice and wrath, punishing sin by sin. From these actions of God, we can draw no comfort; but they aggravate the weight of our sins, and increase our grief.  
The miscarriage of Absalon, 
The Proof.  his rebellion and incest, could not but grieve David; but to increase his grief, 2 Sam. 2.10. God tells him, I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the Sun, in that terrible vision, Isai. 6. the Lord, to demonstrate his wrath against that people, sendeth to them a message full of anger, Make the heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy. Their excaecation was in itself a grievous evil; but it was more grievous, when it came as a plague from an angry God. John 12.39. God's blinding of their eyes, that they could not believe Christ's Word, is brought as an aggravation of their sin, and of the anger of Christ against them, so far, as he went from them, and hid himself.  
The reason of this is, 
The Reason.  That these acts of God proceed from wrath and justice, punishing former sins. Again, they are the means to make sin more sinful, the person being given over to be carried headlong by his own lusts, and Satan's tentations. Thirdly, The punishment of sin in this degree, is much sorer, then if it had been a simple sin, as in the sixth of Isaiah, and elsewhere it appears. No marvel therefore, that men of awakened consciences make it a chief part of their complaint and grief, That God had caused them to err: This being a signe of wrath, and increase of guiltiness, and a forerunner of greater punishment.  
The use is first for Caution, 
1 Use for Caution.  To beware of that dangerous error of taking comfort and encouragement from God's judicial hand in our sins, that is, to glory in our shame, and to joy for what we should be sad. It is to cast off ourselves the burden of our sin, to whom alone it belongs, on God, whose eyes are purer, then to behold iniquity.  
Secondly, 
2 Use for Counsel.  It serves for Council, to make it our chief grief in our mourning, That we have fallen under so heavy displeasure, as to be scourged with the worst of God's Rods: Of all the Arrows in God's Quiver, this is the most venomous, To be given over by God to sin; this comes from a special wrath, and is a presage of very great misery following. When God's spirit stirred up David to number the people, it came from his anger against Israel, and was a forerunner of the destroying Angel: The blinding of the people's eyes, Isaiah 6. and John 12. is made an antecedent of a national ruin. When ever we feel this to be our condition, it should be the matter of our most mournful complaint.  
The fourth observation will clear the third; it is this, 
The fourth Doctrine. Judicial errors are most lamentable.  The godly, when their eyes are opened to see their wander, they are singularly affected with their judicial errors, As here the Church mourning and praying to God, for sin and misery, gins her complaint for these errors, into which, by God's anger and judgement, she had fallen.  
Old Israel by God's judgement, 
The Proof.  had fallen in the grievous error of civil discord, which cost in two days, the eleven Tribes, the lives of forty thousand men; and in the third, proceeded very near to the extirpation of the twelfth Tribe. When the hand of God was lifted off them, and they began to look back upon their actions, Judges 21.2. they weeped fore before the Lord, and complained to him of the great mischief wherein they had fallen: Though the injustice and obstinacy of Benjamin had been the immediate cause of the dissension; yet they pitied their Brethren, seeing it was the Lord's judgement upon them all, that had made that breach in Israel, Verse 15. Ephraim in his pride would needs rebel against the house of David, and have a King among themselves, and Altars of their own making at Dan and Bethel; God in justice gave them over to these sins of continual sedition and idolatry, till they were totally ruined: He gave them a number of Kings in his anger: Hos. 8.11. Because Ephraim hath made many Altars to sin, Altars shall be unto him to sin. But when the Lord gave repentance to Ephraim, see how much they are grieved, ashamed, and confounded, for their madness, wherein by the judgement of God, they were made long to go on, Jere. 31.18. I have heard Ephrains bemoaning himself thus; Surely, after I was turned, I repent; and after I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh; I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I bore the reproach of my youth. The Jews were plagued of God with a horrible blindness of mind, and obstinacy of heart, so that they rejected the Gospel, crucified the Lord of Life, and remain in Rebellion to this day: But when the Lord shall take off the vail of their eyes, and they begin to see their judicial errors, their madness against Christ and the Gospel, wherewith God in justice did plague them; their grief for it will be extraordinary, as it is set down, Zach. 12.10. They shall look on him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mournath for his only son; and shall be in bitterness for him, as one is in bitterness for his firstborn. 2 Thes. 2. The Churches of the Gentiles are in God's justice, many of them given over to strong delusions, to believe Antichristian Lies; but when God gins to open their eyes to see these delusions, their grief and indignation for them is so great, Revel. 17.16. That they hate the whore, who did seduce and bewitch them; They make her desolate, and naked: They eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.  
The Reasons of this Doctrine, 
The Reasons.  are the same which of the former, especially the second. The singular and extraordinary guiltiness, that is in these judicial errors, the blinded soul sees them not, while God in mercy remove the cloud, and send in his light; but then the lightened soul beholding the horrible ways wherein it hath been wand'ring, such wherein it would never have walked, had it not been led by a powerful Devil, set on by the permission and commission of a just God; Seeing in these sins a just God, a wicked Devil, and a heart stirred up by extraordinary temptations; by this horrible back-sight is affrighted and amazed, till Faith in the infinite mercies of God, doth calm and settle it.  
The Use is for admonition: 
The Use.  Beware of judicial errors; very often they are never pardoned, but bring on destruction both temporal and eternal: 2 Thes. 2.11. They to whom God sends strong delusions, are damned: Isai. 6.11. When God shut the people's eyes, and made their heart fat, the Cities were wasted, and the Land made desolate: Before Ephraim and Juda recovered themselves from that snare of rebellion, and came to the repentance spoken of, How many hundred thousands and millions of them did perish both temporally and eternally? And these few whom the Lord bringeth to see, and mourn for their judicial ertours; How great is their grief? How much do they wish to have seen in time their madness, that they might not so much have been plagued therewith?  
But what are these judicial errors which we would beware of? Search the Scriptures, they will make you wise in this very necessary point of knowledge.  
For your use, I shall point at some: First, 
Civil discord a Judicial error.  Civil Discord is a sin, and a great judgement; a sin to the authors and fomenters; a judgement to all, as well the innocent as nocent party. Isai. 19.2. God punisheth the sins of the Egyptians with his plague, I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; City against City, and Kingdom against Kingdom; and the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof, and I will destroy the counsel thereof. The same is the Judgement of Israel, Zech. 11.6. I will no more pity the inhabitants of the Land, but I will deliver the men every one into his neighbour's hands, and into the hands of his King, and they shall smite the Land: and out of their hand I will not deliver them. This is the great Judgement that long hath lain upon us; the removal whereof, hath been one chief end of all our late Humiliations: The longer it lieth on, it is the heavier; and all good men have the more reason to cry, with Abner to Joab, upon a less occasion; Shall the Sword devour for ever? Knowest thou not that it will be bitterness in the later end? How long shall it be ere thou bid the people return from following their brethren?  
Our Malignant enemies, the only authors of our present Discord, have to this day denied us Peace in any just and safe terms. If obstinately they will go on in their refusal, we must proceed in our necessary defence, and crave from the God of Peace, that which these children of Discord do deny unto us; and expect from the heaven such a Blessing upon our Armies, as may force them to permit us to live in quietness, when they are no more able to cause troubles. In the mean time, all should continue their prayers to God so to frame the hearts of all men, that the weary and fainting Kingdoms may be delivered, so soon as is possible, from our destroying Discords.  
The estate of the world abroad, 
Reasons why Peace is to be wished.  doth much call us to these thoughts. The Desolations of Germany, farther from any appearance of remedy this hour then Six and twenty years ago, should be exemplary unto us.  
If our minds be so large as to look so far abroad, we may see the whole Western Kingdoms in a greater danger to be swallowed up with the great Turkish Leviathan, than they have been at any bygone time: We know his head this day is bend towards Christiendom. The Bulwarks which were wont to keep him out on both hands, upon our East in Germany and Hungary, upon our South in Italy and Spain, are so much brangled with Intestine and irreconcilable Divisions, that we have just ground to fear what this his Western Enterprise may produce. England ofttimes hath felt the heavy stroke of the Constantinopolitan Arms, when they were in much weaker and far less terrible hands then at this day they are.  
If these seem farfetched fears, look over to the condition of our nearest Neighbours. While we are sleeping, and so soon as awakened, fallen a destroying ourselves, the French King hath engrossed a greater and more formidable power then any of his Ancestors for some hundred years did enjoy. No wise man of this Isle will close his eyes at the extraordinary and disproportionate increase of that Estate.  
If there were no other reasons, I believe convincing Demonstrations might be drawn from the present estate of the world abroad, why we should continue to make it one of our special prayers in all these meetings, That we might be so happy as quickly to see in all the three Kingdoms a just and well-grounded Peace. But if the fatal obstinacy of our enemies will force us to fight it out; with all cheerfulness let us go on, till they be brought so low, as not to be willing any more to reject the equitable Offers of both Parliaments.  
Only let this Judicial Discord be extended to as narrow bounds as is possible: 
Most of all, Peace among ourselves would be kept with care.  Let all our Divisions be with the enemy; among ourselves let the bond of brotherly Union continue and increase. All that are for God, and the welfare of the Kingdoms in the three Nations, are united together by the Covenant and Band of God. All Ages shall call them Cursed, who, for any imaginable advantage, private or public, shall labour to put asunder what God hath conjoined. The greatest advantages cannot make up the loss which unavoidably will follow upon such a Breach. We know the Prince of Discord, that restless Spirit, will always be stirring up in the humours both of evil and of good men the sparkles of that fire of jealousy, envy, malice, division, wherewith he inflamed the nature of all men, in the breast of our old father the first Adam: But all the members of the second Adam should make it not so much their profession, as their real care and conscience, to smother these smokes, whenever they appear. I am sure, the wisdom, the piety, the peace of mind, the love to his Country, of that man is greatest, who with the greatest sedulity employs himself to cast water on every beginning, on every the least appearance of any Division which Satan may be working in the Parliament, in the Assembly, in the City, in the Army, and, above all, betwixt the Covenanted Nations.  
The second Judicial Error I point at, is, 
Ecclesiastic Anarchy is a Judicial error.  Our Ecclesiastical Anarchy: How great a sin and how great a judgement this is, a little consideration will clear. By this woeful Anarchy, Christ is rob of a great part of his Kingdom in this Land. That in all the Churches he hath in England, there should be no Government at all, no execution of Discipline: That not one of his Officers should have liberty to keep from his Table, to cast out of his House those that are most grievous to him: That for so long a time he should be hindered to keep so much as one Court in any of his approved Churches in England; it is very strange.  
Which of you would not take it for agrievous offence, 
The absurdity thereof.  if any would offer to hinder the sitting of the high Court of Parliament at Westminster, or wherever else they please to sit? Yea, it would be taken for a heinous crime, if any in the City or Country should stop the least Committee, or meanest Officer whom either of the Houses would send out in their name to execute any of their Orders. What man in the Kingdom would not take it for an intolerable affront, if his servant were hindered to close his doors, and keep out of his house his enemies, or any whom he discharged his presence? What grief would it be to any of us, to be forced to see daily, not only walking in our house, but sitting at our Table, those whom least we desire? We may judge, by what we feel in our own breasts when such offences are offered to us, what sense Christ will have of them, when his Spirit so long hath been pierced with them. That Christ, by whose power alone this Parliament hath sitten so long time, in despite of their enemies; by whose goodness it is that their Sentences get any where obedience; who makes their wills in their private States and Families to be regarded; That he should not be suffered to keep any Court in his own Church, That his Orders should not be regarded in his own House, it is very strange.  
Can any man say that ever before it was thus in England these Fourteen hundred years, or if it be longer since there were any Churches in this Land? Was ever a total Anarchy heard of in any Churches, before these late times? Is it any where else this day to be seen in the world? Doth the Pagan, the Turkish, the Popish Princes or States, refuse or delay to grant Ecclesiastic Government to the Churches that live in their Dominions? Have the Independents, the Brownists, or the Anabaptists, or any of the Hetorodox Societies among us, wanted their own Government, since the first hour of their self-erection?  
The Judgement of this Error appeareth in three Circumstances. 
It is demonstrate to be a Judgement and Plague.   

First, That it is evident to all.  
Secondly, That it were most easily amended.  
Thirdly, That it is singularly hurtful.   
The Evidence of it may be seen in the confession of all. The greatest and most unreasonable Sectaries, will not deny but every true Church should be without all delay invested with Government: And if you will speak with the men who most have and do retard the erection of the Government desired, they will profess their true intention and desire to see the Church-Discipline established. For this evil Anarchy hath been so oft, by so many of God's faithful servants witnessed against, that now it's defended by none.  
Concerning the second. The facility of its erection, it is as clear: For, I pray, who are the men that will take it upon them to impede it? Can we at this present, or could we for some years complain of the violence of a seduced Court? Can the blame be cast on any Popish or Prelatical Faction? Will either Brownists or Anabaptists profess their denial to us of what they long ago have taken to themselves? Who then must answer to God for our shameful Anarchy for so long a time?  
The hurt of it is too too perspicuous. Whosoever will lay the Sword, the Pestilence, and all the Calamities that destroy the Land, on our delay to build the House of the Lord, shall have for him the Prophet Zechariahs' direct Warrant, Zech. 8.10. Before these days, there was no peace to him that went out or came in, because of affliction: For I set all men every one against his neighbour. And if we indeed believe, It is not the strength of men, but the Lord Christ who settleth troubled Kingdoms; What hope can we have, that he will ever settle our State, so long as his Church lies neglected, in so woeful a confusion?  
Beside outward Judgements, this Error is the cause of the greatest spiritual Mischiefs. The hedge of Discipline lying level with the ground, makes open doors, yea, invites and calls for all the devouring beasts to prey on the Flock of Christ. From this it is, that so many thousand souls are permitted to perish eternally in ignorance, in profaneness, in Heresies, in damnable Sects, without the least control, or any man's endeavour to reclaim them. So long as the Law permits no Pastor in England to exercise his Pastoral charge on any person, he may well weep and mourn when the devil in his sight plucks away numbers of his Sheep: but with his Shepherd's Crook, with the Ordinance of Christ's Discipline, to hold off that Lion it is not in his power.  
It is not only the passionate desire of all the Reformed Churches abroad, of all the godly and Orthodox Party at home; but also their confident expectation, That the Honourable Houses, without further delay, will at last set up the walls of the House of God, who now is going on apace, by so many Successes, to ruin their enemies, and to settle the state of their affairs, much according to their hearts desire. The neglect of this piece of Thankfulness may provoke the Lord to repent him of his favours, and to call back in one day, what he had been giving in many.  
I point but at one other Judicial wandering, 
False Doctrine is a Judicial Error.  that which usually and properly goeth under the name of Error, the word of our Text; false Doctrine, contrary to the ways of God's Truth. That Error is a sin, and a Judicial one, infliflicted by God as a punishment of former sins, we may see in divers Scriptures: 2 Thess. 2.10, 11. Because they received not the love of the Truth, for this cause God gave them over to strong delusions to believe a lie. Here Errors are Judgements which God puts Satan to bring on men, for their coldrife entertaining of the truth. And how grievous a Judgement Error is, this and other Scriptures clear: Here it is made a cause of damnation. That they might all be damned who believed not the Truth.  
The Socino-Remonstrants have taught our new Masters to extenuate much, and at last to deny the sinfulness and danger of Error. They would hid the Viper's sting, till the pretty and beautiful worm be once taken into the bosom, where a little warmed, it makes it quickly appear how innocent and harmless a creature it is.  
They tell us, that all sin is in the Will, 
Error is a dangerous evil and the cause of damnation.  but the seat of error is the mind: Is not the mind the most high and divine faculty of the soul? Is not the corruption of the best things truly worst? The mind's pollution with the darkness of error, is eminently contrary to the light and truth of the divine nature.  
Against this greatest of errors, the excusing of all errors, we should mind the truth of God, who cannot lie: In the place cited, error is made the cause of damnation; elsewhere the Apostle tells us, That false Doctrine eats up and kills the soul, as a Canker, Gangrene or Pest doth the body. 2 Tim. 2.17. Also false Teachers are called Ravening Wolveses, who tear and rend in pieces the souls of the seduced, Acts 20.29.  
The Apostle Peter is in the same mind, 2. Epistle 2. He tells us the condition of false Teachers, They bring in damnable Heresies, their ways are pernicious, their destruction is swift, their damnation slumbereth not: It is as certain, as was the damnation of the Devils, of the old world drowned in the deluge, of the Sodomites: All this is Peter's Doctrine.  
And this he had from his Master Christ, Matth. 7.15. Beware of false Prophets. When they have the fairest show of piety, he that knows the heart pronounceth, They are but ravening Wolveses. Matth. 15.14. If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall in the ditch: If we believe the Lord, a false Teacher doth not only destroy himself, but draws with him all his blinded Scholars into the ditch of the same perdition.  
1 Cor. 12.25, 27. The Apostle tells us, 
The nature of Shism.  That the Church is the Body of Christ, and that Schismatics make a Schism in Christ's Body: that is, they rend his Body in pieces: they who crucified him would not rend his seamlesse Coat; but Schismatics can tear his skin, cut his flesh, rend his Joints and Members in pieces.  
Understand the Language of them who plead for liberty of errors; 
What is meant by liberty of conscience, and what is the true sense of their language who require a toleration of Errors.  If you believe Christ, or the Doctrine of Paul attested by Peter, and the rest both Prophets and Apostles, whom I have not time to cite; they invite you to permit ravening Wolveses freely to enter your streets, and tear in pieces all they meet with; to come into your Houses and Chambers, to devour the souls of your best beloved Wives, Sons, Daughters, Servants, and Friends; to lead them all out to a ditch, and drown them; yea, which is infinitely worse, to cast them all in the pit of damnation. These were hard expressions if they were our own, and not our betters, I mean Christ, and his Apostles.  
Would you permit any whom you were able to hinder, to rend the Coat of Christ, to tear his Skin, to cut his Flesh, to pull his Arm from his Shoulder? These are the things which too long have been done in our eyes: It were good that such impious actions, so grievous to God, so hurtful to the souls of men, at last were stopped.  
Would you count him a gracious parent, who should wink at any who brought into his house Vipers and Serpents, Wolveses and Tigers, to destroy his Children? who brought in Boxes of Pestiferous , and boldly spread them on the Beds, and about the Table where himself and family were to sit and lie? This is the office and only exercise of all our Heretics and Patrons of error.  
All Christians are obliged to the uttermost of their power to quench the fire of Heresy and Schism; but above all other, we have a special obligation for this duty; we have lifted up our hands to the most high God, vowing to him, in the sight of all the Neighbour-Nations, our endeavours in the sincerity of our hearts, to extirpate Heresy and Schism, and whatsoever shall be found contrary to sound Doctrine, without respect of persons. If herein we should be negligent, would not God avenge our solemn Perjury? If respect to any person should make us ever think of breaking that Bond, and expressly contrary thereto to begin once to tamper about the toleration of errors contrary to sound Doctrine; what might we and the posterity expect from the hand of the God of Justice and Truth?  
Let none object the example of the States of Holland to us in this point: 
The example of Holland an sweared.   
For first, Where the Will of God is evident, the contrary example of men is not to be regarded.  
Secondly, The evil example of one State, is not to be followed against the good example of all other Protestant Churches.  
Thirdly, These States were never bound to God by such a Covenant as we are.  
Fourthly, In these States there hath been a connivance at Errors by particular Magistrates for their private gain; but to this hour, was ever any Sect among them, so impudent, as to offer a Petition for a Toleration by Law, when lately some assayed to do it, they repent ever since of that folly.  
Lastly, Hath not the Magistrates connivance without any Legal Toleration, so much multiplied Sects among them, that for this one thing (though for many other their renown be great) they have become infamous in the Christian World? The godly among them have been more grieved with this scandalous sin, then with any other; and those of them who are wise, do see their State this day in greater civil danger by this piece of impious policy, and from it apprehend greater hazards of commotion and ruin to their State, then from any other ground: However, the connivance there at Sects, and the multiplication of Sects by connivance, is no ways comparable to what is among us: but we trust that this kind of our erring from the ways of God, is near a period, and shall shortly be remedied.  
So much for the first part of the Church's complaint, 
The second part of the Complaint exponed.  followeth the second, And hardened our heart from thy fear, Not only they had wandered out of the ways of God in divers by-paths of sin; but in these sins they were obstinate, their hearts had been hard, the fear of God moved them not to repentance: This was a worse evil than the first; so they acknowledge the hand of God, and his sore punishment into it, and of this make a heavy regrate to him.  
The original word that here is turned harden, 
What is hardness of heart.  is but once else in Scripture, Job 39.16. spoken of the Ostrich, She is hardened against her young ones, or is removed from her young ones; she leaveth them alone. It signifies two things, To harden, or to remove. Some of the best Latin Interpreters translate it here, Why removest thou our heart from thy fear? The Chaldee Paraphrast takes it so also: but the Septuagint, and the most of other Interpreters old and late, translate it as we have it: The words will bear both; but for shortness I shall hold with our own translation only.  
Hardness of heart is a metaphor, importing the wilful, obstinate, and rebellious disposition of the Spirit against the fear and counsels of God: As hard Wax refuseth the stamp, while the soft receives the impression: A hard Wall puts back the Ball, which the soft Air letteth pass through: A Corslet of Iron holds out the Bullet, which the softness of the flesh receiveth.  
The way how God hardeneth the heart against his fear, 
How God hardeneth the heart.  is not by infusion of any hardness, or any evil disposition into the heart, but by three other actions.  
First, By withdrawing of his gracious spirit, whose operation it is that softens the heart, and makes it pliable to the Counsels of God, and subject to his fear: Deut. 29.9. The Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive, eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day: That all they had seen in Egypt and in the Wilderness, had not pierced their heart with the love and fear of God. Of this wonderful hardness of the people's heart, this reason is rendered by Moses, God had not given them a heart to perceive.  
Beside this negative action of God in hardening the heart, he hath two positive; He gives over the heart to its own natural hardness, that it may be more and more hardened: Thus, the Lord hardened Pharaohs heart: He not only withheld all the gracious motions of his spirit from him, but let his natural obstinacy work itself to an acquired habit of hardness: And so, what was before natural, became habitual and judicial. This is the judgement spoken of, the twelfth of John, from the sixth of Isaiah: Make the heart of this people fat; for their rejecting of my former counsels, let their rebellious heart become-worse and worse, so that thy ministry do them no more good.  
Thirdly, God gives over the heart judicially hardened by itself, to Satan's tentations, whereby it becomes more blind, dead, and hard, then of itself alone it could be: He sent evil Angels among the Egyptians, for this evil among others, Psal. 79.49. 2 Thes. 2. He sends out Satan to work with Antichrist; for to blind the eye, and harden the heart with strong delusions.  
By all this you understand, why the Church regrates it here to God, That he had hardened her heart from his fear: Hardness was natural to her heart, yet they found God's judgement, causing in justice that natural evil to increase upon them.  
From this part of the Complaint, observe, 
The Doctrine Judicial hardness is the godlies greatest grief.  Judicial hardness of heart, from the fear of God, in the times of trouble, is the godlies chiefest grief, and complaint to God. The troubles and calamities of the Jews were great at this time, their sins also were great: But behold, here they complain to God more than for either their calamities, or other sins, that God had hardened their heart from his fear, in the midst of all their sins and judgements.  
This was it that made the Prophet Jeremy amazed, 
The Proof.  Jere. 5.3. O Lord, thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction; they have made their faces harder than a rock.  
The Reason why this condition of a people is most lamentable, is first, It is a presage of destruction: 
The first Reason.  When strokes humble not a people, and soften not their heart to the fear and obedience of God, than it cometh to this, Why should ye be stricken any more. After correction is obstinately refused, then cometh rejection. 2 Kings 17.18. God is very angry with the ten Tribes, and removes them out of his sight; the great cause we have, Verse 14. They hardened their necks, like the necks of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. This same was the cause of the ruin of Jerusalem, Jere. 19.15. I will bring upon this City all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words. Jere. 26.29. The Lord hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath, because they had hardened their necks, and did worse than their fathers.  
Another Reason. 
The second Reason.  This is such an evil as draweth on eternal perdition after temporal ruin. Rom. 2.5. After thy hardness and impenitent heart, thou treasurest up to thyself wrath against the day of wrath. There is a treasure and heap of everlasting wrath from this hardness. Heb. 3.7. To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation: Wherefore I was grieved with that Generation, and swore in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest: Meaning such grief and anger in God against this evil, as holds out of heaven.  
Thirdly, 
The third Reason.  This sin hath extraordinary malignancy in it, though neither eternal nor temporal wrath followed on it: The hand of an angry God, of a working devil, and high degree of corruption, are into it: in its production, all these three have place. Before any be hardened in sin, and become obstinate, the corruption of the heart must be great, and highly advanced: Also Satan's hand is in the blinding of the eyes, and searing with the hot-iron, in stupifying and making senseless the conscience of the hardened person: and God, as a just Judge, putting on the executioner, must be also about this action. So that this hardening is very oft the sign of a Reprobate to whom God shows no mercy: Whom he will he hardens, and showeth mercy on whom he will show mercy; albeit it's not ever so, as in our Text and elsewhere. God hardens the hearts of some for a time, whom thereafter he softens, and to them showeth mercy: Yet oft, being the case of Reprobates, and ever very like to it, and in itself a degree to that woeful condition; it affrighteth the godly, when they see it in themselves or others, and becometh a great part of their complaint to God.  
The Use is for Exhortation, 
The Use.  That we be careful to grieve and complain to the Lord for this great evil, wherever we see it, in ourselves or others. Not only the most faithful of God's Watchmen in all the three Kingdoms, but also those of the people who by the anointing of God have the eyes of their mind opened to see the Spiritual estate of their own or their neighbour's souls, bear witness with an unanimous testimony, that notwithstanding all the Judgements which lie on the Land, yet this hardness of heart is greater and more universal than ever they have seen it. This cannot be but the hand of God, adding this Spiritual Plague, as the worst and greatest of all our evils: For this we have great reason to mourn, and entreat the removal of it above all our Woes.  
Motives to the Duty we need no other, than the Reasons of the Doctrine.  
If thou find this evil crept in thy heart, as I doubt not but it lodgeth sensibly in some hearts that hear me; or though the Lord had blessed thee with the tender heart of Josiah, to mourn for the sins and calamities that are already, and to tremble for what further is coming; yet if thou see this Mischief proclaiming itself in the countenances and lives of the most of thy neighbours, as truly an observing and conscientious eye will remark too much of it, wherever he will look, even in the days and places of most solemn Humiliation, when hardness of heart should be banished farthest away; this evil, I say, wherever found, in thyself or others, should be complained of to God: For having in it so much of an angry God, a busy devil, and of a high degree of humane corruption; it being also a presage and certain forerunner, if not remedied, of greater Temporal Judgements then yet we have seen, albeit we have seen and heard of as much woe as our fathers in these Kingdoms have felt for some hundred years, though all their sufferings were put together: Yet the hardness of our hearts, if it continue, will make all we have suffered but the beginning of evils; yea, this hardness of heart poisons and envenoms all our sufferings with a cursed quality. Pestilence, wounds, spoiling of goods, death, are all sanctified and sweetened to a softened heart; but to a hardened heart they are the first acts of a woeful Tragedy; there is a treasure of wrath, and lake of fire and brimstone at their end attending them.  
If we were able, on these days set apart for this end, above all other, to attain the blessing of a soft heart, and the Judgement of a heart hardened by God removed, we would quickly be secure of damnation, we would become certain of the removal of all these Judgements which have very long so heavily lain both on the Church and State, and on the backs, if not of our persons, yet of many in whom our interest is great: we should be assured of heavenly consolations against all evils that for the time were on, or hereafter might befall us. Let it therefore be our earnest endeavour to find this blessing by the Word, by the Sacraments, by public by private Prayer, by Reading, by Conference, by Meditation. At this time I will point at some scriptural helps towards it.  
First, 
The first cure of hardness is, The embracing of the word by faith.  believe the Word of the Lord. God's Word is the means that softeneth the heart, like the Sun that melteth the wax, likethe Hammer that breaketh the stone, the Fire that softeneth the Iron, the watery cloud that moisteneth the dry and parched ground. With all care and conscience, set thy heart under the beams of that Sun, the stroke of that Hammer, before the heat of that fire, under the droppings of that cloud. The contempt, the neglect, the misbelief of this holy instrument of the Spirit, is a great cause of all the hardness of heart we speak of. Heb. 3. To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart. Take heed there be not in any of you an evil heart of misbelief. Who will not hear the voice, or doth hear, but with an evil heart of misbelief, they harden their heart. The Word, which should melt them as the Sun doth Wax, hardeneth them, as the Sun doth Clay: that Word which to the believer is the loud voice of the Trumpet of God, to waken them when sleeping, to quicken them when dead; becomes, to the unbeliever and careless hearer, the song of a pleasant voice to sing them asleep, and to keep them sleeping. To such, the most powerful Ministry of a Prophet, of an Apostle, of Christ himself, serveth to make the heart more hard, and fat, and dead than it was before; as from the sixth of Isai. and twelfth of John it is manifest. That which to the faithful is a quickening Spirit, to the misbeliever is a kill letter: What to the one is the power of God to salvation, to the other is but as sounding Brass and a tinkling Cymbal. Let it therefore be your earnest endeavour, in all holy exercises about the Word, private or public, be it preaching, or reading, or conference, to embrace it with an honest heart, with all attention, reverence and faith.  
Particularly, 
Especially the promise of a soft heart.  embrace and lay up in thy heart the promise of a soft heart, as it is set down, Ezek. 36.26. there the people of God were in a worse condition than we yet: The fury of the Lord was so far kindled against them for their sins, that they were cast out of their Land, they were swallowed up on every side, as it is in the third verse: They were taken up in the lips of talkers, they were an infamy of the people, and the reproach of the Nations, and for all that were not reform, but continued to profane the Name of God, and to increase their provocations, in the midst of all their Judgements: Yet, even then, the Lord doth promise, For my own Names sake, not for your sake, will I do this: A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you an heart of flesh. Let this Word, as a pickle of good seed, be laid up in the heart, it will in time break up to good fruit. This is a part of the new Covenant, as appeareth from Jer. 31 and 32. and Heb. 8. which belongs to us, as to any other, which we would embrace, humbly waiting till the Lord perform it to us.  
A second help to softness of heart, will be a Catalogue of sins for which we ought to mourn; 
The second Cure of hardness is, A clear sight of sin.  for softness of heart is either the same thing, or proceeds in a great part from grief and sorrow for sin; as hardness of heart and impenitency are the same, or are always conjoined. Thou from thy hardness or impenitent heart. The tenderness and melting of Josiahs' heart, was his mourning for the Lands sin: The softening of the Jews heart from their long Plague of induration, is, when they are weeping and in bitterness for their sins, as one for his firstborn. The clear sight of sin being a help to grief, sorrow and repentance, must be so towards the softness of heart. The special end of these solemn Humiliations is for registrating, in clear and legible letters, in the hearts of the godly, the sins both of the Land, and of their own persons. The Tables of our conscience have been so oft impressed with these Types, that I need no more but to remit every one to the books of their breasts: There you may read in capital letters the cause of our Woes, the matter of our Mourning.  
While the Lords Candle did shine over our head, 
What are the sins of the Land.  and we washed our steps in butter; while to all the Neighbour-Nations for a great number of years we were a wonder of Prosperity; and with abundance of all Temporal blessings, we had likewise plenty of the Gospel; How did we meet the Lord? Great numbers of all ranks and estates, were obstinate in Idolatry, and known Papists. Of them who professed the Truth, how many were altogether void of knowledge, void of fear, without any conscience of God? The most did pollute the Service and Church of God with manifold Superstitions, and Prelatical Tyranny, persecuting all who had the least zeal to oppose their Corruptions: True Piety was mocked. The Sabbath, by public Authority, profaned. Covetousness, Pride, Oppression, Pampering of the flesh, Uncleanness, like a flood, did overflow the Land. In these very times, when the Lords patience is broken off, and he from heaven is revealing his wrath against our wickedness; yet where is our Repentance? How many have an ear to hear more what the present Rods of God do speak, than what his former Favours? How many Popish and Prelatical spirits have yet mourned for their old ways? How many upon conscience have left any of the named abominations? How great an addition have we made to our old heap of sin? How much have we put to our old treasure of wrath? Rather than to be reclaimed from their ways, Hath not a great part run to the Sword, and covered the Land with more innocent blood, more Rapines and Ravishments than this Isle did see for many Ages together?  
Many whom God's mercy hath separate to the right hand, 
Episcopacy and Independency flow both from one fountain.  How do they still provoke the Lord, continuing without grief for their old ways? And sundry of them who professemost Piety, advancing the old unhappy way of this Land, an affectation of singularity and difference from all the Reformed: The bitter Potions of God's Judgements, have not yet purged out this very evil humour of many stomaches. The vain spirits of this Land made that the peculiar glory of England, which was truly her peculiar infamy, and proper unhappiness, and the special grief of the most godly in the Land: The gloriation of these light spirits was, That England did excel all other Reformed Churches in their Episcopacy and Service-book: also, That the moderation of their King and Prelates was such, that Roman Catholics might enjoy a sober liberty among them, without all hazard of persecution. Is this humour diminished to this day? Or, with a little change, doth it not predomine yet in many? We must still excel all other Churches in our Government: In place of Episcopacy, we will have a new Popularity: Just the old Brownism of the rigid Separatists, covered with the new name of Independency: For after trial it will be found, that this new and Middle way (as it is called) is really the extremity of the most rigid Separation: That it is not a semi, but a sesqui-Separation: 
Independency is not a se●i, but a sesqui-separation.  That for the smaller crotchets of the Brownists which they lay aside, they add more errors, of a worse stamp, which the old Separatists were wont much to detest.  
But to sweeten our new eminency above other Protestants, it must be mixed with a Liberty of Conscience; not that, for which the King, Court and Bishops were lately so much cried out upon, The toleration only of Papists, or any one false Religion; but a full and Catholic Liberty for all imagivable kinds of false Religion; much more than to this day was ever required, either in Amsterdam, or Pall, or Transilvania, or any where else where the licentiousness of erring, in the great wrath of God, hath been permitted to dwell. Upon these things the godly would look, not as upon a subject of talking, or an incentive of wrath and indignation against the persons of any; but to be matter of heart-grief, and mourning to the Lord in our secret places.  
In the end of this Catalogue of public sins, thou wouldst have annexed a Register of thy personal provocations: When thou hast brought the Candle of God's Word and Spirit within thy own house, and within the Cabinet of thy own breast; doubtless thou wilt behold so many abominations, both fleshly and spiritual, that will be just cause of watering thy Couch with thy tears, and pouring out thy heart before the face of the Lord, if thou were able, in tears of blood.  
A third help to softness of heart, 
A third Cure of hardness is Motives to fear.  is Motives to fear; for this hardness of heart proceedeth as from misbelief and impenitency; so also from security: wherefore in our Text it is opposite to fear: Why hast thou hardened our hearts from thy fear? And Josiah, so soon as tenderness of heart came upon him, began to fear and tremble. So Motives to fear, are helps to softness, and cures for hardness of heart: Of these, I point shortly but at three: The Judgements of God on others: His Mercies to us: And, if these affect not, The Wrath yet to come on us.  
For the first, 
1 Judgements on others.  we would oft remember the examples given us by God: Who ever thou art, thou hast thy pattern from God: Be thou a Churchman, a Citizen, a Knight, an Earl, a Duke, a Prince; how hath the Lord scourged divers of thy Coat lately before thy eyes? wounded, killed, impoveriffied, disgraced many, and put others to stand this day on the brink of ruin and worldly misery? Were they the greatest sinners on whom the Tower of Siloam fell? Or they whose blood Pilate mingled with their Sacrifice? The Lord's remark on these Judgements was, That except we repent, we shall all likewise perish. The late Judgements which God hath inflicted on many of thy quality, are loud words to thee, that thou mayest fear and tremble; that thy heart may melt within thee for thy sins, lest the Lord make thee a spectacle of Judgement to others, who by the miseries of others wouldst not be taught to repent.  
Again, Remember the great mercies of the Lord: 
2 Mercies on us.  For there is mercy with God, that he may be feared. The special means whereby Nathan softened the heart of David, after it had been long hardened in sin with Bathsheba, was a Catalogue of God's mercies towards him, 2 Sam. 2. I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; I made thee King over Israel; I gave thee thy master's house; and if that had been too little, I would have given thee more: Why hast thou despised my Commandment? The ointment of mercy is most softening of it gracious heart, when it groweth into hardness: It's good to have a Register of God's favours both to the public and thy person. Consider all that the Lord hath done lately for the Church and Kingdom. If the Malignant party had prevailed, (as once they were too like to have done) if their Tyranny in Church and State had been established by the overthrow of the gracious party in the whole Isle; what woeful days should have come upon us and the posterity? That the Lord hath heard our Prayers, and from the heaven hath done so many and so great things for us: That we are in so fair a way to have both Church and State settled according to Truth and Justice: That for our persons, we have been guided aright in the common Cause; that when so many greater, wiser, better than we, have been given over to the counsels of their own hearts, to join with the enemy, for their own disgrace and wrack: That the Lord should have kept thy heart straight, and hold ●● thee on thee side wherein was Justice, Truth, and the blessing of God: That in that party the Lord hath taken any service at thy hand, when many, more able, and as willing, have been unserviceable: That thy life, thy limbs, thy estate, are preserved, when this service hath cost many their life, some their limbs, some their estates. These and the like favours would be remembered, for the softening of our heart.  
In the third place, 
3 Greater Judgements yet coming.  if neither Judgements on others, nor mercies on thyself, will move; consider what remediless evils may shortly be the reward of so great a contempt. When Nabals heart grew like a stone within him, the hand of God did in a little time cut him off by death. When neither Judgements nor mercies bring a heart to fear, the Lord usually pours out the full Vials of his heaviest wrath. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hand of that consuming fire. We would do well to be lifting up our eyes to that invisible Spirit whom the world cannot see; To behold his hand guiding all the wheels of public and private affairs. Were our State much better settled then yet for a long time it can be; if he be miskent, he can cast down in a moment more than men can build in many years. If he be not feared and sought to, he will so cross and confound the guides of Church and State, that when they are at the end of the Wilderness, on the very borders of Canaan, he can bring them back to toil in the Wilderness till they die, without so much as a sight of that Canaan, though once they had come very near unto it. Albeit the public did prosper, yet the fearful wrath of God, for thy hardness of heart, may light on thy person. Achan may be stoned to death in the valley of Anchor, in the midst of Israel's triumph. The misbelieving Prince in Samaria may see the Plenty, but be crushed, before he taste thereof. Thy hardness of heart, if it remain, will ruin thee: What the fury and curse of an angry God hath ever brought on a miserable sinner in this life, think upon it, for shortly it may be thy portion; and, which is infinitely worse, the whole treasures of the wrath to come, a greater than ordinary condemnation, for thy impenitency & hardness of heart, if thou remain as thou art, cannot but fall upon thee.  
The last help I propone, is Earnest Prayer. 
A fourth Cure of hardness is Prayer.  Sometimes all the former helps will not do it; for the heart is desperately wicked, and incredibly hard, like that of Leviathan, Job. 41.24. His heart is firm as a stone, as hard as the nether millstone. When we find it thus, shall we give over in d●spair? Not so: For there is yet mercy and power in God to make the rocks flow down, to melt the mountains, to dissolve the Adamantstones. There is a Warrant, Neh. 9 once and again proponed, for the people of God to lay hold on God's mercy and power, in the midst of their greatest Rebellion and Induration, verse 16. Our fathers dealt proudly, and hardened their necks, and heackned not to thy Commandments: But thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful; thou forsakest them not. Also in the 29 verse, They dealt proudly, and withdrew the shoulder, and hardened their necks, and would not hear. Yet in the 31 verse, Nevertheless thou didst not forsake them; for thou art a gracious and merciful God.  
What heart can be more hard and blind than Paul's, when he made havoc of the Church? yet the Lord made the scales to fall from his eyes, and put in his breast, in place of the stone, a most gracious, soft and spiritual piece of flesh. The spectacle of the greatest induration, the Jews, when the Spirit comes on them, their most obdured hearts fall to the greatest mourning, Zech. 12. Let it therefore be our care, in our greatest hardness, to lie at the Throne of Grace, to cry on still for this mercy of a soft heart; who knoweth how soon the Lord may hear and answer? When nothing else can help us, if he himself come down, all will yield to his power. When the King of Glory comes to assault the most stiff and best closed heart, all doors are cast open to him, Psal. 24.9. He breaketh the gates of brass, and smiteth the bars of iron in sunder, Psal. 107.16. When he puts his finger in the hole of the door, the bowels of the secure Spouse will shortly be moved for him, Cant. 5.4. It must be our continual prayer, that the Lord would come to put away the hardness of our heart, to enlighten it with faith, to melt it with repentance, to break it with fear; that so it may be a fitted Sanctuary for his perpetual inhabitation.  
If time were not past, 
The last part of the verse exponed.  there are in the second part of the Text, the Church's petition for the Lords return, sundry things useful for the present occasion. Look in a little upon the meaning of the words.  
The returning of the Lord, is a metaphor taken from finite creatures, that go and come: But properly the Lord cannot move from place to place; for his Essence is infinite; he is essentially omni-present; God is every where, in the heaven, in the earth, in the Sea. Psal. 139. If I ascend up unto heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, thou art there: neither so only, but he fills the heaven and the earth, Jer. 23.24. Do not I fill the heaven and the earth, saith the Lord? But not so, as if when he filled all things, he could be within the circle of the highest heavens: 1 Kings 8.27. Behold, the heavens, and the heaven of heavens, could not contain thee. We have the reason in Job 11.8. The perfection of God is such, that it is as high as heaven, deeper than hell, longer than the earth, and broader than the Sea.  
But beware to conceive of this infinite and immense Essence of God, which is in all places, and without all places, as of a bodily substance; for God is a Spirit, and that of an infinite simplicity: take heed of all gross imaginations of him, left thou turn him to an idol of thine own making.  
Not long ago, 
The zeal of the Court of England against Vorstius heresies.  Verstius and some of the Arminians in Holland, began first to brangle with their Problems, and thereafter, to deny with their positive assertions, these ground-stones of Religion. At that time, the zeal of England broke out, to the joy of all the Churches: Then the care of the King, and the very Prelates, was great, not only to keep Heresies, as hellish vapours, out of England; but to have them suppressed among their neighbours in Holland, with all speed. We hope it shall never be told to posterity, that the zeal of this Parliament was less against Errors at home, than the Courts wont to be against that evil abroad. And however for the present there be nothing so sacred in the Divine Nature and Persons, which the boldness of Heretics among us, arising only from impunity, dare not wickedly profane; yet ere long we expect a remedy to this and many more evils.  
The Returning whereof our Text speaketh, is not to be understood of the Divine Effence, Nature, Substance, nor of the Lords common Operations; but of his gracious Works, of his Mercy and Compassion, as we have it expressly, Zech. 1.16. I am returned to Jerusalem with mercy: And Jer. 12.55. I will return and have compassion on them. As a man in his anger turns his back, and goeth his way; but when reconciled, he cometh back: So the Lord, when grievously provoked with the sins of his people, for a time departeth to his place, hideth his face, withdraweth the signs of his favour: but thereafter, when appeased, he maketh his face to shine, and by his Spirit works graciously in the seduced and obdured heart: For this the Church here petitions, That the Lord would return, and make himself sensibly present to her, and by the gracious work of his Spirit, reclaim her from these errors, and that hardness of heart whereinto by his absence she had fallen.  
The Ground whereupon the Petition is builded, is, God's Relation to them, and their Interest in God: They were his servants, he their Lord and Master; as it is in the last verse: We are thine; thou never barest rule over them: they were never called by thy Name. Since the Lord had taken them to be his people to serve him, this was a ground to them, That he would not fully nor finally cast them off; but, for his interest in them, would return. This is cleared in the last words, his returning to them was not for any good was in them, but because they were The Tribes of his Inheritance: Among all the inhabitants of the earth, he had chosen for his portion the Tribes of Jacob, as the word signifies the Rods or Branches that sprang out of the Root of Jacob, for his peculiar possession: Deut. 32.8. When the Most high divided to the Nations their Inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam; the Lords portion was his people, and Jacob the lot of his inheritance. Out of the whole world, he chose Israel for his peculiar portion; as it is in Amos 4. Thee only have I known, of all the families of the earth. Not for any good in them, but alone for his own love and good will; as it is, Deut. 7.8.  
Were not the time past, we would have enlarged these Observations:  
First, Observe. 1 The proper, the sovereign, the only Cure of an erring spirit and hardened heart, is the presence, the return, the gracious entrance of God in the heart.  
Secondly, When the Lord upon entreaty hath come into the heart, and gins to enlighten and soften it; he would be entertained with much love, humility, fear, care. All in the heart that may grieve his holy eye, would be swept out, lest, if again he depart in anger, the last estate be worse than the first.  
Thirdly, A Land wherein the spirit of Error and Induration doth predomine, cannot enjoy the gracious presence of the Spirit of Truth. 2 Cor. 6.15. What communion hath light with darkness? What concord hath Christ with Belial?  
Fourthly, All who plead for a Liberty of habitation to errenious spirits in this Land, require, in plain English, a Liberty, so far as is in them, to banish God out of England.  
Fifthly, When by the Judgement of God the spirit of Error hath entered a Land, there is no putting of him out, but by Gods own Arm; for he is a great deal stronger than men. Zech. 13.2. It is the Lord who takes it on him to cause the false Prophets, and the unclean spirit that leads them, to pass out of the Land.  
Sixthly, Though the Judgement of Erring and Induration cannot be cured but by the return of the Lord; though the subduing of the spirit of Error and Obstinacy be the work of God's hand: yet every good man, according to his place and calling; above all, the Nobles of a Land, and the Houses of Parliament, would employ their whole strength to help the Lord against that strong one. We tempt God, when we neglect to use the means for doing of that work wherein he hath the principal hand. Because we live in God, Shall we not eat, and drink, and keep ourselves from seen dangers? It is the Lord that subdues our enemies under us; therefore shall not our Soldiers fight? The Lord's Spirit is the subduer of the spirit of Error; therefore Assemblies and Parliaments need to have no care of this matter? When Satan reasoned thus with Christ, He hath given his Angels charge over thee; therefore cast thyself down headlong: he replieth wisely, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.  
Seventhly, God will return for his servants sake, in the most desperate times: When Calamities have wracked the State, when Error and Obstinacy (and these Judicial) lie on the spirits of a people; the faithful expect, believe, pray for favour, upon the ground of their relation to God, still remaining in the mids both of sins and miseries; they are his servants, and he their Lord. The conscience of a desire to serve the Lord, is a Ground of hope in our hardest conditions.  
Eighthly, No hope of a deliverance by God in mercy from any Judgement, unless we be willing to serve him as an absolute Master. The greatest enemies of a State, are those, who would evert or enervate the Relation of master and servant, between God and a people; for this Relation is the groundstone of all the Protection, of all the Deliverance we may expect or pray for from God. Popes, Kings, Bishops, have been striving to be lords over God's Flock; that ambition hath cost all the three dear. Let Christ alone (by his own Laws, his own Officers, and his own Courts) have the full Spiritual and Ecclesiastic Government of his Churches: The taking of this from him, may spoil us of his protection. Those men that are most careful to vindicate the right of Christ, are best servants to the State; for they lay a sure foundation of Christ's favour and protection to that State wherein they settle Christ as the only King, Lord and Master of the Church.  
Ninthly, Consider the unexpressible benignity of God, choosing out among the children of sinful and miserable men, some to be his own inheritance: That the Infinite and All-sufficient God, who hath need of nothing, and to whom all creatures can add no perfection; in all Agesshould delight to have a possession and inheritance among men, as his peculiar treasure, they to be his, and he to be theirs; it's a wonderful love to men.  
Tenthly, God's Inheritance, his peculiar People, his dearest Children, if they will venture on sin, they shall be sure of Plagues both Spiritual and Temporal, rather than any other people of the world: For their sins are greatest, being against a most loving Father: It concerns him in honour and glory not to let them go with their scandalous trespasses: He would be blasphemed, if they went unpunished. Thee only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish thee for all thy transgressions.  
Eleventhly, The Spirit of Adoption, under great sins, and grievous punishments therefore, moves the children of God to lay hold on their privileges for the melting of their heart, and bringing them to Repentance.  
Finally, The sweetest exercise of a Christian, is the improving of the privilege in band, The making use daily of this mutual Relation, We are God's Inheritance, and God is our Portion. A soul truly religious, must give itself up fully to be possessed and filled by God, to be replenished in mind, will, affections, memory, conscience, and every faculty, with the whole fullness of God, as an inhabitant, as a due, proper and only heritor: On the other part, it will claim and lay hold by faith, on the power, the glory, the truth, the mercy, and all that is in God, as its own peculiar portion, as the only heritage which either in earth or heaven it desireth to enjoy.  
But being cut off by time from enlarging these things, I commend them and the rest to your meditation, and the blessing of God.  
FINIS.