PEACE BROKEN, OR, BLESSINGS BECOME SNARES and CVRSINGS.  
BY Reason of Man's Disobedience and Rebellion.  Mal. 2. 2. I will curse your Blessings saith the Lord. 
LONDON, Printed in February, 1645.   
GEN. 3. 19. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread, till thou return to the earth. 
GOD almighty, the great and sole Builder of heaven and earth, in those six dayes, in which his goodness did first reconcile the odds between being and not being, calling the possible world into act, made these, and but these two natures, the necessary and the voluntary; to the former, as being void of reason, and therefore not capable of any positive Law, he gave no precept, he set Nature to them a rule, and furnished them with faculties determined, and( if there be no impediment in second causes) necessitated to such or such actions, tending to such or such ends. To the latter, as being endowed with freedom, and a power indifferent to both extremes, to do or not to do, to do this or that good or ill, He expressly gave in charge, what( if he tendered his life) he should not do; and therefore he had no sooner pronounced him Lord of the whole earth, but knowing how proper it is for happiness to forget her self, and how safe for Monarchs to remember, that they are dependantly and subordinately great, in the proper tone of a Law-Giver( Legum enim authoritas ratione suasoria vile est) tells him flatly, Of the fruit of the three which is in the midst of the garden, thou shalt not eat: The three is now forbidden, and that by the Lord and Maker of it: from henceforth for Adam to taste it, shall be disobedience, shall bee intemperance, shall bee injustice; the least of which shall not dwell in Paradise, they make too great a stir in the soul, and are too turbulent to reside in him, whom God created as a city at unity in itself, there was no insurrection of the sensitive appetite against the will, no deformity between the will and reason, the intellect directed, the will commanded, the members executed: In a word, there was a neat and harmonious consent of all the faculties with reason, and of reason with God; thus was man at peace with God, and with himself. But like as from the quietness of the air the Philosopher suspects an earth-quake, me thinks the man that had not red this book, should have red so much in the book of Nature, tane so much from politic rules, as to fore-see a declension of things at perfection, to fear most a rebellion in a State most composed: such was the state of Adam, and with such success, in the same day were his affections quiet and tumultuous; his will, which that day had well given up her name, revolted from the regiment of reason, judge you how voluntarily fallen, in that she left her leader, and yet herself blind. I ask not whence this desertion, who permitting, who instigating? This is enough for me, this will bring me to my text, if I tell how the evil of sin lets in the evil of pain, and that I find in the sacred History, that our first parents did eat, and this probable in the school, that they were both created, both stood, and both fell, and both in one day. Let both these two great lights on earth answer to those two in heaven, and then behold the eclipse, that Hesychius Milesius speaks of, 〈◇〉, The Sun was darkened, and the moon withdrew her light: but happy you superior lights, whose eclipses are not sins, the defects and anomies of human actions are scanned at the bar of justice, and bearing a guilt upon the offendent, will not be expiated but by suffering; for let the man but taste of the prohibited fruit, and he shall hear a voice from heaven, that voice which breaketh the Cedars of Libanus, thundering out wrath, and this sad doom, In the sweat of thy face, &c.  
The generals in the text are three: first, the sufferer, thou; secondly, his sufferings, to eat his bread in the sweat of his face; thirdly, the term of his sufferings, till thou return to the earth.  
Since there is so necessary dependency of moral acts upon intention, it is a good rule which the Phil●sopher gives in the first of his rhetoric, 〈◇〉, Not to look so much to the letter of the Law, as the mind of the Law-giver: The express prohibition of eating was to one, but intended for all; one man, our first father did eat, and sin; the sin ran down to his sons, and to the sons of their sons, and to those that did descend from them, to all nations, sexes, conditions, times, and ages of the world, to the man that shall last see the Sun set. In the day that thou shalt eat, thou shalt die the death, as it says more kinds of death than one, so more that should die than one; and to dust thou shalt return, was more than a personal sentence, for all men were dead in one, and were gathered to their fathers, as to a living sepulchre, larger, and more common than that which Abraham bought of Ephron the son of Zoar, which was but for him and for his house; so that it seems to have a great deal of mind that which the Jews so talk of, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were butted in the same cave with Adam.  
Now if posterity dyed with him, then it sinned with him, and then shall suffer and labour with him; merely hoc iniquum videtur( says Bodinus) parentum culpam in liberos derivari: Does not Sylla hear ill for the sons of Proscripts? Can a man be guilty of that which was done before he was? Ask the school, Is it not the nature of sin to bee voluntary? Does it not require knowledge, counsel, consent, election? If not, why then is not the wolf called unjust that devours the Lamb? Why is not he cited to Areopagus as well as Mars? Why do not Princes promulgate their laws in the deserts, and compel the affections of the wild ass to a mean, as well as ours? But 〈◇〉, Arist. Moral. lib. 3. The Law-giver hath an eye to what is voluntary and unvoluntarie; to the former by the rule of distributive justice, he sets out rewards and punishments; to the latter, neither reward nor punishment: How then does God punish the sin of the first man in his posterity, that personally had done neither good nor ill? How could they conceive, and bring forth sin, who yet themselves were not conceived, or call it a sin; shall it be a mortal sin? 〈◇〉, Who blames a man for being born blind? That does the Judge of the great Court of heaven and earth: and surely the almighty does not pervert justice, it is not with him as with those roman Praetors, Jus dicunt, cum iniqua decernunt: For like, as by a political union, many families become one body civill, so by participation of the same specifical nature, were all men as one man; and like as the acts of any part of the body, as theft, or murder done by the hand, do not ascribe it to that part, but as it is moved by that first and universal motive principle, the will; so is not that first sin laid to us, as several persons, but as persons and individuals meeting in the same universal nature, totally at once by one man depraved.  
It is not, I confess, the nature of positive laws to bind where they are not known or published, so that if Cain had eaten of the forbidden fruit, Enoch his son had not therefore been born a sinner; but it pleased God, by a peculiar will, to wrap up all men in one Adam, whose will should be reputed as the will of all to come, whose innocency should be our innocency, whose sin our sin, though his repentance not our repentance. Let not dust and ashes wrangle and dispute, how just this is, how much safer is it to rest in his decree, at whose right hand, with the testimony of the Gentiles, we proclaim that justice sits enthroned, and in the infancy of time did sit, when he examined nature in a true balance, and weighed out to all things their being, their properties, their places, their figures, with most exact conformity to their exemplary cause.  
So then you have seen how many came within the precincts of this prohibition, Thou shalt not eat, so many are guilty of the breach of it, and so many are sufferers. Now I proceed to the sufferings: Democritus and the Epicure, whether flattering corrupt manners with promise of impunity, or trembling to join wrath with omnipotency, gave out, that God was not angry at all, but that he sate in Heaven a Dispenser of good things only: The Poet sang of an age that knew not whether jove could thunder or no, and wee have heard of an age, when God as yet had not entered into judgement with the sons of men, when death had no more name, than it hath real nature, when mans labour was his pleasure, his life contempl●tion, and his dwelling Paradise. But oh 〈◇〉, The very name of Troy is doleful, how much more of Paradise, it adds to our misery, since we have lost the thing, to keep the name, which at this day sounds no better, than to the master some unhappy place in the sea, famous of old for the notorious wrack of some goodly vessel.  
Well, wee are now unparadised, turned out of our pleasant walks, and must fall to our work, we must eat our bread in the sweat of our face, this is our sentence, wherein consider, first the act, eating of bread; secondly, the qualification of this act, in sweat of thy face. Man in his innocency had not a body intrinsically immortal, but a natural and elementary body, composed of the same principles with ours, and using for the reparation of nature food, though not using the very same with us; he was to eat, though not to eat in sweat: And though he was not( as Suarez says) in a literal sense to eat bread, by reason of the toil in tillage, in sowing, in reaping, in grinding, yet was he, as the word is meant in my text, to eat bread, it being taken here for all manner of sustenance: and here I cannot pass by that ridiculous conceit of some rabbis, who from this very word bread, do gather that God condemned all men to jog after the plow, a thing which could not stand either with the nature of man, or with the wisdom of God.  
I declare it thus: The light of nature, a beam of that intelligible and eternal Son, was not set out by the fall of man, this lighted men out of caves and rocks into societies oeconomicall and political: political have for their end 〈◇〉, self-sufficiency, never to bee found, if all men were ploughmen: the multitude of our defects must be supplied by the multitude and variety of Arts and Artificials; since then God gave man a natural appetite of a civill and sociable life, which appetite being natural, is not in vain, nor yet was lost by sin; for Cain, an heinous sinner, built the first city, it had not so well suited either with the nature of man, or with the wisdom and goodness of God, to have adjudged all men to that one condition of life; besides, what had become of Sciences, liberal Arts? Had not been mechanical, rude, and inchoate manners as courtly as old Evander found them among the wild Aborigines, the whole world had been benighted, darkness had been on the face of the earth, egyptian darkness, and yet not felt, and God himself had scarce found an unblemishable Levite to serve at his Altar, 〈◇〉, says the 7. of the politics, The ploughman is no fit Priest.  
Thus much of the act: I now come to the qualification of the act, In the sweat of the face: To sweat is proper to the body, yet may be translated to the soul, neither is it a bold metaphor, Tully hath it de Oratore, Commentatio & stylus ille tuus multisudoris est: so that Archimedes sitting still in his study, did sweat as well as Marcellus his Souldiers, then in the midst of Athens, neither does the word face restrain the sense to bodily exercise, since it is so frequent by metaphor, to attribute to things incorporeal, things proper to corporeal, thus does Aristotle call the understanding, 〈◇〉, and David prays, turn away thy face from my sins, O God, when as God hath neither figure nor face.  
Thus much de signo, the word, or the name; now de signato, or the thing signified: Man is a continual actor, the Sun riseth and sets upon his action; waking, he moves, hears, discourses, and when his external senses are locked up, his vegetative faculty is at work, and his fancy dreams; the whole man here never rests, nay, let it seem a paradox, I am sure it is true, there is no rest in Heaven. The grand stoic denied motion, I deny rest. But yet take this distinction, Rest is either a mere cessation from action, a simplo not operation, or a cessation from some action that wearied the Agent: there is a great deal of difference between these two. In the former sense God restend the seventh day, from production of new species: In the latter it was not possible for him to rest. In the former, man in all his faculties, all at once, is never at rest: In the latter, he is in the time of sleep, in this sense our God wils neither perpetual labour nor rest, it was his providence that the Heavens should move, that divers parts of the earth might be disposed by the influence of divers stars; upon this motion follows a necessary vicissitude of day and night, upon that a vicissitude of rest and labour: these two God hath wisely knit together, intending the one for the laxation, yet continuance of the other, 〈◇〉, The final cause of rest is labour: Arist. Ethic. 10. Now penal labour, there is a continual succession of these two, the end of the one is the beginning of the other; the one is from justice, the other from mercy: Now let Anaxagoras look up, and see whether heaven be, 〈◇〉, all of ston.  
To be, is good; but to be doing, is the good and end of being: wee perfect ourselves by action; for the defects of nature are supplied by habits, and habits acquired by actions, which so long as they are simply voluntary, are pleasant, once forced become tedious; so much as they have of constraint, so much of grief, 〈◇〉, Rhet. Arist. 1. Violence is beside nature, and therefore hath grief annexed to it.  
These painful actions which my text calls for, are of the same nature with those that Aristotle calls 〈◇〉, partly voluntary, partly violent; for as the poor man parts with his purse to a thief, yet would not do it, but to save his life, setting the less evil in the place of good; so wee spend our spirits in some actions, not because they are pleasing to the will, but because they are necessary, partly to satisfy the Law, partly for the attaining, partly for the ornament, partly for the maintenance of happiness; supposing then that we efficaciously will this end, or happiness; wee necessary will these penal actions, as means to the end, no other way to be purchased. For our condition is not like that of the lilies, which are clothed and spin not; nor that of the little Lambs, whom their mothers bring forth in the mountaines, wrapped in natural rags against the injuries of the air; neither is it with us, as they say it was with Mercury, who was born in the morning, found playing on the lute at noon, and driving of oxen at night: wee are first infants, then boyes, then youths; how many are the wants of these ages? and when wee come to be men, wee spy more, and are fain to double our pains, the more our knowledge is, the more intense are our desires, and our desires employ our members; the vast capacity of our souls, and our large wills add much to our travail; the appetite of bruits is terminated here below, our ranges about the earth, the sea, the air, attempts heaven with waxed wings, mounts up to Angels, to God himself, and rests not there; which very unrestinesse, though it be full of anxiety( Non enim est absque dollar quòd aliquis perfectionem appetat: Aquin. Comment. on Ethic.) seem to me wonderfully to exalt man above other creatures, that whereas they al disport themselves in some slender rivulets of good, onely man looks to that boundless and bottomless deep, the deity of his Maker, not to be sounded, not to be compassed.  
You have heard the sentence that God hath past on the sons of men, and that an heavy sentence, yet me thinks easier than if he had condemned us to do nothing, this 〈◇〉, this 〈◇〉, as Aristotle terms it, contradicts not only the nature of the soul, whose very being is to be, and whose well being is to be well doing, but also the whole nature of things: Could a man stand in delft, which Cosmographers call Vmbilicum terrae, the very navel of the earth, and turn his eyes to all positions of place, to the right hand, to the left, behind, before, above, and beneath, he should find them all meet, and conspire to smother, or expose this spurious or supposititious brat, and shall man father it, and harbour it in his bosom?  
go to the little Bees, thou sluggard, Pullos vel triduanos ad pensam vocant, they set their little ones their task at three dayes old; nec insenectute in fucos degenerant, neither turn they Drones in their old ages. Next turn to the Ant, and see her ways, what are those ways? Ask the natural Historian, Etiam per saxa & silices vestigia videas & semitas, Thou mayest find her steps and paths upon the hardest flints: So often does that little, yet exemplary creature, trudge this way and that way, backward and forward, to store her earthy granarie, and keep off a winter famine.  
Now if there be any to whom God hath dealt so liberal a portion of these temporal goods, as that they need not labour to prevent either want or could, or famine, even to these also do I preach, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread: they that sit on high, so high, that the poor below seem 〈◇〉, no bigger than Ants, says Lucian, are not alway to sit still, quality and condition exempt not from labour, but from the manner of labour; and therefore does Solomon set the Spider, that emblem of industry, in that she spins her Web out of her own bowels, to spin even in the Courts of Princes, though she has been often swept out for her labour. Why now should the sluggard yet fold his arms? why should he for forty, fifty, sixty yeares rest those bones to whom nature owes so long a rest? surely his soul is crept into his body to the same end that Epimenides did into his Den, to sleep out sixty yeares: he forgets how long a rest he is like to take in the grave, he and all the travellers of the earth; let the poor labouring man, he that grinds in the Mill, the hireling, whose pains are treble by the sins of great ones, solace himself with this, that this day shall end in a night, not like the nights of the year, which after a few houres give place to the day: nor like that in Ogyges his time, famous for nine monthes, but longer and more shady: where Abel has slept almost from the foundation of the world, where Israel makes not, nor egyptian Pharaohs tyre the people with building Pyramids, where silent Nations sleep in beds of day, and shall not rise, nor wake, nor rub their eyes, till the Trumpet shall sound in their ears, and heaven and earth inflamed, shall light them new start up to Christs tribunal.  
Thus much of our sufferings: the term of suffering follows in these words, Till thou return to the earth: where you may take notice of four things: the first implyed our coming from the earth: the second expressed our return to the earth: First, as the end of evils: Secondly as itself an evil. First of the part implyed, our coming from the earth. luke. jun. Brutus consulting with the Oracle, who should be consul, received this answer, That he should be consul that first kissed his mother, he by and by fell on his face, kissed the earth, returned home, and was created consul, Romes first consul: beside the faith of the history, that man is of the earth, witness the like qualities of his nutriment, his sinking in the water, melancholy, his compact flesh, the dryness of his bones, the constancy of his figure, and that which is not of least moment, the base worldling, that has fixed his eyes on the earth, and by his life-preaching gentilism, does sacrifice at Vesta's Altars, and calls her the mother of gods and men; it may be Lucretius red his Pedigree, where he tells of men, whom the earth after certain conversions of the heaven grown big, brought forth and nursed with her own milk: But let the Poet dream of prodigious births, we know that God made man of the earth, I do not say as some did, fetched from the four extremities of the earth, to show that his Dominion, and the world had the same bounds, but of earth: First, that wee might the more joy in our Ascension to heaven, and glorify our Maker, for raising our heavy bodies to so high a place above the air, above the Fire, above the Moon, and though Leucippus taught 〈◇〉, that the Orb of the sun was the supreme Orb, above the sun, above all the stars, except those that praised him in the morning. job. 38. The blessed Angels, whose early harmony echoed to the harmony of the new born world.  
Secondly, of earth, that we might have from whence to raise our souls: but not why to raise our Crests, that great ones might not look too big on the poor, but resemble in this that glorious Planet, the bright eye of the World, the Sun: the higher it is, the less it looks, that they might consider, the humble shrub lives in Mount Lebanon, as well as the stately Cedar, and many times lives longer, alway safer: that 'tis somecimes in States as in nature, that gives to lighter bodies the higher place; that all faces are drawn in dust, though some in illustrious dust; that very Cyrus, who in his time was writ 〈◇〉, now begs his memory as Strabo writes, 〈◇〉, O man I am Cyrus, he that styled himself great from the Empire of the earth, stood but like the emblem of inconstancy, with his foot upon a Globe, a slippery Globe, earth upon earth: he and poor Diogenes lived both but for a time, and both in a time, though not both in a Tub: and Plutarch says, they dyed both in one day: Death you see makes no difference, and Christ himself seems to make none: 'tis noted to this purpose, that on the mount there appeared with him Moses and Elias, the one in his younger yeares was a mighty man in egypt, after a leader of Gods people: the other, alway poor, could, and hungry, clothed with Goats hair. Away then with that Knave Lisippus, that must needs paint Alexander with a Thunder-bolt in his hand, with Caligula, that set his head on Jupiters shoulders, and with Darius, that by all means must bee a god, though but for thirty dayes: better was that speculation of Philip the Macedonian, who on a time falling, and viewing in the dust his length, cried out, Lord what a little portion of earth is not content with the whole earth: he well took notice, that as he had fallen on the earth, so he came from the earth: which is my first part; and should return to the earth, which is my second.  
〈◇〉, Rhet. 2. Arist. who knows not that he shall die? to consult about an escape were 〈◇〉, seriously to deliberate what course a man might take, that the Sun should not rise or set. I have red of Temples dedicated to fears, but that no people did ever consecrate a Priest or Temple to death, as being well known to bee inexorable; who have not heard of the gates of Death? who knows not that they lie open, and that for him? yet because evils that may bee far off do not much affect: and wee while the blood runs hot in our veins put far from us, that frozen and benumbed age, as if eternal Hebe or Youth filled our Cups, as Poets say shee does their Joves: it will not be out of place or time, in the middle of Summer to admonish of Winter; 'twas the Devills policy in old time, to have the dead butted without the Walls, out of sight, that the living might not lay it to heart: he that steers well, must sit at the end of his Boat: and 'tis the good Politician, 〈◇〉, when danger is far off, then to suppse it near: in this respect it cannot bee out of season: this is my second part, our return to the earth.  
The whole man came not from earth, and therefore cannot return to the earth: the soul shall go to places deputed to her, the body to the earth, one and the same our Mother, our Nurse, our House, our tomb; that these two should part, proceeds from causes moral, and natural; the moral cause is sin, that made a separation of God from the soul, then followed a separation of the soul from the body: for God made not Death, neither taketh the Potter pleasure in bruising an earthen Pitcher: two things( I may safely say) cannot God make, a God and Sin; of these( take the word properly, he has no Idea.)  
The natural causes of Death are either external or internal; external, O that I could number them! I should then learn to number my dayes: the internal cause is the mutual conflict of contrary qualities: the brain being could, the stomach, and the Liver hot, the Bones dry, and the reins moist: the soul comes from the Father of Spirits, itself a Spirit; into a body whose principles exercise natural and irreconcilable enmity: me thinks at her first entrance into an house so divided against itself, she should look about her like that fellow in Libanius, that coming home, and finding painted on his Wall two ready and instructed Armies, cries out, 〈◇〉; who has made my house a Military camp? The members of every mans body are at continual war; wee may bee at peace with foreign enemies, our domestic are alway in arms: 'Tis false that Solinus writes of a people in jury, that are so equally mixed, their temper so arithmetical, without excess, defect, or jar, ut aeterna gens sit cessantibus puer periis, that there is alway the same number of people, and yet no children born: Who shall make me believe that jury, or any part of jury is exempted from death, since life itself, our Lord and Saviour Jesus did die in jury? Death erects her Trophies as well in jury as Greece, and in Greece as Scythia; her victories are here above, her Captives lye below; God made the face of the earth to bee inhabited, sin and death the bowels: this is the place of them that live, that of them that have lived. Thus is the earth the common receptacle of the living and of ●he dead: other Elements serve us in our life, her service continues after death, when our funeral fires have turned us to ashes, when the air our Breath hath left us, and the water belched us up, shee is to our tossed bodies a shore, to our bodies turned to ashes an urn, to our bodies out of breath a place of Repose, a Seat to rest in.  
Thus much of my second part, our return to the earth: I now come to our return as the end of evils. Hercules his Pillars were the term of his travails, the term of his life was the term of his labours; Life and Labour go hand in hand, death and rest: hence some did conclude it the prime good not to be born, the next to die speedily: Plinie thought so well of death, that he conceived no other end of venomous herbs, than to rid men out of life, siquando taedio esset, when it grew wearisome. But seek not, said Solomon, death in the error of your lives; Death is not to bee hastened, and need not bee feared: never did pinnace arrive at the blessed Islands, that first passed not through the straights of Death; God and Nature have set them between us and home.  
There is a place, says job, meaning the grave, where there is no order; and yet this for our comfort, there is no tumultuous confusion, for Pompey and Caesar are ●t peace, the Senate and the people, nay Rome and Carthage: Fortune there rules no orb, anger and revenge lie chained up, and they that divide the Empire of our living world, pride, ambition, injustice, fraud, covetousness, oppression, have not so much as one little Province: 'Twas well done of Nature, that condemned us not to any long stay here, that cuts off our sins with our thread, and our pains with our lives, for did not men weep oftener before the flood than after? and did not old Priamus  shed more tears than young Troilus? to all that float upon the troubled waves of this world, there is one common and universal Haven, the haven of death, and yet even there in the very haven do all men suffer ship wrack, which casts me on my fourth and last part, the discourse on death, as death is an evil.  
Sin, and the punishment of sin, are members adequally dividing human evils; the former presupposed no evil or privation, it presupposed imperfection in him that sinned, as mutability of will, which is no evil or privation; for it is universally & actually in all individuals; but no privation is actually affirmed of the whole species: the later presupposed evil, an inordination in free actions or omissions, called Malum culpae, which in Gods justice is payed with that other, called Malum poenae, the evil of punishment, to which member I reduce the hate of Nature, the last enemy, the last of evils, Death; but not the least.  
Can that be the least of evils, which is so abhorred of all those appetites which God hath printed in the soul, to wit, the natural, animal, and rational? Does not the nutritive faculty earnestly labour to maintain us in being, 〈◇〉, says Aristotle, Mor. 1. even when wee are asleep? Does not the irascible defend our being, and the concupiscible, together with the generative propagate it? Does not that universal faculty( as Suarez calls it) the will, love and desire, the being and well being of all inferior parts? show me but any thing of the most obscure being, that desires not to maintain that being, and I shall the sooner with the Egyptians believe two Gods that made the nature of things, the one good, the other bad. Stay then, take notice, see and be amazed too, to see by what strange ways and windings the derived rivers become tributary to the sea, all things flow from the deep of divine goodness, see how he fetches them back again, he hath made them all, at least by some analogy, to love him in that they love themselves; for they are drops of the bucket, and so much as they love themselves, which are by participation, so much they must needs love him, which is of himself; they cannot love to bee, but they must love him who swallows up in his infiniteness of being, all being, whose nature and essence it is to be, let me tell you of a paradox, if there bee any in afflicted Jobs case, that weep that they died not from the womb, that bless the barren mother, and the paps that never gave suck, even these, the damned spirits and unhappy souls, out of a mere love to their being, desire not to be: such is our love to our being, and God himself glories to say of himself, I am, and yet this our being does death, as far as it can, destroy.  
again, can that bee the least of evils, which drowns in tears the eyes of widows and orphans? that leaves the streets as a green field, and changes the palaces of Princes into lodges of Bars and owls, that had not God for a father, nor Nature for a mother, till she was adulterate? that is ushered in by a thousand evils, the sword, pestilence and famine, excess in labour, excess in pleasure, lingering; grief, and sudden mirth, with a thousand more.  
Now that death is a passage from these to a more blessed mansion, from these cloudy regions to those enlightened by the Lord God, it is no thank to death, death is still the ruin of Nature, the demolisher of Gods work, this is the goodness and power of God, who will raise us again out of the dust, and the dark grave, and then will bless us, and show us the light of his countenance, and say in the end of the world as he said in the beginning, let there be light, and there shall bee light; a light that no Cloud from thenceforth shall dim, that shall never set: to which light he lighten us, who lighteth every man; nay who is that very light, and for Iesus Christ his sake, our onely Lord and Saviour.  
Amen.  
FINIS.   

The second Sermon.  ECCLES. 12. 1. Remember now thy creator in the dayes of thy youth. 
THE Text naturally falls into these parts: First, an act, Remember: Secondly, the object of that act; and that first in a general notion, as the creator: Secondly, in a special, with this restraint or appropriation, thy creator: Thirdly, the time when, set forth three ways: First, in thy youth: Secondly, in the dayes of thy youth: Thirdly, now in the dayes of thy youth.  
First, of the act, Remember: But because the memory of any thing does of necessity suppose the former knowledge of that, here comes in another act, laid down by way of supposition, that we know God: First then of this supposed; Supremum in homine( says S. August. de Civit. D●i) attingit supremum in mundo; The noblest faculty in the little world, man, reacheth to the noblest thing in the great world, God, the builder of heaven and earth. When God in the creation did stamp on the rude Chaos this face of method, he was not lavish of his own image, he gave to human nature an intellectual soul, and became himself the object of it: he hath not dealt so with every nation, go down into the deep, and tell me if that scaly people have heard of the God of Hosts. do they that dwell in the air, those winged Tribes, sing psalms to him that taught them, to him that made them? do the beasts of the forest build him a Tabernacle? or the Cedars of Lebanon religiously bow their heads to him? No: they are not capable of so royal service, their portion is not fallen in so faire a place, they all move in shallower waters; only man, like the stately Pine, lanches out into the main, and moves upon that boundless and bottomless Ocean, the infinite and invisible God.  
Now the knowledge of this God is two-fold, either revealed by Oracles, visions, dreams, tradition, Scripture, divided into the new or old Canon; or natural, such as the Heathen and Gentiles had by the bare light of reason, which though compared to ours, it was no more than the glow-worm to the Sun, yet was enough to leave them inexcusable, if according to that measure of knowledge, they did not honour the true God.  
The means by which they came to this knowledge, was first by reflection on their own souls.  
Secondly, by the unsatiable appetite of happiness, which cannot rest in any finite good.  
Thirdly, by the powerful conservation and upholding of all things: and here, O Lord, to whom shall I liken thee, either in heaven, or in earth? What Agent, either natural or artificial, is such to his effect, as thou to the world? What the Sun produced by day, it leaves at night, and Arts, 〈◇〉, says Aristotle, Lib. 1. Mor. cap. 11. though they are fond of their own works, and love them as their children, yet leave them to strangers, to fortune, to rust, to time. Where is Minerva, the work and glory of Phidias? or Mercury, of Polycletus? Time hath razed their Temples, and like Metellus, when he took Athens, hath cursed the very Gods in triumph. But of all the works of God, of all the parts of this great whole, there is not one missing, not one grown feeble with time, or that stoops to age. I have seen the heavens painted on Atlas his shoulders, but me thought he made a filthy sour face. There is one, and but one, sufficient for this, he that cast the mountaines in their mould, and weighed them in a balance, he that stretched forth the heavens as a curtain, and spread them like a tent to dwell in.  
Fourthly, by the neat linking of causes with themselves, and with their effects, by the voice of the heavens; for their sound is gone out into all lands, since their creation have they both day and night preached their creator, Non verborum, said rerum eloquentiâ, says the Father, Not with eloquence of words, but of things.  
Lastly, in this great volume of Nature, what page. soever they turned, they might( as in a faire print) red a God. So that to them that never saw the books of Moses, as Pagans and Heathens, who never red that in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, it will be damnation not to know a God. For like as though God had never said, Thou shalt not kill, or, Thou shalt not steal, it had been sin to take that which is not a mans own, or to  shed mans blood, because the voice of Nature cries loud against it( and therefore was Cain guilty of murder, before the Law was given in Sinai against murder.) So though God had never revealed himself, yet not to have known him, had been inexcusable ignorance, usually called in the school, Ignorantia vincibilis, Ignorantia pravae dispositionis, Ignorantia privativa: that is, the absence of that knowledge, which though we have not, yet wee might, and ought to have had.  
But in us there can bee no such ignorance, the night is past, and darkness is no more upon the face of the earth, we all know him, wee speak of him, wee sing of him, wee confess him with our pens, our words, our prayers, and daily oaths, when wee are but in our cradles, wee are taught to call God Father, and while wee hang on our mothers breasts, to say, I believe in God.  
But because to know God, and proceed no further, is like Moses from Mount Nebo, to have a view of the land of Canaan, but to die before he could set foot in it, because we know God as wee are men, but remember him as we are good men: therefore I now proceed from the supposed act, the knowledge of God, to that other explicit act, the remembrance of him.  
The good actions of men are of small continuance, and cease to be so soon as their effect is complete, like as natural motion ceaseth when the form is produced. If they continue for any time, they may thank the memory of posterity, that faithfully records the noble acts of her fathers, & suffers not the same dust that covers their bodies, to cover their names; by her they that dwell in the dust live, and the bodies of Martyrs shall bleed a fresh to all generations; it is she that writes good deeds with a pen of iron, and makes the acts of one age the history and lecture of the next.  
Now in this respect do men call for a remember, that seeing they themselves have no long parts to act upon the stage of this world, when the time comes they must go out, the curtain be drawn, and they put off their upper clothes, their bodies, they may leave to this world their name behind them, to testify that they themselves had sometime been here: but in this respect cannot God require our remembrance of him, seeing that what he is, he hath been from all eternity, and so shall continue, when time shall bee no more. The reason why he calls for our remembrance of him, is not any benefit that shall accrue to him; alas, how far is a creature, a silly man, a little quickened dust, from adding to him, who if he himself could add any thing to himself, I would not aclowledge him my God; the fullness of his perfection excludes all access of new, our prayers, our psalms, our remembrance of him do him no good, Quòd colitur Deus, homini prodest, non Deo: neque enim fonti quispiam dixerit se profuisse si biberit, nec soli, si viderit: If we do God service, wee profit ourselves, not God; for who will say, that the fountain is beholden to him that quenches his thirst at it; or the Sun to him that sees by it. There is a service, whose end is onely the benefit of him that rules, and this is more properly called servitude; and it was the lot of that impious son of Noah, Cursed is Cham, a servant of servants shall he be. Again, there is a service where the benefit is partly his that rules, and partly his that is ruled, and such a service had he in the gospel, in whose behalf the Centurion besought Jesus in this form, 〈◇〉, Lord, my boy lies at home sick of a palsy: And the original will bear, my child lies at home sick of a palsy. And such a service was that wee red of in Genesis, and Isaac blessed Esau, that he might serve his brother. But now beyond both these, there is a relation of Lord and Servant, between God and Man, where the Lord reserves to himself onely honour, and puts over all the profit to us his servants; and yet though our service be not good to him, but to ourselves, it is his pleasure and goodness to require it; it is he that lead the pen of Salomon, when he began this Chapter, as wee should begin every day of the week, every day in the year, Remember now thy Creator in the dayes of thy youth.  
The Creator is the object of our remembrance, and that first in this general notion, as the Creator: secondly in a special as thy Creator: First of the general; the poor Philosopher that knew no other, no better God than the sun, when he was asked for what he was born, made answer, 〈◇〉, to look upon the Sun; though his ignorance was too too gross, in that he made a God of a Creature, adoring the Sun for him that inflamed the sun; yet had his ground been true, had that been a God which he supposed to be a god, how worthy had his answer been, to be sent in Letters of gold to posterity, to red and practise: bee it what it will, 'tis writ against us, and shall be red against us at the great accounts, if knowing the true God, we deny him in our lives.  
Of all those Acts by which Almighty God communicates himself to the Creature, he is most visible in his act of Creation, as for his acts of executive providence, though they are equally certain, yet they are not equally seen: it was the ignorance of those that puzzled the Epicure, and driven him to his wits end, to find out, why all things come alike to all, to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not, why the thunder-bolt should pass a tavern and fire a Temple; why the Foxes should have holes, and the Birds of the air nests, but humility and simplicity not where to lay their head: which knot when he had thus tied, but could not untie, he desperately broken it, and peremptorily sets down, that there was a God in heaven: but he, a careless and sleepy one, wherein in that he took away from him providence, he indeed left him no God: not much unlike the Cretians, that call their god jove immortal, yet talk of his Tomb with this inscription, 〈◇〉, Here lies jove the Son of Saturne; but his act of Creation, he that sees it not must needs be guilty of damnable ignorance, of voluntary and affencted ignorance, and seems to have his eye-lids given him for nothing else but to shut out day; and therefore this remembrance of God is rather urged from his act of Creation, than from his act of Providence.  
There is a second reas●n which may claim our remembrance of him, and that is the extent of his goodness in this act of Creation; before heaven or earth, before day or night had God been of eternal, and infinite continuance, he was then alone, solitary, yet wanted no company: it is not with him, as with man, whose natural infirmities breed a natural, and necessary desire of society: hence says Solomon, two are better than one, neither wanted he the earth for a footstool: to want a footstool is proper to bodies, to elementary and gross bodies; neither wanted he a house do dwell in, for then he should want it now: For behold the heaven of heavens contains him not: and yet for all this it pleased him to create an heaven and earth, the one for thy footstool, the other for thy Canopy, both of them of rare beauty, of wonderful continuance, of such perfection, that to them, as Solomon says, no man can add, and from them can no man diminish, unless it be some one so wickedly curious, as he is Lucian, that blamed him first for making a woman: secondly, for placing the Bulls horns above his eyes.  
But because no efficient acts at random, but has respect to some end which either itself tends to, but apprehends not, as it is in all things below man, or which itself both tends to and apprehends, as it is in all intellectual agents, and chiefly in the first, the infinite wise God; who therefore in the theology of the Gentiles is called the first intelligence: take further notice of the end for which he became a Creator, and then unless thou be more stupid than Clusius Sabinus, that could never hit of Hectors Name, or Messala Corvinus that forgot his own, thou canst not but with thanks and amazement call to mind thy God, thy Creator, and his mercies which have been of old. Look into the upper and nether world, both sun and moon give thee to see, though they see not themselves and in this lower world, whatsoever bleats or lowes, or roars upon a thousand hills, whatsoever ch●nts in the air, or is silent in the water, both are, and grow, and multiply either for thy pleasure or for thy necessity: descend from the sensitive degree to the vegetative, thou shalt find the laurel in the could of Winter put off her leaves for Caesars head: for him the Pine leaves her native mountain, for an inhospitall Element, and at the Artificers pleasure the Cedar comes down from Lebanon, and puts on the form of men, of beasts, of gods. If this bee not enough, do but think how GOD hath placed the head of trees below the foot of man, 〈◇〉, The head of a three is the root. Arist. de anim. Of all these, Et Dominium & usus fundatur in humana natura, Suar. de oper. 6. dierum, Both Dominion and use is founded in the nature of Man: Whatsoever he created in those first six dayes of the world, he made in reference to thee; to thee( I say) whosoever thou art; he desires no man to remember him for whom he did not create these things: he that hath not so much land as he can cover with his prostrate body, for him was the whole earth created: whatsoever is now enclosed, had not sin entred into the world, should have lain common: the Civilian had not broached those terms of division, dominion, acquisition, prescription, usucaption, occupation, it had not been in controversy whether the master might cast Anchor at this or that shore, nor whose was the swarm of Bees that settled in this or that three, there had been no settling of Land-marks, no buying, no selling either of hand of Iustice; no Michaelmas or Easter term. Aquinas notes, that buying or selling was never heard of, till Abraham bought a burying place of Ephron the son of Zoar; and here by the way you may note, that the first thing this good man bought was a burying place, as if the end of his life had been the beginning of his thoughts: the River of God, says the Psalmist, is full of Water; you have heard how this River keeps not within banks, but rejoices to break out, and run down with a mighty stream, to make glad the face of the whole earth.  
Thus much of the object in general, as the Creator: I now come to the object in a more special notion, with this restraint or appropriation, thy Creator: where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth,( says God to job) let the Poet make answer, quâ non nata jacent, were things that are not yet born or conceived are, that is just no where: how much then dost thou owe to God that gave thee life, when as yet thou couldst not ask it of him? and when he first gave thee life, thou wast as thy dayes are, but a span long, and yet what a faire place did he make ready for thee? even the wide and spacious world, that when thou comest to yeares and mans stature, thou mightest have elbow room enough.  
That God is the Creator, and therefore Almighty, is matter of fear and trembling; but that he is thy Creator is matter of love, and thankful remembrance. Did he not give thee a being? yes, but so he did to stocks and stones. Did he not give thee a soul and life? thus much he hath done for beasts and trees. But did he not give thee a reasonable soul? to deny it were the best argument, that he did not. But in that he hath given thee a reasonable soul, remember this thing that he hath done for thee: The soul of Beasts is from the earth, earthly; the soul of man from the Father of Spirits, and is spiritual; the soul of Beasts is but for a time, and then dyes with the body, the soul of man lives after the body, and returns to God that gave it.  
Some of the old Philosophers compare the soul of a man to a circled; for like as a circled returns to the first point, and ends where it began, so the soul of man returns to God from whom it began: to which may that bee well applied which God says of himself, I am the beginning, and I am the end.  
But now though it bee true that the wise men said of old, that the soul of man doth resemble a circled; yet is there some disparity and unlikeness in the one and the other; for every circled returns to the point from whence it begins, but every mans soul doth not return to God that gave it: for the souls of the wicked go out from him, and are lost in this world, and never return to him again: but the souls of the just are like the Dove which Noah sent out of the ark, which finding no rest for the sole of her foot, returned back again, and he put forth his hand and received her. In this do the souls of good and bad agree, that they were all created by one and the same God, that they are all for a time to be united to the body, that they shall all at the end of that time be separated from the body, that they shall all put on the very same bodies which sometimes they put off; that they shall all come to judgement; and here begins the woeful and lamentable difference, some proving chaff, some Wheat; some Sheep, some Goats; some being set on the right hand, and some on the left; some marked out to eternal death, and some to eternal life: now that thou mayst never feel the happiness of the one, and never feel the misery of the other, take with thee this counsel, it is the counsel of a King, of Solomon the King, let it bee to thee as the Signet of thy right hand, and as jewels of gold about thy neck; writ it upon the nails of thy fingers, upon the palms of thine hands, upon the posts of thine house, and in every corner of thy heart, Remember thy Creator. The fruit that will spring from this remembrance, will be much and rare: from contemplation of his highnesse, and thy low estate will spring humility, from thought of this, that he gave to thee not onely when thou hadst nothing, but wast nothing, charity to the poor, from his mercy hope, from his Iustice a true balance; fear of his Name, resolution and contempt of injuries, from his immensity and illimited presence in all places, watchfulness and wariness in all thy ways, words, and actions.  
But because there is an appoynted time for all things, a time for every purpose under the Sun, my Text does not only set down whom we must remember, but the time when we must remember him, and that in three particulars:  

First, in our youth.  
Secondly, in the dayes of our youth.  
Thirdly, now in the dayes of our youth,   
First of the first. It was the superstition of the old Romans, primam lanuginem Diis Consecrare, to consecrate the first hair of their cheeks to their gods: what was superstition in them, will bee good Religion in us, God will have our firstlings; what are they? the first born male of thy cattle, and of thy sheep, thou shalt sanctify to the Lord thy God, was the old Law. But now, I will take no Bullock out of thine house, nor Goat out of thy fold: will I eat the flesh of Bulls, or drink the blood of Goats? Offer unto me praise, and pay thy vows, call upon me( but mark what follows) in the day of trouble, not in the night, not after sun set, wee must not defer it so long: and I say, call upon him early, betime in the morning; and if not in the morning of the day, yet surely in the morning of thine age, that is, in thy youth. How many have thought to call in the evening, who have been called away themselves at noon, and been benighted at mid-day? for we are here but for a time, and then must bee gone: like travellers, or wayfaring men, wee must pay our debt and reckoning to Nature, and then away; after we have eat and drunk here, or like Tenants at will, who must give up our Title and Land, even that small portion of earth which we carry about us, when God shall call, as he called to Abraham, exi de terra tua, go out of thy Land: and whither then? to the place that job in his tenth Chapter speaks of, dark as darkness itself; where there is no order; where there is no place for repentance, for as the three falleth so it lieth. six dayes shalt thou labour and do all that thou hast to do, in these thou must gather thy Manna; if thou gather on the seventh, it shall stink and bring forth worms: never had man pardon of his sin to whom it was not sealed in this world; we must be wrought here, and sitted and squared for the house of God, or no where, for after this life shall cease the noise of the hammer, the Axe, and the Chisill: the day is for action, whether good or ill: the night cometh, in which no man worketh; for that reason remember thy Creator here, and for this remember him here in thy youth, because it is uncertain whether thou shalt ever be old: none are old which were not young; many are young which shall not bee old. Times and ages, God, as a wise dispenser has kept in his own hands, to the intent that wee might suspect a shorter thread of life, and yet not despair of a longer.  
There is a time to be born, and a time to die( says Solomon) mark his language, here is birth and death, but no talk of life; as if in a new way of Philosophy, he would make a passage ab extremo, ad extremum sine medio, as if wee were to spring immediately out of our mothers womb, out of our swaddling Clouts into our winding sheet.  
But suppose it were so, that thou hadst a long lease of thy life, and wert forced to go to thy grave as a sheaf of Wheat into the barn, ripe and in a good age: suppose thou hadst a promise to see thy childrens children, and their Children, yet were it extreme impiety to defer thy repentance to thy later dayes, to give thy beauty and youth to thy pleasure, and thy wrinkles and gray hairs to thy God. Hast thou not red, hath it not been  told thee, that God will have no pleasure in thy leavings, the halt, the lame, the bleare-eyed, and the blind, are these fit offerings on his Altar?  
Besides, how unjust is this, to play away the strength of thine age, and then to lay the burden of all thy sins upon thy old and decrepit age, which God knows is a burden to itself, whose knees tremble and shake under as many diseases as sins. O Lord, that back that so stoops under threescore yeares, how shall it sink under the sins of threescore yeares? the sins, I say, whose weight he full well knows, that calls to us, Come unto me all you that are heavy laden; for this I call heaven, and earth, and hell to witness; for the earth sunk under the sins of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram: the first sin weighed the apostate Angels to hell; and now is another hell to them, and the sin of man weighed down from heaven to earth: The Son of God, who on the Mount of Olives sweat drops of blood, under the load of our iniquities, and when he bare them on the cross, he cried out in the anguish of his soul, heaven and earth bewailing the extreme weight that lay upon him, for the sun shut his eye, and the whole Land of jury became as a close mourner; for it was wrapped in a black Mantle of darkness from the sixth even unto the ninth hour: is this then a burden for thine old age? for crazy and faint limbs? then let a Pigmie, a dwarf, twitch up Mount Aetna at the roots, and strut away with it on his shoulders.  
Besides all this, do but think of the many and certain miseries of that age; Nonius Marcellus coats three places out of Accius, Pacuvius, and Titinnius, where senium is put for Malum, as if it were one and the same thing to be old and miserable: add hither the decay of Senses, conscience of an ill-acted life, the fear to die, and yet weariness to live, with Chiliads, and Iliads, more of evils, Ministers to the first, I tremble to say the second death.  
Beyond all this, there are some vices natural to old age, as jealousy, peevishness, morositie, loquacitie, their present life being but a vain repetition or memory of their former, 〈◇〉, they live by memory, says Arist. I add hither also covetousness, so proper to this age, that the Philosopher therfore calls it, 〈◇〉, uncurable, because 〈◇〉, old age, and every impotency breeds it, whether it bee, that when the gifts of body and mind fail, wee catch at those of fortune, as our last refuge, like men half drowned, that missing of better hold, catch at straws or weeds, which reason Aquinas on that place gives; or whether it be 〈◇〉, which is the Philosophers one Reason in 2. of his Rhetor. because old men by experience best know how necessary those eternalls are, and yet how hardly got, how easily lost: This is that, that makes them, when they are even at their journeys end, break their Asses backs with saying on new provision, not much unlike Rivers, that then run biggest, and gather most waters, when they come nearest to the Sea, to their own home.  
Lastly, how hardly does gray-headed sin leave a sinner? This is that egyptian Tyrant, that Pharaoh that will not let Israel go: it is continuance in sin, that makes an earnest sinner, our first sins are with some reluctancy, some checks, some gripes, our later with delight; happy is he that dashes those Brats, those little ones, against the ston, as it is in psalm one hundred thirty six. Some Interpreters by little one, do there understand sin in its Infancy, and by the ston the Rock, the Corner ston, CHRIST JESUS.  
How hardly is the iniquity of our heels shooke off? Cassiodorus expounds our heels our later Age, and the difficulty proceeds partly from the devil, to insidiaberis calcane●, said God to the Serpent, thou shalt lie in wait for his heel; partly from the sinner, he is an old, a grave sinner, hardly curable; not as if the balm of Gilead failed, not as if GOD wanted mercy, for he ran to meet the prodigal afar off, and Saint John saw, jerusalem with twelve Gates open to the East three, to the West three, to the North three, and to the South three: but because God in Iustice hardens such sinners, not positively, but negatively, that is, Non impertiendo malitiam, said non impertiendo gratiam, says lombard, not by making them evil, but by not making them good, leaving them stupid, bed-ridden, and speechless sinners, without sense, without motion, not able to do or say so much as the prodigal did, I will rise, or I would rise, and go to my Father.  
Hence now I pass to the second particular, In the dayes of thy youth.  
Why in the dayes of our youth, more than in the yeares of our youth: They that have set us out the shortest time for youth, allow us from fourteen to thirty four, but this is to put us in mind of uncertainty of life, as if our youth was but for a few dayes, or like as at the end of the day comes evening, and then dark night, so at the end of our youth comes old Age, and then Death.  
Or it may bee without violence to the Text, you may take in the dayes of thy youth; for, by the good actions done in thy youth, and then the sense will bee, give testimony that thou Remembrest thy Creator, by thy well-doing, in thy youth; for so may this word Dayes bee used: Abraham( said Moses) departed full of daies, Hoc est( says Aquinas) plenus operibus lucis & diei: Neither do I without warrant expound this Preposition in as a causal, signifying by; so would some have it meant in the very first word of Genesis, and so it is used in the psalm, In wisdom hast thou made them all: that is, by wisdom; for the Son is the wisdom of the Father: And so is it used in the first of the Hebrewes, 〈◇〉, he spake to us in his son, that is, by his Son.  
Thus I have done with the second particular, In the dayes of thy youth. But that is not enough, the wise man adds, now in the dayes of thy youth. I say now: for now is the sabbath Day, to the hallowing of which, GOD prefixed, as he did to my Text, a Remember, Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day.  
Secondly, remember him now, because no time is thine, but this very now, whether any bee to come it is uncertain; and what it may bring with it as uncertain: That which is past is behind thee, and seeing thou art a traveller on earth, the further thou journyest, the further thou leavest it.  
Thirdly, Remember thy Creator now, because now, in this very moment, this very Article of time, does he create thy better part, thy soul: f●r by the very same action by which it was first created, is it till this day created, is this minute created, and shall bee created to all eternity,( mistake me not) the Conservation of it in being; being nothing else but the Creation of it continued: since therefore, God upholds thy soul in being by the same act, by which he gave it being( I mean thy soul onely, for he did not in a proper sense create thy body) and since no cause loseth its Name, or formality, till its actual influence, or causality cease: who sees not that whensoever he did first create it, yet he now creates it: he is now thy Creator, therefore thou shalt now remember him: if he be thy beginning, thou must make him thy end: the first efficient, and the last end must needs bee coincident: if he do for thee, thou must do for him; if he now remember thee, thou must not now forget him; because thou wast at first deduced from him, thou must bee thus reduced to him. Alcinous in his Introduction to Plato says of him, 〈◇〉, he held GOD of a Sphaericall figure: and truly, though God bee of no figure, yet( to omit many instances) he seems to love this figure: for as a circled returns into itself, and ends where it began; so all things that were derived from him,( and what was not derived from him?) must end in him: Ister, Achelous, Euphrates, and Ganges, all these Rivers flow from that mighty Well: and after all their windings, come to pay tribute, and fall with a loud noise into that mighty Well.  
Last of all, Remember you especially your Creator now, because there was of late evil in your great city, the evil of Plague, but now is not, because the giant hath now laid by his Quiver, his Bow, and his arrows, because shee that did sit in▪ Ashes, is now become the glory of Cities, the seat of joy, of mirth, and health; because now her streets, her Courts of Iustice, her Temples are returned from solitude to their old frequency, because now shee hears not Zim, nor the Scriech-Owle by night, not the Vulture, nor the Raven by day: O let it not bee  told in Edom, let not the Hittite and the Stranger hear that Israel found a mindful God, but God an unmindful Israel, that you are still a rebellious people, though his Angel past by your houses, and your first-borne live, that you hear not him, whereas he heard for you, your very doors calling, and crying, Lord have mercy upon us.  
{inverted ⁂ }   

Errata.  
page. 2. line 4 red vilescit for vile est. p. 3. l. 15. r. leaving for bearing p. 4. l. 17. r. mind to that, for mind that. p. 5. l. 24. r. are not ascribed, for do not ascribe. p. 8. l. ●. r. put for set. p. 8. l. 16. deal.?. at Arts, and set it at Sciences. p. 25. l. 16. r. carried for cursed.  
FINIS.