to the full and final vastation of Israel, to the scorn and hissing of all nations, to the just terror of the world: while that darling people, which was once the example of God's mercy, is now become the fearful spectacle of his fury and revenge; surviving only in some few abhorred and despised vagabonds, to shew that there was once such a nation.

IV. But the time and occasion call my thoughts homeward, and invite me rather to spend the rest of my hour in PARALLELING ISRAEL'S BLESSINGS, SINS, THREATS OF JUDGMENT WITH OUR OWN: Wherein our interest shall be a sufficient motive of our attention.

1. Gather you together therefore, gather you, O nation, not worthy to be loved; and cast back your eyes upon those incomparable FAVOURS, wherewith God hath provoked and endeared this Island; in which I dare boldly say we are, at the least, his second Israel. How hath he chosen us out of all the earth, and divided us from the rest of the world, that we might be a singular pattern and strange wonder of his bounty! What should I speak of the wholesome temper of our clime; the rich provision of all useful commodities? so as we cannot say only as Sanchez did, "I have moisture enough within my own shell;" but as David did, Poculum exuberans, My cup runs over, to the supply of our neighbour nations. What speak I of the populousness of our cities, defencedness of our shores? These are nothing, to that heavenly treasure of the Gospel, which makes us the Vineyard of God; and that sweet Peace, which gives us the happy fruition of that saving Gospel. Albion do we call it? nay, as he rightly, Polyolbion, "richly blessed." O God, what, where is the nation, that can emulate us in these favours?

How hath he fenced us about with the hedge of good discipline, of wholesome laws, of gracious government; with the brazen wall of his Almighty and miraculous protection! Never land had more exquisite rules of justice, whether mute or speaking. He hath not left us to the mercy of a rude anarchy, or a tyrannical violence; but hath regulated us by laws of our own asking, and swayed us by the just sceptres of moderate princes. Never land had more convincing proofs of an Omnipotent Tuition, whether against foreign powers or secret conspiracies. Forget, if ye can, the year of our invasion, the day of our Purim: besides the many particularities of our deliverances filled up by the pen of one of our worthy prelates *.

How hath he given us means to remove the rubs of our growth; and to gather away the stones of false doctrine, of heretical pravity, of mischievous machinations that might hold down his truth! And, which is the head of all, how hath he brought our vine out of the Egypt of Popish Superstition, and planted it! In plain terms, how hath he made us a truly-orthodox Church, eminent for purity of Doctrine, for the grave and reverend solemnity of true Sacraments, for the due form of Government, for the pious and religious form

* Bishop Carleton's "Thankful Remembrance of God's Mercy." EDITOR.

of our public Liturgy! With what plenty hath he showered upon us the first and latter rain of his Heavenly Gospel! With what rare gifts hath he graced our teachers! With what pregnant spirits hath he furnished our academies! With what competency of maintenance hath he heartened all learned professions! So as, in these regards, we may say of the Church of England, Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all; Prov. xxxi. 29.

How hath the vigilant eye of his Providence, out of his tower of heaven, watched over this Island for good! Not a hellish pioneer could mine under ground, but he espied him: not a dark lanthorn could offer to deceive midnight, but he descries it: not a plot, not a purpose of evil could look out, but he hath discovered it; and shamed the agents, and glorified his mercy in our deliverance.

Lastly, how infinitely hath his loving care laboured to bring us to good! What sweet opportunities and encouragements hath he given us of a fruitful obedience! And when his Fatherly counsels would not work with us, how hath he screwed us in the wine-press of his afflictions: one while, with a raging pestilence; another while, with the insolence and prevalence of enemies; one while, with unkindly seasons; another while, with stormy and wracking tempests: if, by any means, he might fetch from us the precious juice of true penitence and faithful obedience, that we might turn and live! If the press were weighty, yet the wine is sweet.

Lay now all these together, And what could have been done more for our Vineyard, O God, that thou hast not done? Look about you, Honourable and Christian Hearers, and see whether God hath done thus with any nation. Oh, never, never was any people so bound to a God. Other neighbouring regions would think themselves happy, in one drop of those blessings, which have poured down thick upon us. Alas! they are in a vaporous and marish vale, while we are seated on the fruitful hill: they lie open to the massacring knife of an enemy, while we are fenced: they are clogged with miserable encumbrances, while we are free: briars and brambles overspread them, while we are choicely planted: their tower is of offence, their wine-press is of blood. O the lamentable condition of more likely vineyards than our own! Who can but weep and bleed, to see those woeful calamities, that are fallen upon the late-famous and flourishing Churches of Reformed Christendom? Oh, for that Palatine Vine, late inoculated with a precious bud of our royal stem; that Vine, not long since rich in goodly clusters, now the insultation of boars and prey of foxes! Oh, for those poor distressed Christians in France, Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, Germany, Austria, the Valteline, that groan now under the tyrannous yoke of Antichristian oppression! How glad would they be of the crumbs of our feasts! How rich would they esteem themselves, with the very gleanings of our plentiful crop of prosperity! How do they look up at us, as even now militantly triumphant, while they are miserably wallowing in dust and blood; and wonder to see the sun-shine upon our hill, while they are drenched with storm and tempest in the valley!

What are we, O God, what are we, that thou shouldest be thus

rich in thy mercies to us, while thou art so severe in thy judgments unto them? It is too much, Lord, it is too much, that thou hast done for so sinful and rebellious a people.

2. Cast now your eyes aside a little; and, after the view of God's Favours, see some little glimpse of our REQUITAL. Say then, say, Onation not worthy to be beloved, what fruit have ye returned to your beneficent God? Sin is impudent: but let me challenge the impudent forehead of sin itself. Are they not sour and wild grapes, that we have yielded? Are we less deep in the sins of Israel, than in Israel's blessings? Complaints, I know, are unpleasing, however just; but now not more unpleasing than necessary. Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of contention; Jer. xv. 10. I must cry out in this sad day, of the sins of my people.

The searchers of Canaan, when they came to the brook of Eshcol, they cut down a branch with a cluster of grapes, and carried it on a staff between two, to shew Israel the fruit of the land; Num. xiii. 23. Give me leave, in the search of our Israel, to present your eyes with some of the wild grapes, that grow there on every hedge. And what if they be the very same, that grew in this degenerated vineyard of Israel?

Where we meet, first, with Oppression: a lordly sin, and that challengeth precedency, as being commonly incident to none but the great; though a poor oppressor (as he is unkindly, so he) is a monster of mercilessness. Oh the loud shrieks and clamours of this crying sin! What grinding of faces, what racking of rents, what detention of wages, what inclosing of commons, what engrossing of commodities, what griping exactions, what straining the advantages of greatness, what unequal levies of legal payments, what spiteful suits, what depopulations, what usuries, what violences abound every where! The sighs, the tears, the blood of the poor pierce the heavens, and call for a fearful retribution. This is a sour grape indeed; and that makes God to wring his face in an angry detestation.

Drunkenness is the next: not so odious in the weakness of it, as in the strength. O woeful glory! Strong to drink. Woe is me! how is the world turned beast! What bouzing, and quaffing, and whiffing, and healthing is there on every bench! and what reeling and staggering in our streets! What drinking by the yard, the die, the dozen! What forcing of pledges! what quarrels for measure and form! How is that become an excuse of villainy, which any villainy might rather excuse, " I was drunk!" How hath this torrent, yea this deluge of excess in meats and drinks drowned the face of the earth, and risen many cubits above the highest mountains of religion and good laws! Yea, would God I might not say that, which I fear and shame and grieve to say, that even some of them, which square the ark for others, have been inwardly drowned, and discovered their nakedness. That other inundation scoured the world: this impures it. And what but a Deluge of Fire can wash it from so abominable filthiness?

Let no Popish eaves-dropper now smile to think, what advantage

I give by so deep a censure of our own profession. Alas! these sins know no difference of religions. Would God they themselves were not rather more deep in these foul enormities! We extenuate not our guilt: whatever we sin, we condemn it as mortal: they palliate wickedness, with the fair pretence of veniality. Shortly; They accuse us; we, them; God, both.

But where am I? How easy is it for a man to lose himself in the sins of the time! It is not for me, to have my habitation in these black tents: let me pass through them running. Where can a man cast his eye, not to see that which may vex his soul?

Here, bribery and corruption in the seats of judicature; there, perjuries at the bar: here, partiality and unjust connivancy in magistrates; there, disorder in those that should be teachers: here, sacrilege in patrons; there, simoniacal contracts in unconscionable Levites: here, bloody oaths and execrations; there, scurril profaneness: here, cozening in bargains; there, breaking of promises here, perfidious underminings; there, flattering supparasitations: here, pride in both sexes, but especially the weaker; there, luxury and wantonness: here, contempt of God's messengers; there, neglect of his ordinances, and violation of his days. The time and my breath would sooner fail me, than this woeful bead-roll of wickedness.

3. Yet, alas! were these the sins of ignorance, of infirmity, they might be more worthy of pity than hatred. But oh, the high hand of our presumptuous offences! We draw iniquity, with the strings of vanity, up to the head, up to the ear; and shoot up these hateful shafts against heaven. Did we sit in darkness and the shadow of death, as too many Pagan and Popish regions do, these works of darkness would be less intolerable: but, now that the beams of the glorious Gospel have shined thus long, thus bright in our faces, Oh me, what can we plead against our own confusion? O · Lord, where shall we appear, when thy very mercies aggravate our sins and thy JUDGMENTS?

How shouldest thou expect fruit from a vineyard so chosen, so husbanded? and woe worth our wretchedness, that have thus repayed thee. Be confounded in thyself, O my Soul, be confounded, to see these deplored retributions. Are these grapes for a God? Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unjust? Hath he for this made us the mirror of his mercies to all the world, that we should so shamefully turn his graces into wantonness? Are these the fruits of his Choice, his Fencing, his Reforming, his Planting, his Watchtower, his Winepress ? O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenants and mercies to them that love thee; we have sinned and committed iniquity, and have rebelled by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments. O Lord, righteousness belongeth to thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day. We know, we acknowledge, how just it may be with thee, to pull up our hedges, to break down our wall, to root up our vine, to destroy and depopulate our nation, to make us the scorn and proverb of all generations. But, O our God, Let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy Jerusalem, thy holy

mountain. O Lord hear, O Lord forgive, O Lord hearken and do. Defer not for thine own sake, O our God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy Name; Dan. ix. 16, 19.

But, alas! what speak I of not deferring to a God of Mercy; who is more forward to give, than we to crave; and more loth to strike, than we to smart; and, when he must strike, complains, Why will ye die, O house of Israel? Let me rather turn this speech to ourselves. The delay is ours. Yet, it is not too late, either for our return or his mercies. The decree is not, to us, gone forth, till it be executed. As yet, our hedge stands, our wall is firm, our vine grows. These sharp monitions, these touches of Judgment have been for our warning, not for our ruin. Who knows if he will not return, and yet leave a blessing behind him? Oh, that we could turn unto him with all our heart, with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning! Oh, that we could truly and effectually abandon all those abominable sins, that have stirred up the anger of our God against us; and, in this our day, this day of our solemn Humiliation, renew the vows of our holy and conscionable obedience! Lord God, it must be thou only, that must do it. Oh, strike thou our flinty hearts with a sound remorse, and melt them into tears of penitence for all our sins. Convert us unto thee, and we shall be converted. Lord, hear our prayers; and regard our tears; and reform our lives; and remove thy plagues; and renew thy loving countenance; and continue and add to thine old mercies. Lord, affect us with thy favours; humble us for our sins; terrify us with thy judgments: that so thou mayest hold on thy favours, and forgive our sins, and remove thy judgments; even for the Son of thy Love, Jesus Christ the Righteous: To whom, &c.