that he came to say It Repents me that I have made such a Creature And however it may be but a witty Fancy in a Late Learned Writer that the Earth before the Flood was nearer to the Sun than it is at this Day and that Gods Hurling down the Earth to a further Distance from the Sun were the cause of that Flood yet we may fitly enough say that men perished by a Rejection from the God of Heaven Thus the Enhanc'd Impieties of this our World will Exasperate the Displeasure of God at such a rate as that he will more Cost us off than heretofore until at last He do with a more than ordinary Indignation say Go Devils do you take them and make them beyond all former measures miserable If Lastly We are inquisitive after Instances of those Aggravated Woes with which the Devil will towards the End of his Time assault us Let it be Remembred That all the Extremities which were foretold by the Trumpets and the Vials in the Apocalyptic Schemes of these things to come upon the world were the woes to come from the wrath of the Divel upon the shortning of his Time The horrendous desolations that have come upon mankind by the Irruptions of the old Barbarians upon the Roman World and then of the Saracens and since of the Turks were such woes as men had never seen before The Infandous Blindness and Viâ—…eness which then came upon mankind and the Monstrous 〈◊〉 which thereupon carried the Roman world by the Millions together unto the shambles were also such woes as had never yet had a Parallel And yet these were some of the things here intended when it was said wo For the Divel is come down in Great wrath having but a short Time But besides all these things and besides the Increase of Plagues Wars and Storms and Internal Maladies now in our days there are especially two most extraordinary Woes one would fear will in these days become very ordinary One Woe that may be look'd for is A frequent Repetition of Earthquakes and this perhaps by the energy of the Divel in the Earth The Divel will be clap't up as a Prisoner in or near the Bowels of the earth when once that Conflagration shall be dispatch'd which will make The New Earth wherein shall dwell Righteousness and that Conflagration will doubtless be much promoted by the Subterraneous Fires which are a cause of the Earthquakes in our Dayes Accordingly we read Great Earthquakes in divers places enumerated among the Tokens of the Time approaching when the Devil shall have no longer Time I suspect That we shall now be visited with more Usual and yet more Fatal Earthquakes than were our Ancestors inasmuch as the Fires that are shortly to Burn unto the Lowest Hell and set on Fire the Foundations of the Mountains will now get more Head than they use to do and it is not impossible that the Devil who is e're long to be punished in those Fires may aforehand augment his Desert of it by having an hand in using some of those Fires for our Detriment Learned Men have made no scruple to charge the Devil with it Deo permittente Terraemotus causat The Devil surely was a party in the Earthquake whereby the Vengeance of God in one black Night sunk Twelve considerable Cities of Asia in the Reign of Tiberius But there will be more such Catastrophe's in our Dayes Italy has lately been Shaking till its Earthquakes have brought Ruines at once upon more than thirty Towns but it will within a little while shake again and shake till the Fire of God have made an Entire Etna of it And behold This very Morning when I was intending to utter among you such Things as these we are cast into an Heartquake by Tidings of an Earthquake that has lately happened at Iamaica an horrible Earthquake whereby the Tyrus of the English America was at once pull'd into the Jawes of the Gaping and Groaning Earth and many Hundreds of the Inhabitants buried alive The Lord sanctifie so dismal a Dispensation of his Providence unto all the American Plantations But be assured my Neighbours the Earthquakes are not over yet We have not yet seen the Last And then Another Wo that may be Look'd for is The Devils being now let Loose in preternatural Operations more than formerly perhaps in Possessions Obsessions that shall be very marvellous You are not Ignorant That just before our Lords First Coming there were most observable Outrages committed by the Devil upon the Children of Men And I am suspicious That there will again be an unusual Range of the Devil among us a little before the Second Coming of our Lord which will be to give the last stroke in Destroying the Works of the Devil The Evening Wolves will be much abroad when we are near the Evening of the World The Devil is going to be Dislodged of the Air where his present Quarters are God will with flashes of hot Lightning upon him cause him to fall as Lightning from this Ancient Habitations And the Raised Saints will there have a New Heaven which We expect according to the Promise of God Now a little before this thing you 'l be like to see the Devil more sensibly and visibly Busy upon Earth perhaps than ever he was before You shall oftner hear about Apparitions of the Devil and about poor people strangely Bewitched Possessed and Obsessed by Infernal Fiends When our Lord is going to set up His Kingdom in the most sensible and visible manner that ever was and in a manner answering the Transfiguration in the Mount it is a thousand to one but the Devil will in sundry parts of the World assay the like for Himself with a most Apish Imitation and Men at least in some Corners of the World and perhaps in such as God may have some special Designs upon will to their Cost be more Familiarized with the World of Spirits than they had been formerly So that in fine if just before the End when the Times of the Iews were to be finished a man then â—…an about every where crying Wo to the Nation Wo to the City Wo to the Temple Wo Wo Wo Much more may the descent of the Devil just before his End when also the Times of the Gentiles will be finished cause us to cry out Wo Wo Wo because of the Black things that Threaten us But it is now Time to make our Improvement of what has been said And first we shall entertain ourselves with a few Corollaries deduced from what has been thus asserted Corollary I. What cause have we to bless God for our preservation from the Devils wrath in this which may too reasonably be call'd the Devils VVorld While we are in this present evil world We are continually surrounded with swarms of those Devils who make this present world become so evil What a wonder of Mercy is it that no Devil could ever yet make a prey of us
a Spirit and thus they become Improv'd in Sinfulness Yea the Devil will put Good Men upon doing Ill. Thus we read in 1 Chron. 21. 1. Satan provoked David to Number Israel And so the Devil provokes men that are Eminent in Holiness unto such Things as may become eminently pernicious he provokes them especially unto Pride and unto many unsuitable Emulations There are likewise most lamentable Impressions which the Devil makes upon the Souls of men by way of punishment upon them for their Sins 'T is thus when an Offended God puts the Souls of men over into the Hands of that Officer Who has the Power of Death that is the Devil It is the woful misery of Unbelievers in 2 Cor. 4. 4. The God of this World has blinded their minds And thus it may be said of those Woful Wretches whom the Devil is a God unto The Devil so Muffles them that they cannot see the things of their Peace And The Devil so Hardens them that nothing will awaken their cares about their Souls How come so many to be Seared in their Sins 'T is the Devil that with a Red Hot Iron fetch 't from his Hell does cauterise them Thus t is till perhaps at last they come to have a Wounded Conscience in them and the Devil has often a share in their Torturing and Confounding Anguishes The Devil who Terrify'd Cain and Saul and Iudas into Desperation still becomes a King of Terrors to many Sinners and frights them from laying hold on the Mercy of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. In these regards Wo to us when the Devil comes down upon us Proposition V. Toward the End of his Time the Descent of the Devil in Wrath upon the World will produce more woful Effects than what have been in Former Ages The Dying Dragon will bite more Cruelly sting more bloodily than ever he did before The â—…th-pangs of the Devil will make him to be more of a Devil than ever he was and the Furnace of this Nebuchadnezaear will be heated seven times hotter just before its putting out We are in the first place to Apprehend That there is a Time fixed and stated by God for the Devil to enjoy a Dominion over our sinful and therefore woful World The Dâ—…vil once Exclaimed in Mat. 8. 29. Iesus thou Son of God art thou come hither to Torment us before our Time It is plain That until the Second Coming of our Lord the Devil must have a Time of plaguing the World which he was afraid would have Expired at His First The Devil is By the wrath of God the Prince of this World and the Time of his Reign is to continue until the Time when our Lord Himself shall Take to Himself his great Power and Reign Then 't is that the Devil shall hear the Son of God swearing with loud Thunders against him Thy Time shall now be no more Then shall the Devil with his Angels receive their Doom which will be Depart into the Everlasting Fire prepared for you We are also to Apprehend that in the mean time the Divel can give a shrowd guess when he drawes near to the End of his Time When he saw Christianity enthron'd among the Romans it is here said in our Rev 12 12 He knows he hath but a short time And how does he know it Why Reason will make the Divel to know that God won't suffer him to have the Everlasting Dominion that when God has once begun to rescue the world out of his hands Hee 'l go through with it until The Captives of the mighty shall be taken away and the prey of the Terrible shall be delivered But the Divel will have Scripture also to make him Know that when his Antichristian Vicar the seven headed Beast on the seven-hilled City shall have spent his determined years he with his Vicar must unavoidably go down into the Bottomless Pitt It is not Improbable that the Divel often hears the Scripture expounded in our congregations yea that we never Assemble without a Satan among us As there are some Divines who do with more uncertainty conjecture from a â—…eartain Pâ—…ace in the Epistle to the Ephesians That the Angels do some times come into our Churches to gain some Advantage from our Ministry But be sure our Demonstra ble Interpretations may give Repeated Notices to the-Divel That his time is almost out and what the preacher says unto the Young Man Know thou that God will bring thee into Iudgment THAT may our Sermons tell unto that Old Wretch Know thou that the time of thy Iudgment is at hand But we must now likewise Apprehend that in such a time the Woes of the world will be heightened beyond what they were at any Time yet from the foundation of the world Hence ti 's that the Apostle has forewarned us in 2. Tim. 3. 1. this know that in the last days perillous times shall come Truly when the Divel knows that he is got into his Last days he will make Perillous Times for us the times will grow more full of Divels and therefore more full of Perils than everthey were before Of this if we would Know what cause is to be assigned It is not only because the Divel growes more Able and more Eager to Vex the world but also and cheefly Because the world is more worthy to be Vexed by the Divel than ever heretofore The Sins of men in this Generation will be more mighty Sins than those of the Former Ages men will be more Accurate Exquisite Refined in the Arts of Sinning than they use to be And besides their own sins the sins of all the Former Ages will also lie upon the sinners of this generation Do we ask why the mischievous powers of darkness are to prevail more in our days than they did in those that are past gone T is because that men by sinning over again the sins of the Former days have a Fellowship with all those unfruitful works of darkness As 't was said in Math. 23. 36. All these things shall come upon this generation so the men of the Last generation will find themselves involved in the guilt of all that went before them Of Sinners t is said They Heap up Wrath and the sinners of the Last generations do not only add unto the Heap of sin that has been pileing up ever since the Fall of man but they Interest themselves in every sin of that enormous Heap There has been a Cry of sin in all Former Ages going up to God That the Divel may come down and the sinners of the Last generations do sharpen and louden that cry till the thing do come to pass as Destructively as Irremediably From whence it follows that the Thrice Holy God with His Holy Angels will now after a sort more Abandon the World than in the former Ages The Roaring Impieties of the Old World at last gave Mankind such a Distaâ—…t in the Heart of the Just God
the great wrath of God will send us down from whence there is no Redemption Corollary IV. How wellcome should a Death in the Lord be unto them that belong not unto the Divel but unto the Lord While We are sojourning in this world we are in what may upon too many accounts be called The Divels Country we are where the Divel may Come down upon us in Great Wrath continually The day when God shall take us out of this world will be The Day when the Lord will deliver us from the Hand of all our enemies and from the Hand of Satan In such a day why should not our Song be that of the Psalmist Blessed be my Rock and let the God of my Salvation be Exalted While we are here we are in the Valley of the shadow of Death and what is it that makes it so Ti 's because the Wild Beasts of Hell are lurking on every side of us every minute ready to Salley forth upon us But our Death will fetch us out of that Valley and carry us where we shall be For ever with the Lord. We are now under the daily Buffetings of the Divel and he does molest us with such Fiery Darts as cause us even to cry out I am weary of my Life Yea but are we as Willing to Dy as Weary of Life Our Death will then soon set us where we cannot be Reach'd by the Fist of Wickednoss and where the Perfect cannot be shotten at It is said in Rev. 14. 13. Blessed are the Dead which Dy in the Lord They Rest from their Labours But we may say Blessed are the Dead in the Lord inasmuch they Rest from the Devils Our Dying will be but our Taking Wing When attended with a Convoy of Winged Angels we shall be convey'd into that Heaven from whence the Devil having been thrown he shall never more come thither after us What if God should now say to us as to Moses Go up and Dy As long as we Go up when we Dy Let us receive the Message with a Joyful Soul we shall soon be there where the Devil can't Come Down upon us If the God of our Life should now send that Order to us which he gave to Hezekiah Set thy House in Order for thou shalt Dy and not Live We need not be cast into such deadly Agonies thereupon as Hezekiah was We are but going to that House the Golden Doors whereof cannot be Entred by the Devil that here did use to Persecute us Methinks I see the Departed Spirit of a Believer Triumphantly carried thro' the Devils Territories in such a Stately and Fiery Chariot as the Spiritualizing Body of Elias had methinks I see the Devil with whole Flocks of Harpies grinning at this Child of God but unable to fasten any of their Griping Talons upon him And then upon the utmost Edge of our Atmosphaere methinks I over-hear the Holy Soul with a most Heavenly Gallantry deriding the Defeated Fiend and saying Ah! Satan Return to thy Dungeons again I am going where thou canst not come for ever O 't is a Brave Thing so to Dy And especially so to Dy in Our Time For tho' when we call to mind That the Devils Time is now but short it may almost make us wish to Live unto the End of it and to say with the Psalmist Because the Lord will shortly appear in His Glory to Build up Zion O my God Take me not away in the midst of my Dayes Yet when we bear in mind That the Devils Wrath is now most Great it would make one willing to be Out of the Way Inasmuch as now is the Time for the doing of those things in the prospect whereof Balaam long ago cry'd out Who shall live when such Things are done We should not be inordinately loth to Dy at such a Time In a word The Times are so Bad that we may well count it as Good a Time to Dy in as ever we saw Corollary V. Good News for the Israel of God and particularly for His New-English Israel If the Devils Time were above a Thousand Years ago pronounced Short What may we suppose it now in Our Time Surely We are not a Thousand Years distant from those Happy Thousand Years of rest and peace and which is better Holiness reserved for the people of God in the latter days and if we are not a Thousand Years yet short of that Golden Age there is cause to think that we are not an Hundred That the blessed Thousand Years are not yet begun is abundantly clear from this We do not see the Devil bound No the Devil was never more let Loose than in our Days and it is very much that any should imagine otherwise But the same thing that proves the Thousand Years of Prosperity for the Church of God UNDER THE WHOLE HEAVEN to be not yet Begun do's also prove that it is not very Far Off and that is the prodigious Wrath with which the Devil do's in our Days Prosecute yea Desolate the World Let us cast our Eyes almost where we will and we shall see the Devils Domineering at such a rate as may justly fill us with astonishment it is Quaestionable whether Iniquity ever were so Rampant or whether Calamity were ever so Pungent as in this Lamentable Time We may truly say T is the Hour and the Power of Darkness But tho' the Wrath be so Great the Time is but Short when we are perplexed with the Wrath of the Devil the Word of our God at the same time unto us is that in Rom. 16. 20. The God of Peace shall bruise Satan under your feet SHORTLY SHORTLY didst thou say Dearest Lord O! Gladsome word Amen Even so Come Lord Lord Iesus Come Quicâ—…ly We shall never be rid of this Troublesome Devil till Thou do come to Chain him up But because the people of God would willingly be told Whereabouts we are with reference to the Wrath and the Time of the Devil you shall give me leave humbly to set before you a few Conjectures The first Conjecture The Devils Eldest Son seems to be towards the End of his last Half-time and if it be so the Devils Whole-time cannot but be very near it's End It is a very scandalous thing that any Protestant should be at a loss where to find The Anti-Christ But we have sufficient Assurance that the Duration of Antichrist is to be but for a Time and for Times and for Half a time that is for Twelve-hundred and Sixty Years And indeed those Twelve Hundred and Sixty years were the very Spott of Time left for the Devil and meant when 't is here said He has but a short time Now I should have an Easy Time of it if I were never put upon an Harder Task than to produce what might render it extreamly probable That Antichrist entred his last Half-time or the Last Hundred and Fourscore years of his Reign at or soon after the Celebrated Reformation which began
Dayes of Greatest Light has had that in it which may divert the Calumnies of an Ill-natured World from Centring here They are the words of the Devout Bishop Hall Satans Prevalency in this Age is most clear in the marvellous Number of Witches abounding in all places Now Hundreds are discovered in one Shire and if Fame Deceive us not in a Village of Fourteen Houses in the North are found so many of this Damned Brood Yea and those of both Sexes who have Professed much Knowledge Holiness and Devotion are drawn into this Damnable Practice I suppose the Doctor in the first of those Passages may refer to what happened in the Year 1645. When so many Vassals of the Devil were Detected that there were Thirty Try'd at one time whereas about Fourteen were Hang'd and an Hundred more Detained in the Prisons of Suffolk and Essex Among other things which many of these Acknowledged one was That they were to undergo certain Punishments if they did not such and such Hurts as were appointed them And among the Rest that were then Executed there was an Old Parson called Lowis who Confessed that he had a Couple of Imps whereof One was alwayes putting him upon the doing of Mischief Once particularly that Imp calling for his Consent so to do went immediately and Sunk a Ship then under Sail. I pray Let not New-England become of an Unsavoury and a Sulphurous Resentment in the Opinion of the World Abroad for the Doleful Things which are now fallen out among us while there are such Histories of other places abroad in the World Nevertheless I am sure that we the People of New-England have cause enough to Humble our selves under our most Humbling Circumstances We must no more be Haughty because of the Lords Holy Mountain among us No it becomes us rather to be Humble because we have been such an Habitation of Unholy Devils II. Since the Divel is come down in great wrath upon us let not us in our great wrath against one another provide a Lodging for him It was a most wholesome caution in Eph. 4. 26. 27. Let not the Sun go down upon your wrath Neither give place to the Divel The Divel is come down to see what Quarter he shall find among us and if his coming down do now fill us with wrath against one another and if between the cause of the Sufferers on one hand and the cause of the Suspected on t'other we carry things to such extreames of Passion as are now gaining upon us the Devil will Bless himself to find such a convenient Lodging as we shall therein afford unto him And it may be that the wrath which we have had against one another has had more then a little Influence upon the coming down of the Divel in that wrath which now amazes us Have not many of us been Devils one unto another for Slanderings for Backbitings for Animosities For this among other causes perhaps God has permitted the Devils to be Worrying as they now are among us But it is high time to leave off all Devilism when the Devil himself is falling upon us and it is no time for us to be Censuring and Reviling one another with a Devilish Wrath when the Wrath of the Devil is annoying of us The way for us to out-wit the Devil in the Wiles with which he now Vexes us would be for us to join as one man in our cries to God for the Directing and Issuing of this Thorny Business but if we do not Lift up our Hands to Heaven Without Wrath we cannot then do it without Doubt of speeding in it I am ashamed when I read French Authors giving this Character of Englishmen Ils se haissent Les uns les autres et sont en Division Continuelle They hate one one another and are always Quarrelling one with another And I shall be much more ashamed if it become the Character of New-Englanders which is indeed what the Devil would have Satan would make us Bruise one another by breaking of the Peace among us but O let us disappoint him We read of a thing that sometimes happens to the Devil when he is foaming with his Wrath in Mat. 12. 4â—… The unclean Spirit seeks rest and finds none But we give Rest unto the Devil by Wrath one against another If we would lay aside all fierceness and keeness in the disputes which the Devil has raised among us and if we would use to one another none but the Soft Answers which Turn away Wrath I should hope that we might light upon such Counsels as would quickly Extricate us out of our Labyrinths But the Old Incendiary of the world is come from Hell with Sparks of Hell-Fire Flashing on every side of him and we make ourselves Tynder to the Sparks When the Emperour Henry III. kept the Feast of Pentecost at the City Mentz there arose a Dissension among some of the People there which came from words to Blows and at last it passed on to the Shedding of Blood After the Tumult was over when they came to that clause in their Devotions Thou hast made this day Glorious the Devil to the unexpressible Terrour of that vast Assembly made the Temple Ring with that Outcry But I have made this Day Quarrelsome We are truly come into a day which by being well managed might be very Glorious for the exterminating of those Accursed Things which have hitherto been the Clogs of our Prosperity but if we make this day Quarrelsome thro' any Raging Confidences Alas O Lord my Flesh Trembles for fear of thee and I am afraid of thy Iudgments Erasmus among other Historians tells us that at a Town in Germany a Witch or Devil appear'd on the Top of a Chimney Threatning to set the Town on Fire and at length Scattering a Pot of Ashes abroad the Town was presently and Horribly Burn't unto the Ground Methinks I see the Spectres from the Tops of the Chimneys to the North ward threatning to Scatter Fire about the Countrey but let us Quench that Fire by the most amicable Correspondencies Lest as the Spectres have they say already most Literally Burn't some of our Dwellings there do come forth a further Fire from the Brambles of Hell which may more terribly Devour us Let us not be like a Troubled House altho we are so much haunted by the Devils Let our Long Suffering be a Well-placed piece of Armour about us against the Fiery Darts of the wicked ones History informs us That so long ago as the year 858. a certain Pestilent and Malignant sort of a Daemon molested Caumont in Germany with all sorts of methods to stir upStrife among the Citizens He uttered Prophecies he detected Villanies he branded people with all kind of Infamies He incensed the Neighbourhood against one Man particularly as the cause of all the mischiefs who yet proved himself innocent He threw stones at the Inhabitants and at length burn't their Habitations till the Commission of the
Daemon could go no further I say Let us be well aware lest such Daemons do Come hither also III. Inasmuch as the Devil is come down in Great Wrath we had need Labour with all the Care and Speed we can to Divert the Great Wrath of Heaven from coming at the same Time upon us The God of Heaven has with long and loud Admonitions been calling us to A Reformation of our Provoking Evils as the only way to avoid that Wrath of His which does not only Threaten but Consume us 'T is because we have been Deaf to those Calls that we are now by a provoked God laid open to the Wrath of the Devil himself It is said in Prov. 16. 7. When a mans ways please the Lord He maketh even his Enemies to be at peace with him The Devil is our Grand Enemy and tho' we would not be at peace with him yet we would be at peace from him that is we would have him unable to Disquiet our Peace But inasmuch as the Wrath which we Endure from this Enemy will allow us no Peace we may be sure Our Ways have not pleased the Lord. It is because we have Broken the Hedge of Gods Precepts that the Hedge of Gods Provodence is not so Entire as it uses to be about us but Serpents are Biting of us O let us then set our selves to make our Peace with our God whom we have Displeased by our Iniquities and let us not imagine that we can Encounter the Wrath of the Devil while there is the Wrath of God Almighty to set that Mastiff upon us REFORMATION REFORMATION has been the Repeated Cry of all the Judgments that have hitherto been upon us because we have been as Deaf Adders thereunto the Adders of the Infernal Pit are now hissing about us At length as it was of old said in Luc 16. 30. If one went unto them from the Dead they will Repent Even so There are some come unto us from the Damned The Great God has Loosed the Bars of the Pit so that many Damned Spirits are come in among us to make us Repent of our Misdemeanours The means which the Lord had formerly Employ'd for our Awakening were such that he might well have said What could I have done more and yet after all He has done more in some regards than was ever done for the Awakening of any People in the World The Things now done to Awaken our Enquiries after our Provoking Evils and our Endeavours to Reform those Evils are most EXTRAORDINARY Things For which cause I would freely speak it If we now do not some EXTRAORDINARY Things in Returning to God we are the most Incurable and I wish it be not quickly said the most Miserable People under the Sun Believe me 't is a Time for all people to do something EXTRAORDINARY In Searching and in Trying of their Ways and in Turning to the Lord. It is at an EXTRAORDINARY Rate of Circumspection and Spiritual Mindedness that we should all now maintain a Walk with God At such a Time as This ought Magistrates to Do something EXTRAORDINARY in promoting of what is Laudable and in Restraining and Chastising of Evil Doers At such a Time as This ought Ministers to Do something EXTRAORDINARY in pulling the Souls of men out of the Snares of the Devil not only by publick Preaching but by personal Visits and Counsels from House to House At such a Time as This ought Churches to Do something EXTRAORDINARY in Renewing of their Covenants and in Remembring and Reviving the Obligations of what they have Renewed Some Admirable Designs about the Reformation of Manners have lately been on foot in the English Nation in pursuance of the most Excellent Admonitions which have been given for it by the Letters of Their Majesties Besides the vigorous Agreements of the Iustices here and there in the Kingdom assisted by Godly Gentlemen and Informers to Execute the Laws upon Profane Offenders there has been started A PROPOSAL for the well-affected people in every Parish to enter into orderly Societies whereof every Member shall bind himself not only to Avoid Profaneness in himself but also according unto their Place to do their utmost in first Reproving and if it must be so then Exposing and so Punishing as the Law directs for others that shall be guilty It has been observed That the English Nation has had some of its greatest Successes upon some special and signal Actions this way and a Discouragement given unto Legal Proceedings of this Kind must needs be very exerciâ—…ng to the Wise that observe these Things But O why should not New-England be the most forward part of the English Nation in such Reformations Methinks I hear the Lord from Heaven saying over us O that my People had hearkened unto me Then I should soon have subdued the Devils as well as their other Enemies There have been some fome feeble Essays towards Reformation of late in our Churches but I pray what comes of them Do we stay till the Storm of his Wrath be over Nay let us be Doing what we can as fast as we can to divert the Storm The Devils having broke in upon our World there is great Asking Who is it that have brought them in and many do by Spectral Exhibitions come to be cry'd out upon I hope in Gods Time it will be found that among those that are thus Cry'd out upon there are persons yet Clear from the Great Transgression but indeed all the Unreformed among us may justly be Cry'd out upon as having too much of an Hand in letting of the Devils in to our Borders 't is our Worldliness our Formality our Sensuality and our Iniquity that has help'd this Letting of the Devils in O Let us then at last Consider our Wayes 'T is a strange passage recorded by Mr. Clark in the Life of his Father That the People of his Parish refusing to be Reclaimed from their Sabbath Breaking by all the zealous Testimonies which that Good man bore against it at last on a Night after the people had Retired Home from a Revelling Profanation of the Lords Day there was heard a Great Noise with Rattling of Chains up and down the Town and an horrid Scent of Brimstone fill'd the Neighbourhood Upon which the Guilty Consciences of the Wretches told them the Devil was come to fetch them away and it so terrify'd them that an Eminent Reformation follow'd the Sermons which that man of God Preached thereupon Behold Sinners Behold and Wonder lest you Perish the very Devils are Walking about our Streets with Lengthened Chains making a dreadful Noise in our Ears and Brimstone even without a Metaphor is making an Hellish and Horrid Stench in our Nostrils I Pray Leave off all those things whereof your Guilty Consciences may now accuse you lest these Devils do yet more direfully fall upon you Reformation is at this Time our only Preservation IV. When the Devil is come down in Great Wrath Let every Great Vice