give notice of it They having no other Clocks or Sun-dials saith the Author The Hindoes or Indians saith the Author believe there are Devils but that they are so fettered that they cannot hurt them The Women are habited saith the Author somewhat like the Men they have their Ears bored in several places for little Pendants and the lower part of their left Nostrils where they wear a ring with little Pearls hanging at it when they please As to the great Mogol's Leskar or Camp-Royal saith the Author it consists of a vast number of Tents all of them white but only the Mogol's which is red and far higher than the rest This said Camp is at least five miles from side to side of the same The Mogol having one hundred thousand Souldiers waiting always upon him besides the Grandees near him carry their Wives and Families along with them which makes up an exceeding great number of Attendants upon him When the Camp removes the Mogol gives notice by drums beating about mid-night There was two Comets or blazing-Stars saith the Author appeared while I lived at the Mogol's Court the one Northward like a long blazing Torch or Lance fired at the end The other Southward was round like a boiling pot boiling out fire And although the Astrologers told the Mogol that he needed not fear for they concerned not him nor his but other places But not long after these blazing-Stars appeared their usual Season of Rain which was never known to fail them till then failed them and this caused such a Famine and Mortality in the South parts of his Empire that it did very much unpeople it And in the Northern parts of his Dominions the Mogol's son Sultan Caroon raised a Rebellion against his Father who was overthrown and taken Prisoner and kept in Confinement by his Father The Conclusion NOW O Christians consider seriously all these things faithfully related by the Reverend and Worthy Author First Shall Mahometans not mention the name of our Saviour at any time but with high reverence and respect and shall we Christians not learn good manners towards our Blessed Lord and Master but daily express our contempt of him by our Blasphemies Oaths and Curses Shall the poor Heathens believe that God hath a thousand Eyes and a thousand Hands and yet we Christians live so as if we did not believe he had one Eye to see or one Hand to revenge the Violation of his Laws Shall Mahometans whatever Diversions or Impediments they meet with be Five times a day after great preparations with very great Reverence and humble Adoration even with their Faces to the ground at their Devotions in their Mosquits or Churches if they conveniently can come at them however else where And shall we Christians make no conscience of our being twice a day after due preparation at our Devotions at our Churches if it may be with lowly Reverence and humble Adoration upon our Knees But however if that cannot be at least in our own Habitations Shall both Mahometans and Heathens be strict observers of their Sabbaths and other Festivals and times of publick Devotions and their times of Lent of Mortification and Fasting and that with great Affection Reverence and Adoration And shall we Christians be indifferent and careless and remiss in the Religious Observation of our Sabbaths or Lord's days and other Fasts and Festivals of the Christian Church and of our Lent and times of Mortification and come short of them in our Affections Reverence and Devotion at those holy Assemblies Shall the Mahometans and Heathens be zealous and in good earnest in their Religion for the promoting the same yea have many strict Votaries therein that impose upon themselves great Self denials very sharp and strict Pennances And shall we Christians be careless and indifferent in our Christian and Holy Religion and not matter what becomes of it even betraying the cause of Christianity while we faintly maintain it And they certainly would hardly die for Christ who dare not speak for his honour as one hath well observed And shall we scoff at all Christian Self-denials and Mortifications and deny our selves in none of our sensual carnal Pleasures and Vanities but think to swim with ease to Heaven through a Deluge and Sea of Sensuality and worldly Delights Shall both Mahometans and Heathens have their Priests in very great Esteem and Veneration never at any time meeting them in the Street or any other place but testifying the same by lowly reverencing them and also allowing them comfortable maintenance And shall we Christians slight neglect and despise our Priests and Ministers our Spiritual Fathers yea testifie the same to their Faces when we meet them by our rude and irreverent Behaviour towards them And grudge and repine at their competent and comely maintenance which not our selves but the Laws of our pious Ancestors have bestowed and setled upon them And this notwithstanding our blessed Lord and Master hath plainly told us That he that despiseth you meaning his Apostles and Ministers dispiseth me and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me Shall both Mahometans and Heathens be at a great deal of pains and cost to erect neat and splendid Mosquits and Tempies for the Worship of God and of their Idols not suffering them to be polluted and prophaned in any kind not so much as suffering their dead to be buried therein And shall they have in great esteem those who are zealous in their Religion build also stately Monuments for the honour and to preserve the memories of their deceased Saints and Devotes of their Religion And shall we Christians be negligent in Repairing and Beautifying our Churches built ready to our Hands Shall our Christian Temples lie neglected yea many of them Ruinous very many if not most of them in the Country like places rather for the entertainment of Beasts than for Men and Women to worship God in And thus lying despised neglected prophaned Are they not more also Polluted and Unhallowed many times by our assembling there by means of our sordid Irreverence by our slight careless slovingly inanimate serving of the living God in them And shall we Christians scorn contemn and deride the Devotes in that Religion which we profess to own as ours And shall we slight and neglect those days and times appointed to commemorate our Saints and Servants of God famous in their Generations for their Sanctity Labours and Sufferings Shall Mahometans and Heathens be exemplary in their dutifulness to their Parents especially the poor Heathens not suffering at any time their Parents to be in want but parting with half of that little they have for their support and subsistence And shall there be such horrid complaints among us Christians of the undutifulness if not Barbarity of Children to their Parents in our days that it would make a man's ears to tingle and heart to ake to hear all that may be said in this Respect Shall both Mahometans and Heathens have very great
Respects and Reverence for their Superiors and Governors for the preservation of Order and Government and publick Peace And more especially shall they abound in affectionate Loyalty to their Prince and Sovereign although a Tyrant And shall we Christians be deficient herein yea untractable mutinous and rebellious against our Governors and so highly disloyal as to resist the Lord's anointed our gracious Prince when our Religion nevertheless assureth us That they that resist shall receive to themselves Damnation Shall there be much love and good will and accord among Heathens one towards another as also equally exhibited by them to Strangers yea extending their good Nature Humanity and Pity even to the very bruit Creatures subjected to their use And shall we Christians abound in discord and dissention and shall we malign hate bite and devour one another and make our Lord and Master the Prince of Peace a Patron of Dissention and his Gospel of Peace a Religion of Discord And shall we be more uncivil to Strangers than these Heathens and also be cruel and merciless towards our Beasts when as our Religion also instructs us That a good Man is merciful to his very Beast Shall both Mahometans and Heathens have a great detestation of Unchastity especially in such single Women who pretend to it and so great an abhorrence of Adultery that the very Relations and Kindred of the Offenders of either sort will be themselves their speedy Executioners and deprive them of their Lives and think they do a just Act therein their Law permitting it And shall we Christians who own a Religion of the greatest strictness and purity in the World make little account of these Sins as if we had forgot our Religion and were transformed into Beasts and having lost all shame and modesty design to vie with Sodom Shall both Mahometans and Heathens not indulge their Palates but be very temperate and moderate in Eating and Drinking and have such an abhorrence of Drunkenness that they have but one word in their Language to signifie both a Drunkard and a Mad-man And shall we Christians be the Epicures of the World so abound in Excess Debauchery and Drunkenness and without all sence of shame and in the sight of the Sun as if we were the Disciples and Votaries of the drunken God Bacchus Shall that Sin of Drunkenness which is the Mother of Heaviness the joy of none but the Devil and is big with a Thousand Evils as one of the Fathers speaks overspread the Nation Shall the Heathens be very laborious and industrious diligent and careful in their Trades and Callings abhorring Idleness And shall we Christians abound in Improvidence Carelesness and ill Husbandry giving our selves up to Ease and sensual Pleasures to the prejudice and ruine of our poor Families brought hereby many times to a morsel of Bread Shall the poor Heathen Servants although they have very small wages allowed them be very Just and Honest Diligent and Laborious abounding in all Fidelity to their Masters and Mistresses And shall Christian Servants be Idle Careless and Unfaithful not fit to be confided in and trusted and shall this be still the general complaint in our days made by all sorts and degrees among us of their Wretchlesness and Unfaithfulness Shall the Heathens be very faithful in Trusts committed to them that they will sooner lose their lives than either betray or forsake a trust committed to them in any concern And shall we Christians be perfidious and unfaithful one to another and that to this degree that it is become a very Proverb among us Where shall we meet with a Man that we can trust And in matter of Money or Profit I will not trust my own Father But a Man of honour and integrity as one observes will sooner break his heart than his word He will not forfeit his Parole even to an Enemy no not if he had a thousand Crowns and Lives at Stake Shall the Heathens observe exact Justice in their way of Trade in Buying and Selling and be so honest therein that a man may trust them safely and not be cheated And shall we Christians be the only traders in Wickedness in lying cheating over-reaching one another in our commerce and trading What a reproach and shame is it to Christianity that we should be according to the Proverb Homo homini Lupus As Woolves to prey upon and devour one another And that Heathens should exceed us Christians in common honesty For it hath been observed in our days so sordid are most People grown that their faith is not so dear to them as their profit Shall both Mahometans and Heathens be modest and sober in their Apparel steady and constant in their Fashion never altering the same And shall we Christians many of us not know what belongs to modesty and sobriety in our Clothes and Attire and so fickle and inconstant varying our Fashions as often as we renew our Garments Shall Mahometans so abound in Charity to the Poor that a Mussulman or zealot in their Religion will give a seventh part of his Estate towards their relief And others of them be of such noble and publick Spirits that for general and publick use and benefit they will be at great Expences in building Sarraas or publick Inns for entertainment of Strangers in their Journeying and of Wells and Fountains with persons to attend them for refreshing of weary Travellers and be noble and generous in forgiving high and insolent affronts and injuries offered to them And shall we Christians be of close and private and selfish uncharitable Spirits wholly Circumscribed within our own concerns as if we were born only for our selves and give far less in Charity to the Poor than a Mahometan And shall we Christians think it also a piece of honour and gentility upon an affront and injury offered to us to be inexorable implacable and cruel never to remit the injury Shall a new Mahometan Convert be so zealous and constant to his new profession of Christianity who neither by threats or promises made by his Powerful and Tyrannical Prince and his Lord and Master could be prevailed upon to retract and renounce the same And shall we who have been long Educated in Christianity not be zealous and constant to our holy Christian profession but fickle wavering and inconstant And let all our Atheistical Christians defiers and neglecters of God and Goodness take warning from the great Example before mentioned of the Almighty's remarkable Justice and Vengeance in that strange providence related before against a Mahometan Atheist which extorted such a free and ingenious Confession and Acknowledgment from him in his Distress and last Agony and let them become so wise as either cease to be Creatures and remove themselves if they can out of the reach of the Almighty or else cease to defie him In short let us Christians seriously consider these things and how prevalent Mahometanism and Heathenism hath been upon the minds and consciences of these
with Sorrow moderate They are not lost but gone before where Fate Disposeth all and we in order must One after one be turn'd to the same dust We meet at the same Inn by several ways And in another World shall see new days And as to their Tartarus or Hell Virgil having begun to relate some of the infernal Torments passes over the rest in silence because of their multitude declaring that though he had one hundred Mouths and as many Tongues and a Voice of Iron yet should he not be able to recite so much as their Names I shall draw to a Conclusion and make use of the words of a late worthy Author That indeed Moral Vertues were never so establish'd by the Light of Reason as they are by the Laws of the Gospel and our Obedience endeared to us by nobler Promises than the Pagan Philosophy were ever made acquainted with and these Promises attended with all the Motives of Credibility and likewise enforced under severer Penalties than either Virgil or Homer in all their Romantick Description of Elyzium or Tartarus ever dreamt of Nor is there in all the Ethicks of the Grecians or Romans such an Inducement and incentive to practical Obedience as the Incarnation of the Son of God That God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son to die for us that we might not perish but have eternal Life nor such a matchless Patern of universal Vertue as the Life of the ever blessed Jesus sets before us So that upon the whole we Christians that have the Light of the Gospel the sacred Writings of the Old and New Testament are more inexcusable in our Failures and criminal in our Miscarriages than those that lived under the Conduct of meer Reason were And to which let me adjoin that notable Saying of Salvian viz. After what manner is Jesus Christ at this day honoured among us Christians when the being his faithful Disciples is an Occasion to make one less esteemed of men How can the Corruption of the World come to any greater Extremity than to hold Religion for a mean and dishonourable thing when on the contrary 't is Religion only that truly deserves Honour and Regard and to which all Divine and Humane Laws have ever given great Respect and Deference yea so far that the very feigned Deities of the Heathens were thought worthy of Gold and Silver Temples when even the true God who gives all Beauty and Lustre to Gold and Silver and precious Stones is scarcely honoured by us within Stone Walls Alas as another Author tells us The great Wisdom of many in our times consisteth only in getting Money the grand Antichrist of the World which in the very Letter of the Text they exalt above God and Religion But a wise man saith Seneca studies rather to fill his Mind than his Coffers And may I conclude with these serious Cautions of Seneca and Virgil. That Kingdom saith Seneca is in an unstable and cottering Condition where Impudence abounds and where is no regard of Religion Justice Fidelity and Integrity Discite Justitiam moniti non temnere Divos saith Virgil. Be admonished and learn Righteousness and cease to contemn God and Religion any more ERRATA PAge 37. l. 3. r. saith Seneca p. 39 l 1. for presenting r. prosecuting p. 41. dele the 10th line Books Printed for and Sold by Luke Meredith at the Angel in Amen-Corner Books written by the Reverend Dr. Patrick now Lord Bishop of Chichester THE Christian Sacrifice A Treatise shewing the Necessity End and Manner of receiving the Holy Communion together with suitable Prayers and Meditations for every Month in the Year and the principal Festivals in memory of our blessed Saviour In Four parts The Ninth Edition corrected The devout Christian instructed how to pray and give thanks to God Or a Book of Devotions for Families and particular persons in most of the Concerns of humane Life The Eighth Edition in Twelves And Advice to a Friend The Fourth Edition in Twelves The Glorious Epiphany with the devout Christian's Love to it in Octavo The Book of Job Paraphras'd in Octavo new The whole Book of Psalms Paraphrased in Octavo Two Volumes The Proverbs of Solomon Paraphrased with Arguments to each Chapter which supply the place of Commenting A Paraphrase upon the Books of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon with Arguments to each Chapter and Annotations thereupon in Octavo The Truth of Christian Religion in Six Books written in Latin by Hugo Grotius and now Translated into English with the Addition of a Seventh Book against the present Roman Church in Octavo Search the Scriptures A Treatise shewing that all Christians ought to read the Holy Books with directions to them therein In Three Parts A Treatise of Repentance and of Fasting especially of the Lent Fast In Three Parts A Discourse concerning Prayer especially of frequenting the daily publick Prayers In Two Parts A Book for Beginners or a Help to Young Communicants that they may be fitted for the Holy Communion and receive it with profit Books written by Jer. Taylor D. D. and late Lorâ— Bishop of Down and Connor THE Rules and Exercises of holy Living and holy Dying the Eleventh Edition newly Printed in 8. The Golden Grove a Choice Manual containing what is to be believed practised and desired or prayed for the Prayers being fitted to the several days of the Week also Festival Hymns according to the manner of the Ancient Church A Collection of Offices or Forms of Prayer in Cases ordinary and extraordinary taken out of the Scriptures and the ancient Liturgies of several Churches especially the Greek Together with a large Preface in Vindication of the Liturgy of the Church of England The Second Edition in Twelves The Psalter of David with Titles and Collects according to the Matter of each Psalm whereunto are added Devotions for the Help and Assistance of all Christian People in all occasions and Necessities The Tenth Edition in Twelves Books written by the Reverend J. Goodman D. D. THE Penitent pardoned or a Discourse of the nature of Sin and the Efficacy of Repentance under the Parable of the Prodigal Son A Winter Evening Conference between Neighbours in three Parts The Old Religion demonstrated in its Principles and described in the Life and Practice thereof Boanerges and Barnabas Judgment and Mercy or Wine and Oil for wounded and afflicted Souls In Two Parts By Fra. Quarles The Tenth Edition in Twelves The Saints Legacies or a Collection of certain Promises out of the Word of God Collected for privatence but Published for the Comfort of God's People Together with the Saints Support in time of Trouble The Thirteenth Edition In 12o. Bishop Cozen 's Devotions in Twelves The Countess of Morton's daily Exercise or a Book of Prayers and Rules how to spend the time in the 〈◊〉 vice and Pleasure of Almighty God The Thirteeâ—â—â— Edition 24. THE END