Wretch who though he believes his own Religion true exchanges it for another which he believes to be false upon no other Consideration but so much temporal Advantage to boot By which he plainly declares that in the Ballance of his Estimation the Odds between Truth and Falshood the Declarations of God and the Impostures of the Devil is so inconsiderable that the least Addition of the transitory Goods of this World to the later renders it of sufficient Weight to turn the Scale against the former and that for his part he is not much concerned whether the Almighty be his Friend or Foe and provided he may but enjoy his Ease and Pleasure a few Years longer here he is very well contented to part with all his Hopes and Interest in God for ever For this is the natural Construction of Mens Apostacy from the true Religion in Consideration of their worldly Interest that that Interest is in their Esteem far more eligible than God with all his Power and Goodness that it is better to be without God in the World than without Preferment and that that Man makes a very good Bargain who gets a good Place in Exchange for his Maker and with the treacherous Iudas sells his Saviour though it be but for thirty Pieces of Silver Which is such a monstrous Degree of Impiety as one would think should be fufficient to scare and affright the most couragious Sinner that hath but the least Apprehension of God or Sense of Good and Evil. But then 2. Consider the desparte Folly of Mens abandoning their Religion in Complyance with their vicious Affections For he who without through Conviction abandons the Profession of his Religion whether it be true or false doth together with that most certainly abandon all the blessed Rewards and incur all the dreadful Penalties that true Religion promises and denounces because though his Religion perhaps may be false yet in renouncing it whilst he believes it true his Will doth as maliciously renounce the true Religion as if it really were so He thought it true and yet renounc'd it by which he plainly declares that if it had been true he would have renounced it so that whether it be true or false it 's all one to him his Will is the same his Crime and Guilt the same it is true Religion he intentionally renounces and therefore in so doing he doth intentionally renounce all his Concern and Interest in true Religion Now what a desperate Piece of Folly is this for a Man to part with all his Stock in the Common Bank of Religion which if it be not a down right Sham and Imposture is of everlasting Moment and Concern to him only for a present Gratification of some vain and unreasonable Lust to divorse himself for ever from the Love of God to quit all Title and Interest in the precious Blood of the Saviour of the World only to curry a short-lived Favour with Men with Men whose Breath is in their Nostrils and who within a few Days or Years must go off the Stage and leave us here perhaps forlorn and destitute To part with all my glorious Hopes of Heaven which are my best Heaven upon Earth and which is worse with Heaven it self where I have Treasures of Bliss sufficient to maintain me in a most happy Port to eternal Ages only to gain or secure a transitory Estate or Preferment which while I have it cannot make me happy and from which erelong I shall be torn and divided and not be a Farthing the better for forever to expose one self as a publick Spectacle of Scorn and Contempt to God and Angels and all the wise and good Part of the rational World for a short extemporary Blaze of pompous Splendor and Greatness which lies at the Mercy of every Counter-blast of Fortune and in all Probability will e'er long expire in Smoak and Stink Wretchedness and Infamy to plunge one self head-long into all the Agonies and Torments the Horrors and Desperations of a woful Eternity only to escape a short Persecution and a glorious Martyrdom when a little after perhaps I shall suffer a great deal more and longer under the Gout or Stone or Strangury without the Comfort of dying in a brave Cause and being assured of an immortal Recompence than I could have done under the Hand of the Executioner with it And yet all these mad Pranks that Man plays at once who abandons his Religion in Complyance with his Lusts. 3. Consider the foul Dishonesty of it For besides that our Religion being the most sacred Pledg committed to us by God for our own Use and the Use of our latest Posterity we cannot viciously desert and abandon it without betraying of God and falsifying our Trust to him and which is worse without squandering away the most inestimable Good that ever he committed to Men upon our own base Lusts and his most execrable Enemies which is Dishonesty blackned with the foulest Ingratitude Besides this I say by forsaking our Religion in Complyance with any leud Affection we not only do a dishonest Thing at present but also totally discard the Obligations to Honesty for the future For there is nothing can rationally oblige a Man to be throughly honest but only his Religion or inward Sense that it is his indispensable Duty towards God before whose righteous Tribunal he must one Day give an Account of all his Actions The two great Motives of humane Action are Religion and worldly Interest Now as for Religion that consists of fix'd and unalterable Principles which will by no Means ply or bend to the Alterations of outward Affairs and Circumstances but do in all Conditions move and oblige us with equal Force and Vigour whereas Worldly Interest is a fickle and mutable Thing that varies and alters with every outward Turn and Revolution So that that which is my Interest to Day may prove my Damage to Morrow and if it should whatever Part I act to Day it will oblige me to act the contrary to Morrow When therefore a Man hath let go his Religion and hath nothing but his Interest to hold him it is Cross or Pile for the future whether you find him an honest Man or a Knave because from henceforth he will be Knave or Honest according as it serves his Turn and that which serves his Turn to Day may prove his Loss and Prejudice to Morrow so that whether to Day or to Morrow he proves a true Man or a Cheat wholly depends upon the Die of Fortune and you must consult his Stars to find the lucky Hour or Moment when you may safely trust him For after the Wretch hath been so perfidious as to renounce his God and his Religion he hath no one Principle remaining in him upon which you can fasten any lasting Confidence As for his Interest that is such a fickle and inconstant Thing that there is no trusting it if it plead for you now the next Turn of Affairs it may be
not believed the Messias to be a Divine Subsistence they would never have attributed to him this incommunicable Name of God of which they had so high a Veneration that they thought it too sacred for any Creature to name and much more to assume And the Commentary upon the fourth Psalm expresly saith Because the Gentiles cease not to ask us Where is our God the time will come that God will sit among the Righteous so as they shall be able to point him out with the finger which plainly refers to the Coming of the Messias And so also the Septuagint change Shaddai the undoubted Name of the Omnipotent God into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Word Ezek. 1. 24. where instead of the Voice of God as it is in the Hebrew they read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Voice of the Word of God And so also the afore-named Paraphrase as I have already hinted doth often use the Word of God for God himself and that more especially with relation to the Creation of the World Thus instead of I made the Earth Isa. 45. 12. they read it I by my Word made the Earth And instead of God made Man Gen. 1. 27. the Ierusalem Targum reads And the Word of the Lord made Man And instead of They heard the Voice of the Lord Gen. 3. 8. the Paraphrase reads it And they heard the Voice of the Word of the Lord God And Philo expresly calls this Word the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Second God next to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And as the Iews believed The Word to be a Divine Subsistence so did the Gentiles also For so Numenius the Pythagorean as he is quoted by St. Cyril calls the Father the First and the Word the Second God and Plotin tells us that this Word or Image of God beholdeth God and is inseparably joined with him and Porphyry as he is cited by the fore-named Father tells us that the Essence of God extends to Three In-beings viz. the highest Good which is the Father and the Maker of all things which is the Word and the Soul of the World and these he also calls the First and Second and Third God And of Pythagoras Proclus the Platonist affirms that he commended Three Gods together in ONE even as Plato also doth the Second of which was the Word or Wisdom whereunto he attributes the Creation of the World And Plato in his 6th Epistle so far owns the Divinity of the Word that he earnestly exhorts his Friends that they should 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is invocate God the Governour of all things that are and shall be and also the Lord and Father of that Prince and Govenour by the first of which he evidently means The Word since 't is to the Word that he elsewhere attributes the Government of the Stars and Heavenly Bodies By all which it is apparent that by The Word they understood some Divine Subsistence whose Nature is exalted above all finite Beings whatsoever and therefore 4. And lastly Our Saviour to whom this Phrase The Word is applied must be that Divine Person or Subsistence And so we find him stiled in the first Verse of this Chapter In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God Which Expressions are so exactly agreeable to the Phrase of the Gentile Theology that Amelius the Disciple of Plotin and a great Enemy to the Christians was forced to acknowledge that this is that Word which was from Everlasting and by whom all things were made as Heraclitus supposed And per Iovem saith he Barbarus isle meaning St. Iohn cum nostro Platone consentit Verbum Dei in Ordine Principii esse This Barbarian is of our Plato ' s Mind that the Word of God is ranked among the Principles And indeed unless we understand this Place of the Eternal Deity of The Word I know not how it will be possible to make any tolerable Sense of it for if by In the Beginning here we understand as the Socinians would have us in the beginning of the Gospel when Iohn Baptist began to preach the Words will imply a gross Tautology and the Sense of them must be this that Christ was when Iohn Baptist preached that he was or which is all one that he was when he was For how can it be worthy of an Apostle so solemnly to assert that the Word had a Being in the Beginning of the Gospel when we know the Baptist taught as much himself who therefore came baptizing with water that he should be made manifest to Israel Ioh. 1. 31. And when St. Matthew and St. Luke who wrote before taught us more than this viz. That he was in being thirty Years before when we are sure it was as true of any other then living as of the Word even of Iudas that betrayed him and Pilate who condemned him By in the Beginning therefore must be meant the Beginning of the World and that even then the Word was with God and the Word was God So Phil. 2. 6 7. Who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a Servant and was made in the likeness of Men. From whence these three Conclusions do most naturally result First That Christ was in the form of a Servant as soon as he was made Man Secondly That he was in the form of God before he was in the form of a Servant And Thirdly That he was in the form of God that is did as really and truly subsist in the Divine Nature as in the form of a Servant or in the Nature of Man For the Words literally translated run thus But emptied himself taking the Form of a Servant being in the Likeness of Men Which plainly implies that Christ was full before he emptied himself that he emptied himself by taking the form of a Servant that he took the form of a Servant by being made in the likeness of Men which Emptying presupposes a precedent Plenitude and which Plenitude consisted in being so in the form of God as to think it no Robbery to be equal with God So Rev. 1. 11. he solemnly proclaims his own Divinity I am Alpha and Omega the first and the last which is the incommunicable Title by which God describes his own Being and distinguishes it from all others And Isa. 44. 6. I am the first and I am the last and besides me there is no God These and many other plain Assertions there are in the New Testament of the Eternal Deity of the Blessed Word But since the Eternal God was constantly both by the Iews and Gentiles signified by this Phrase the Word there is no Reason to imagine that St. Iohn should make use of it in any other Notion since in so doing he would have imposed upon the World and taken an effectual Course to make us believe that
meerly that he might make us happy and advance us to that Glory and Bliss which for our sakes he willingly abandoned and yet that we are no more touched and affected with it than with the most indifferent Thing in the World Blessed God what are we made of What kind of Souls do we carry about with us that no Kindness will oblige us no not the most endearing that ever was known or heard of Doubtless should any Man have shewn us but half this Kindness should a Friend but offer to die for us or a Prince to descend from his Throne and put himself into the State of a Beggar to inrich and advance us in the World we should have thought our selves bound to him as long as we lived and should we have thought any Services too much any Requitals too dear for him we should have been lookt upon as Monsters of Ingratitude as the Reproaches and Scandals of humane Nature and been hiss'd out of all Society for a Company of infamous Villains unworthy of the least Respect or Favour from Mankind But for a Friend to die or a Prince to become a Beggar for our sakes alas what poor inconsiderable Things are they compared with the Condescentions of the Son of God who humbled himself much lower in becoming a Man than the most glorious Angel in Heaven could have done in assuming the Nature of a Worm And can we be so inhumane as not to be moved by such a Miracle of condescending Love Is it the less because it is the Love of God or doth it less deserve our Requital What Excuse then can we make for our wretched Insensibility O ungrateful that we are with what Confidence can we shew our Heads among reasonable Beings after we have so barbarously slighted our best Friend and behaved our selves so disingenuously towards our greatest Benefactor How can we pretend to any thing that is modest or ingenuous tender or apprehensive in humane Nature when nothing will oblige us no not that astonishing Love that made the Son of God leave all his Glory and become a poor miserable Mortal for our sakes O blessed Iesus what do thy holy Angels think of us how do thy blessed Saints resent our Unkindness towards thee yea how justly will the Devils themselves reproach and upbraid our Baseness who bad as they are were never so much Devils yet as to spurn the Love of a Redeemer coming down from Heaven to die and suffer for their sakes Wherefore as we would not be hiss'd at by all the reasonable World and become Spectacles of Horror to God and Angels and Devils let us endeavour to affect our selves with the Love of our Redeemer and to inflame our own Souls with the Sense of his Kindness who hath done such mighty things to endear and oblige us 4. From hence I infer what monstrous Disingenuity it would be in us to think much of parting with any thing or doing any thing for the sake of Christ who for our sakes parted with his Father's Bosom and all those infinite Delights which he there enjoyed and united himself to our miserable Nature that he might make us good and happy for ever And now after all this with what Conscience or Modesty can we grudge to do any thing which he shall require at our hands Should he command me to descend into the lowest Form of Beings and to become the most wretched and contemptible of all Animals could I be such a Caitif as to deny him who descended much lower for the sake of me Should he remand me back into Non-entity and bid me cease to be for ever alas the Distance is nothing so great between me and nothing as 't was betwixt him and that humane Nature which he assumed for my sake Should he require me to die for him under all those lingering and exquisite Tortures which the blessed Martyrs suffered for his Name what Proportion were there between what he requires of me and what he hath done for me He only requires that I should pass through Death to Heaven for him but he came from Heaven to pass through Death for me so that for his sake I should only put off a wretched Garment of Flesh that I may be inrobed with Glory and Immortality but for my sake he put off his Robes of Glory and Majesty that he might wear my frail and mortal Flesh and therein reconcile me to God and make me everlastingly happy And when I may advance my self into an Equality with Angels by suffering the Agonies of a miserable Death for him shall I refuse or think much of it when he who was equal with God in Glory and Happiness was so ready to be born a wretched miserable Man for me Should he require me to give my Substance to the Poor and leave my self destitute of all Supplies and Comforts could I deny so poor a Request to him who forsook a Heaven of infinite Pleasures for my sake and exposed himself naked to the Mercy of a wretched wicked and ill-natured World from whom he could expect nothing but the most barbarous Contempt and Cruelty Sure one would think 't were impossible for any reasonable Being to deny such poor such inconsiderable Boons to such a great and deserving Benefactor and yet these are much more than what he ordinarily requires at our hands For that which he ordinarily requires of us is that we would forsake those Vices which are as injurious to us as they are hateful to him and which are therefore hateful to him because they are our Enemies and that we would practise those Virtues in which the Perfection and Happiness of our Nature is involved and which we can no more be happy without than we can be without Being And can I think much to part with those Lusts for his sake which are my Shames and Infelicities who never grudg'd to part with Heaven for mine Can they be as dear to me as his Father's Bosom was to him and yet he left that for Love of me and shall not I leave these for Love of him Methinks if we will not part with them for our own sakes as being destructive to our Peace and Happiness yet had we the least spark of Ingenuity in us we should gladly part with them for the sake of our Saviour who for ours was so ready to part with all that was dear to him Can we be such Wretches as to refuse to serve him when he requires nothing of us but what we are obliged to by our own Interest Are we so lost to all that is ingenuous and modest that we will not obey him when he only requires us to be kind to our selves O wretched Mortals doth his Coming down from Heaven to save you deserve this barbarous Treatment at your hands that to spite him you should injure your selves and wound his Authority thro' your own Sides Had he been wholly indifferent to you it had been very unreasonable to reject his Service when it
Cruelties which those barbarous Villains were about to practise upon him how they would scourge his Body with knotty Whips and nail his Hands and Feet to the Cross and thrust a Spear into his Heart he saw how they would triumph over his Misery mock at his Calamity and dance to the Musick of his dying Grones And now one would have thought such a Prospect as this would have for ever enraged his Soul against them and made him rejoyce to see that sweeping Destruction that was coming upon them but such was the incomparable Sweetness of his Temper that while he foresaw them plotting his Ruin he could not but sigh over theirs and while he beheld their Malice all reeking in his Blood and sporting it self with his Torments and Agonies yet at the Sense of their approaching Destruction his very Bowels earned and his Heart melted with Commiseration and he could not forbear weeping to think that those cursed Instruments of all his Miseries must e're long be so wretched and miserable themselves earnestly wishing that they who so greedily thirsted for his Blood had known in that their day the things which belong to their Peace And though one would have thought the barbarous Entertainment he met with here upon Earth would have for ever quenched all his Affections to Mankind yet still it lives and in despite of all the Affronts and Outrages he endured burns as vigorously in his Breast as ever So unconquerable was his Love to his Subjects that all the bloody Cruelties they practised upon him when they chased him out of the World were never able to alienate his Heart and Affections from them but after all their Cruelties he still retained his Fatherly Bowels towards them and when he could endure their Torments no longer breathed out his loving Soul in an earnest Prayer for their Pardon Father forgive them for they know not what they do And now that he is in Heaven among Angels and glorified Spirits where he cannot but remember how unkindly we treated him when he was upon Earth and perhaps doth still bear upon his glorified Body those very Wounds which he received from our Hands which one would think were sufficient to incense him against us for ever yet his Heart is the same towards us full of all those kind and tender Resentments that first brought him down from Heaven and render'd his Conversation among us so full of Sweetness and Endearments And now being so infinitely kind as he is why should we be disheartned from serving him Methinks the Sense of his Love to us if there were no other Argument in the World should be sufficient to bind us to his Service for ever For O my Soul how can I do too much for so kind a Friend How can I be too submissive to so good a Master That is so infinitely tender of all his Servants and loves them a thousand times more than they love themselves Sure if we had any Spark of Ingenuity in us the Sense of his matchless Kindness towards us would be sufficient to turn all our Duty to him into Recreation to make us thirst after his Service and catch at all Opportunities of expressing our Loyalty and Obedience to him We should embrace his Commands as Preferments to us and wear them as the greatest Favours and think our selves more honoured in being the Servants of Iesus Christ than in being made mighty Kings and Potentates 2. Consider as he is full of Grace in Respect of his own Personal Disposition so he is also in Respect of his Laws in which as I have already shewed you he requires nothing of us but what is for our Good nothing but what tends to the Perfection of our Natures and the Consummation of our Happiness All that our Saviour requires at our Hands is only that we should act according to the Laws of a Reasonable Nature and constantly pursue the great End of our Creation which can never be obtained by us unless we regulate our Actions by those wise and excellent Rules which he hath prescribed us and which he hath prescribed us upon no other Inducement but only to oblige us to be happy For as to any Advantage that will accrue to him from our Actions 't is altogether indifferent to him whether we obey him or no for he was always infinitely happy within himself and would have always been so though we had never had a Being so that his Felicity depends not upon us and were it not that the superabundant Goodness of his Nature doth for ever incline him to make us happy as well as himself he would never have concerned himself about us but would have let us alone to do as we list and abandoned us to the Fate of our own Actions He therefore being infinitely happy within himself can have no self-Ends to serve upon his Creatures because within the Circle of his own divine Being he hath all that he needs and all that he desires but being infinitely good as he is infinitely happy we are sure that our Good must be the only End of his intermedling with our Actions and his giving Laws to direct them And if we consult the particular Lawss which he hath given us we shall find they all of them most naturally tend to perfect and rectiâ—ie our disordered Natures to exalt and spiritualize our Affections and inspire us with all those divine Dispositions that are requisite to qualify us for the Happiness of the World to come And now methinks if we had any Sense of our own Interest this Consideration should mightily encourage us to Obedience to think that while we are serving our blessed Master we are serving our selves to the best Purposes and that his Service and our Interest are so combined and united that by the same Actions we may gratify him and do our selves the greatest Kindness in the World that he exacts nothing from us but what he was obliged to do by the infinite Care and Concern he hath for us and that he had been less kind should he have required less and must necessarily have subtracted from us some Degree of our Happiness should he have abated us any Part of our Duty O Blessed Iesus who can complain of thy Service when thy very Commands are Tokens of thy Love when all the Duty thou requirest of us is only to be kind to our selves in doing those things which if thou hadst never commanded our own Interest would have obliged us to had we but understood it as well or regarded it as much as thou dost 3. But then consider again as He is full of Grace to us in his own personal Temper and in those mild and gentle Laws which he hath given us so Thirdly He is full of Grace to us also in respect of that gracious Pardon and Forgiveness which he hath procured for and promised to us if we will heartily repent and amend I confess though his Personal Temper should be never so sweet and his
vanish immediately into Air or sink into flat and empty Nonsense For thus the Doctrine of Faith and Repentance and Iustification which lye as plain in the Scripture as Words can make them are by their Divinity render'd more obscure and mysterious than ever they were whilst they were couched under the Types and Figures of the Law more of the true Nature being discovered in Circumcision and the legal Washings and Attonements than in a hundred Volumes of modern Systems of Divinity For whatsoever is intelligible they look upon as carnal and till they have subtilized it into some unaccountable Mystery it is not spiritual enough to be admitted into their System of Divinity as if they thought it below the Majesty of Religion to expose it self to the View of the World and there was no Way to secure it from Contempt but to lock it up in Mysteries and Obscurities for else to what Purpose should they wrap it round with Clouds as they do unless they design to make a Trade of it and so draw a Curtain before it as Men do before their Puppet-Plays that so they may get Money by shewing it For 't is apparent that Religion it self suffers extremely by it for whilst they thus spiritualize it into Air and do as it were juggle it out of Sight in the Clouds of their mystical Nonsense they render it extreamly suspicious to all that are wise and inquisitive and will not suffer themselves to be imposed upon by the Trains of their mysterious Gibberish And as for their more credulous Followers whilst they thus lead them by the Nose through a Vally of Shades and Darkness they utterly deprive them of the vigorous Warmth and Comforts of Religion for how should they know how to make use of the Arguments and Motives of Christianity when those excellent Doctrines from whence they are deduced are wrap'd in unintelligible Mysteries For how should they draw forth from the Articles of their Faith those Practical Principles that are lodged in them when those Articles are converted into Riddles which they do not nor cannot understand Thus by turning Christianity into a Mystery they do not only thwart the Design of our Saviour which was to bring it forth from under the mysterious Representations of the Law and propose it to the World in the most plain and intelligible manner but they also dispirit Religion it self whose Life and Energy consists in being understood and expose it to the Contempt and Scorn of those that have Wit enough to detect the Follies of their Enthusiastical Mysteries 4thly And lastly He dwelt among us full of Grace and Truth From hence I infer the Inexcusableness of those Men that persist in their Disobedience to the Gospel now that our blessed Lord hath expressed so much Grace towards and so clearly made known his Mind and Will to us What Excuse can we urge to palliate our wretched Disobedience If you will but imagine your selves for a little while to be standing before the Tribunal of your Saviour where e're it be long you must all appear I will briefly draw up what in Probability will be your Plea and what may be reasonably presumed will be his Answer In the Name of Iesus then let me demand of you what can you plead for your selves why that fearful Doom which he hath pronounced against you should not be pass'd upon you Why Lord we knew that thou wer 't an austere Man that thou would'st exact of us to the utmost Punctilio and that if ever we fail'd in the least Circumstance of our Duty thou would'st immediately let loose thy implacable Vengeance upon us and this utterly disheartned us from thy Service considering how impossible it was for us to please thee Ah wretched Creatures can you have the Face to charge me with Rigour and Severity who have had so many notorious Experiments of the Sweetness of my Nature and Tenderness of my Affections towards you What one Action was I ever guilty of in all my Conversation among you that could give you the least Suspicion that ever I would prove an austere Master to you or that I would not be ready to construe you in the most favourable Sense and to pity and pardon you wheresoever you were excusable Did I ever give you any Occasion to think that I was of a peevish or captious Nature apt to be provoked with Trifles Yea had you not all the Reason in the World to conclude from the Sweetness of my Temper that I would be always ready to consider your Infirmities and pity your Weaknesses and judge you by the Measures of a Friend And do you now pretend that it was the Dread of my Severity that disheartned you from my Service But Lord the Laws which thou gavest us were so intolerably burthensom that neither we nor our Fore-fathers were able to bear them We would willingly have obeyed thee if it had been possible but when we saw thy Burthen exceeded our Strength we concluded it was in vain for us to attempt the bearing it O ungrateful Rebels dare ye accuse me of Tyranny when you know in your own Consciences I never imposed any Law upon you but what had a necessary Tendency to your Happiness and was so far in its own Nature from being a Burthen to you that it commanded nothing but what would have been an Ease and Refreshment And if you can but produce any one of my Commands that obliged you to any thing but to be kind to your selves or convince me that I could have enjoyned less upon you without being less kind or merciful to you I will freely admit of your Plea as just and immediately pardon all your Disobediences against me But when all my Laws are Instances of my Love to you and Expressions of my Zeal for your Welfare who but such Monsters of Ingratitude as your selves would ever have charged me with Tyranny and Oppression But Lord thou knowest we are fickle and mutable Creatures and though we did heartily resolve that we would never revolt from thy Service yet through the many Temptations that perpetually sollicited us we were at last seduced into a Rebellion against thee And though when we reflected upon what we had done we were full of Sorrow and Remorse and wish'd from our Souls that we had never done it yet then being desperate of Mercy and past all Hopes of Pardon we concluded that it was too late to repent or to think of returning to our Duty again Ah unworthy Wretches with what Confidence can you impute the Continuation of your Rebellion against me to your Despair of ever finding Mercy at my hands when you know in your own Consciences that I died to procure Forgiveness for you and that by my Death I obtained an Act of Indemnity and Oblivion for all that would come in and return to their Duty upon the Proclamation of my Gospel When you cannot but know that I tender'd you your Pardon sealed with my own Blood and