too frequently used amongst us and too covetous of all manner of our Neighbours goods But when those heavenly-breathed Petitions were poured out by all the Congregation to the Almighty glory Lord have mercy upon us and encline our hearts to keep this Law and also Lord have mercy upon us and write all these thy Laws in our hearts we beseech thee O what acclamations of joy those men breathed Petitons made against the walls of heaven and entered into the holy ears of the Almighty which by experience we may and ought to know when his holy glorious blessings preserved our Governours and Nation with tranquility and peace both from domestick and forreign foes for many score years together when those forms of publick Worship were continued wherein all had a share But our old enemy with his busie instruments who were long ago about to slight this work knew well that as long as God was so worshipped by those constant forms of so well an instructing Church his labours were to no end But at last he found Feoffees indeed he could trust who with their schismatique hammers and destroying Pickaxes of Division would now up with Root and Branch and take the Bramble for the Vine whose government he well knew would sufficiently scratch both Church and Common-wealth into the sad condition he long ago wished for as our selves and the distressed poor stript Sons of the Church by woful experience can testifie But since the constant Prayers for all occasions of our well-ordered Church were put out of use how hath all things looked like the Antipodes as if a Chaos of confusion had infatuated all our Councils and actings that nothing cometh to good And since the Pale of our distressed Sion and National Government was broken down by our schismatique Factions England Scotland and Ireland have all suffered a just deserved affliction by the loss of uniformity in Prayer for Magistrates and people And also those unhappy hands who set about this fatal work in making way for the Church of Rome to unkennel her subtil Foxes to destroy ours with the help of our long tusked Bores with their basket-hilted swords who have rooted out and thrown down the Vineyard and laid waste the inheritance of our dear Mother and are like to destroy the rest of her tender plants if God in mercy prevent it not But Gods divine vengeance whose Judgments have fallen upon divers of them our eyes have seen that are roled into their graves with reproch and their names recorded in infamy for after-Ages to abhor that nulled these heavenly petitions From Plague Pestilence and Famine from Battle and Murther and from sudden death Good Lord deliver us From all sedition and privy conspiracy from all false doctrine and heresie from hardness of heart and contempt of thy Word and Commandments Good Lord deliver us the which in all likelihood by our humble addresses and with our hearty united prayers and truly compunctious tears to his heavenly Majesty might have moved our gracious God to have had compassion on us and our King and all his people which now lie languishing in woful distresses because we have rejected those usual means by which for many years his gracious goodness was pleased to deliver our Land and Governors from Plague Famine and intestine Wars and from factious Schisciomites What a decent sight it was to see the people so reverently worshiping the mighty Lord when they warbled forth with joynt consent O come let us sing unto the Lord let us heartily rejoyce in the strength of our Salvation and those eternal dues from all the Earth in the Landamus We praise thee O God we acknowledge thee to be the Lord c. that all the people both young and old rich and poor are in duty bound reverently to worship the Father everlasting whose infinite Majesty gloriously commands all the whole world And yet we poor Underlings the sinful Sons of Adam must be tongue-tied and may not bear a part in those heavenly Hallelujahs to our most gracious preserver and powerful Redeemer because a few of our tender-conscienc'd brethren will not allow us that freedom to discharge our eternally obliged duties without offending them who under the name of Liberty of Conscience do manage all kind of mischiefs witness the direful Petition Febr. 9. 1658. When these decent Orders were used in our well-disciplined Church with what reverence did my eyes behold both old and young adore their holy Maker and since this named Reformation how unreverently do most demean themselves in his sacred Temples the place of his divine worship where children boyes and unmannerly servants clap on their hats before their Masters Magistrates Ministers Judges and all degrees of men and yet forbear it at home but presume to affront God with as much unhandsom worship as the Reformation is pleased to suffer to avoid Superstition When I have observed in inferiour Courts as at Sessions and elsewhere in cooler air before men onely earthly Judges and upon wooden benches highly reverenced as if it were some great fault to be covered before them who are but the Keepers of the laws of Men when our ever-living God who made the glorious heavens with all the mighty vast movables who keep their course for the observation of times and seasons ever since the Creation with the massy globe we trample upon which he hath hung in the air by the power of his all-commanding word with the proud waves of the great Deep who keep their violent ebbings and flowings in their appointed channels round the circumference of the earth with admiration and wonder And yet this infinite incomprehensible all-powerful God that giveth us all good things here and eternal life hereafter is so unhandsomly served by us his poor creatures and may not be suffered without offence forsooth to tender Consciences to use our dear Mothers decent dressings in her humble ornaments to do her divine adorations to this glorious King for fear of ushering in Superstition as if rational men might not teach their children and servants such respective observations in holy worship to our great God before whom the Cherubims and glorious Angels tremble when they come before him as in civility we do to one another and before our earthly Judges which die like men And why those decent postures of humbly kneeling when the Sacrament is received and those known prayers fitted for that posture said as The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee c. and likewise those agonizing words The bloud of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for thee c. all those known prayers used by all the Communicants to keep the evil one from hindring our serious meditations and humble invocations upon our bended knees whiles others were singing those hallowed Hymns while the holy sacrificed Oblation was remembringly performed by all the believing Communicants over that that I have seen of late by divers who are very observant to see how the
so about that such a poor Mushrome as my unworthy self should be at all thought on for such affairs when divers of more knowing worth degree and fitness were forgotten But thus being put into the traces and my dull senses lasht by divers able mens disputes about our Nationall and City-priviledges and hearing Mr. Barbone a justing those members in these words now sitting to be the Parliament of England and the same men that acted there the last Summer and were so by the City and Nation acknowledged and the Taxes then leavyed by them gathered by us and why not now being the same Parliament of England now sitting it was a wonder to him being lasht as I said before and this Gentlemans words so touching my galled Conscience began to winch and being prest by its discharge I like blind Bayard said My Lord Mayor The Gentleman that spake last concerning the Parliament of England as he calls the Gentlemen now sitting surely mistakes the sense of this Court for truly my Lord I am perswaded there is never a Member here but honours the Parliament of England and will lay their hands under their feet and sacrifice thier lives and estates to do them service and we honour these that now are set at the Stern as men of worth and quality But my Lord we cannot say by these Gentlemen though by us once freely chosen because they were dâ—ssolved by the late Kings death as by Law hath been undeniably proved but my Lord divers of these did desert their Trust that we reposed in them and went to the Army and brought in Oliver the great Oppressor to invade our Rights and with his and their Adherents by force secluded most of our Trustees and were themselves also dissolved so by him and his Complices though they acted with and for him a long time and now my Lord your Honour and all us well know that the same force that pull'd down great Olivers Son set up these that now sit by the Lord Lamberts assistance and by his force were the third time dissolved and now by the strength of an Army are again set in power to act as our Representatives although not new elected or chosen by us according to our Laws and English Birth-rights as hath been throughly debated in this Court by divers worthy Citizens of able knowing judgments that intended no hurt to these Gentlemen that now sit but the right and good of all the Nation and themselves My Lord this that hath now been plainly said is truth and Truth seeks no corners nor these Gentlemen a Parliament by us chosen The substance of these words was offered at the Guild-hall in the Council of the Commons February 8. 1659. when the Army was new come to London The next Friday being the 10. of the same Moneth the Gates of the City were broken down and our Posts and Chains pluckt up and divers of our Members sent Prisoners to the Tower and our sorrowful hearts overwhelmed with grief dreading the fearful issue following yet trusting still in God our alone great Deliverer who comforting our drooping hearts by his gracious appearance in a merciful measure for us on Saturday the II. of the same Moneth on which night was great joy expressed by many of the younger sort by Bonfires in every eminent street and I doubt not but the elder sort both Laymen and Divines sacrificed divers humble Prayers and hearty thanks to the most high God our whole deliverer whose heavenly smiles did then graciously glimmer upon us his poor distressed creatures whose holy Name be eternally praised by all that fear him whose goodness we hope will now perfect our now new begun joy I have lived to see our Moses and Aaron the defenders of our Faith and Church with their friends and adherents suffer and I may yet live to see the Troublers of our Peace and Church with their Corah Dathan and all their Abiramists overwhelmed or as I desire converted Then let not our Faith fail us but stand still and see how our God will deliver us and remember when his servants the distressed Sons of Jacob were at the brink of the Sea and Egypts Host fiercely pursuing and Israels fainting spirits sinking and their doubtful thoughts breaking out into doleful expressions Because there were no graves in Egypt hast thou brought us forth to die in this wilderness Therefore take courage dear Brethren of this City and the bottomless sea of our distrusts may become walls to our fainting spirits and our selves though going through these troubled seas in this night of our afflictions we may yet stand upon the shore of safety by the power of our God and see these furious Conjurers and Pharaoh-like Task-masters floating upon the deep waters of Despair helpless for it is the same Jehovah who saved Israel that will deliver us and be confident the Arke of his Truth which we trust in will tumble down the Dagon of their Injustice let them set it up never so often and let us belive with faithful Abraham that The Judge of all the earth will do right I have been also often grieved to hear and see such a dull and negligent garb of Publick Worship as is now used in divers Churches Over that reverential form of Publick Worship was that I had the happiness to see before these times of Trouble and Confusion which if at all offensive to any might by skilful Workmen have been handsomelier mended than by such self-conceited Bunglers thus ill-favour'dly patcht up and pestered with Sectaries of all kind of colours as if they intended to make it like my Lord Husons Fool But the holy Scripture saith When the blind lead the blind we must needs fall into the distressed ditch of our confused Fopperies The good Lord give us grace to return and humbly beg mercy through the merits of our dear Saviour whose offended Father we have most egregiously provoked to displeasure before his fierce deserved warth break in upon us and seek our God in sincerity by humiliation and true imitation of the Ninevites unfeigned Fasts and lay by our hypocritical vizards with which we have so long deceived the Nation and our selves and walk no more by Sathans Dark-lanthorns but revive the former pure lights that shewed us the right wayes to Unity in perfect forms of divine Worship which teacheth us to pray for the Governors his goodness will be pleased to set over us and for one another that our Church and State may once again flourish in unity and concord with due respect to tender Consciences that are not factious And then it were but equity if rightly considered in my weak apprehension for to suffer us that would joyn together in the praising of the Almighty glory with our interlocutory voices in acknowledging and humbly confessing our manifold sins before the great God of Heaven and earth Angels and Men in his publick fit-to-be-done Worship and because it best suits with our Consciences and the rules
of Righteousness in the holy Scripture which saith That At what time soever a Sinner doth repent him of his sins from the bottom of his heart I will put away all his wickedness out of my remembrance saith the Lord and likewise When two or three are gathered together in my Name there will I be in the midst of them And humbly may I say and cannot otherwise think but that when so many multitudes of People at the known divine Worship of the immortal God in publick but that there be divers that worship him in Spirit and Truth and do not conceive it an Idol-worship as I have heard Mr. Pernes out of his Pulpit call the Common Prayer-Book an Idol although they knew the words they were to praise God with before they met rather than unpremeditated disgustings remembring the rule of a wise man God is in Heaven and thou art on Earth and also well knowing that The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak Therefore the Confession used in our well-ordered Church that all the Congregation might bear a part in the humble acknowledgment of their many faults meekly kneeling upon their bended knees with holy adorations to the Almighty glory clapping their trembling hands upon their sorrow-smitten breasts humbly begging pardon for our manifold transgressions of him who onely can grant us pardon and hear our petitions and most likely when so many millions of sin-sick humbled souls shall be invocating Heaven with one consent in the same words betwixt the hours of 9. and 12. upon his dayes and places appointed for his publick Worship in the three nations over it is now in our Churches when but one in a Congregation and that what he pleaseth and many times so low that few can hear or learn the matter being changed so often and many times so thin that it slides away unheeded and without an Absolution also of our sins though never more need Nor can I be of Mr. Pernes opinion who directed his Auditors to pray in their Families although their folks laughed at them when so many well-formed prayers are extant for poor Penitents to follow without oftentation or vain Fantasies of their own giddy brain as that Prayer of prayers taught us by the blessed lips of our dear Redeemer wherein all things needful at once are begged in that holy Epitomie which teacheth us how to pray and to whom and by him commanded When you pray say our Father which art in Heaven c. and yet by divers not at all used for what reason I never yet heard nor can I think unless they think it is too mean or too common for their high-gifted Fantasies or would help the Enemy to obliterate it that he might do us more evil Pardon me I pray all you that neglect it for it doth make the common people too too much slight it by such eminent examples Nor would I be herein mistaken as not to like and allow of voluntary prayers which ought to be often seriously practised before publiquely used by devout souls it being the onely remedy for the saddest complaints of any afflicting conscience to make his timely addresses to his offended God for the quieting of his sorrow-troubled soul and was alwayes allowed in our Churches before and after Sermons as I have often heard before these times and now praise be to the highest Lord by divers rarely gifted Divines as the Angel of the Church of St. Dunstans and many others whose heavenly expressing language pours forth the dictates of the holy Spirit filling their Auditors ears with such soul-ravishing meditations as if the Cloven-working power had inflamed their zealous hearts with heavenly firing raptures And it was well with us when such men steer'd the helm of publick Worship that being alwayes most for Gods glory Although private Worship ought to be in great esteem as best pleasing to God which our blessed Saviour doth direct those secret Closet-confessions of a broken and contrite heart with all the sorrow-shaking throws of a distressed soul pouring forth his saddest griefs before the heavenly throne that onely can help in time of greatest need which our old enemy knows is likeliest to prevail with God whose merciful goodness hath said Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden and I will give you rest But the subtile betrayer of our weak performances is apt to suggest his old cunning sophistries into our soondeluded souls as he did our first Mother These meditations in publick amongst the gifted Brotherhood would make thee highly esteemed and accounted wise in letting your inspired new-tinded Lights be seen before religious men for the most tear-melting Hypocrite that is best able to deceive himself and others is the Saint that liketh him best Herod had the applause that It was the voice of a God and not of a man For he by no means would have us take counsel of our most endearing Saviour nor follow his examples who often withdrew himself apart to pray unto his all-guiding God to hold an heavenly conference with his Almighty Father about the great work of our Redemption and he hath also directed us To enter into our Clossets to pray in secret to our heavenly Father where we should unburthen our sin-guilty souls with the grones of his heavenly Spirit no where else so sufficiently to unfold our troubled minds and the distresses of our dejected spirits before a powerful forgiving God who knows the secret thoughts of our deceitful hearts before our tongues or brinish tears unfold our shameful griefs not fit for others ears to hear Nor can such grief-expressing mones be made by a truly Penitents throbbing breast in publick but our old enemy will be distracting our thoughts with his subtile delusions which spoil the meditation of the serious prayers that we poor weaklings can perform in the sight of others The Lord preserve us from his trecheries whose whole work is to deceive us Therefore a known form of publick Worship that all may use is surely requisite For may we not observe by the vile things now done by divers what want there hath been of the due observance of the great commands of the everliving God delivered upon Mount Sinai by the voice of the powerful Master when the Heaven-shaking thunders made the earth to tremble and Jacobs whole posterity to quake to hear what indignations the wilful breakers of these Heaven-given Laws should be punished with yet now for more than 12. years in divers Congregations not read to the people nor observed as our duty binds us whereby our transgressions we may observe are multiplied our great Gods commands too much dishonoured and by many falsly worshipped his Name violently taken in vain by our too too many Oaths and breaches of Covenants and hypocritical Fasts breaking of Sabbaths marching of armed men all dayes alike dishonouring our Magistrates and Parents Murthering our King Priests and Commons odious Adulteries used among us and many false Witnesses for Sequestrations and unneighbourly dealings
deliverer prayes and receives whilst divers are at gaze to see what others do more than seriously I fear to consider the great work we are about which brings life or death Truly I like not the new way though performed by able men but will have none but their select permitted when they cannot see into the hearts of men more now than the inspired Apostles could who charged us to examine our selves upon great penalties The people would indeed go up to Jerusalem to worship after the accustomed manner and Jeroboam would devise a new way to restrain their old way of Sacrificing but it became a fault I pray God it may be none to our Restrainers from the usual Sacraments Likewise I have wondred why the Birth of our blessed Saviour should not be solemnized as formerly it was by as wise and learned men as are now to keep in memory a day for his birth since God so miraculously and of his own goodness hath been pleased to discover how our God was made man and that holy born man made God to redeem us and therefore in my weak judgment fit to be kept in perpetual memory to all generations of Christian men until the Resurrection when there will be no distinction of Gods At last I did conceive it was the old enemy of mans happiness that would obliterate the great Gods Birth-day under some reforming pretence that in time he might bring in Infidelism and by degrees damp the light of the holy Scriptures the great work he is now about the Lord prevent him with the birth of our dear Saviour whom he would have forgotten Then let him alone to bring several gods amongst us as Ashteroth Molech Mahomet or any of those heathenish Baboons but God who is alwayes good to his is now raising up one instrument or other to keep the memory of his holy Childs birth on foot as may be spoken to his glorious honour and the immortal praise of that vertuous Lady Parthenia Lowman who hath given to St. Dunstans west and two or three adjacent parishes 100 l. apeece the improvement whereof she hath ordered to be given to glad the hearts of the Poor upon the Birth-day of our blessed Lord with a commemoration-Sermon also to continue his sacred memory to all succeeding generations What offence likewise to any did that soul-ravishing Emphasis and general applause of all the Congregation to the honor of our most endearing God Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the holy Ghost c. fit to be acknowledged and used by all the sincere Worshippers of God throughout the whole world And this interlocutory Doxology holy David did allow and sure his judgment was right being by testimony of holy Writ A man after Gods own heart when he breaks forth into holy raptures in Psal. 67. Let all the people praise thee O God let all the people praise thee and with this promised blessing ver. 6. Then shall the Earth bring forth her increase and God even our God shall give us his blessing To speak the very truth there are so many holy sentences and heavenly ejaculations and divine prayers for all occasions that it makes my amazed soul to wonder and tremble that we should neglect nay with contempt slight and cast out such a well-framed form of publick worship that instructed the simple and unlearned to rightly worship God by her constant rules of publick worship But I have done This is a work indeed for some Angelick Orator to let us ignorant know the heavenly use might be made of such a mercy we once enjoyed though now slighting that Manna so wisely provided for us Having thus cast in my two poor inconsiderable Mites the one for the Liberties of my native Country the other for my dear Mother the distressed Church of England in these troublesom times I hope my friends will sparingly censure the weak smoakings of this smothering flax and for my foes to this just cause and me the good Lord forgive them and pardon me in time of greatest need if any trouble come for thus discharging my Conscience as being a Covenanter and loving well-willer to the Church and State Pardon me also I pray you ye great learned lights of the Church for thus presuming to offer with my roughhewing hands and unpollished Pen in touching things so far above my feeble reach and with the greatest accept of the will for the deed you know the poor widow would cast into the Treasury all that she had and it was the poor Shepherds inconsiderable persons I humbly conceive that had the happiness to see that heavenly sight of the blessed Quire of Angels when they proclaimed Glory to God in the highest on earth peace good will towards men yea their poor ears had the honor to hear that unexpressible soul-ravishing mirth that that Hierarchy of Angels made at the birth of our dear mothers new-born Bridgroom And we poor weaklings would heartily rejoyce to hear and see the Church again comforted therefore I hope you will excuse me poor despicable worm and with humble reverence I 'le but remember you A Carpenter was dry Nurse to the holy Son of the most high God and divers mean men have had a hand in repairing of Churches though they could not perfect them and I am confident the Church with her decencies and truths will again be in high esteem with moderate men when these foggy mists of our misled understandings are dispers'd as God hath already begun to manifest his divine power after his own way without one blow strucken by man as yet and many of the opposers of Church and State nonplus'd or amazedly astonished and vanished and a great part of that prophesie uttered by the late King performed and all the rest of it hasting by divine justice to be made known to all the world as in the Kings Book of his Prophesies is foretold Nor will he suffer those men long to prosper in their Babel who build it with the bones and cement it with the bloud of their Kings I am confident they will find avengers of my death amongst themselves the injuries I have sustained from them shall be first punished by them who agreed in nothing so much as in opposing me Their impatience to hear the loud cry of my bloud shall make them think no way better to expiate it than by shedding theirs who with them most thirsted after mine who have cause to fear that God will both further divide and by mutual vengeance afterwards destroy A great part of which Prophesie hath already been manifested to the observers of it and the rest expected But let us the lovers of Sion and her sacred-truths that have had the hateful names of Malignants c. cast upon us move like sober men that truly fear God and desire no revenge but the love of our Brethren that have been too much misled by Phanatick humors for love covereth a multitude of sins whereof we are all guilty and remember it is said 2 Sam. 24. The anger of the Lord was moved against Israel and he movedDavid to number Israel and Judah and Israel was punished but the holy-hearted King when he saw the people in perplexity cried out Lo I have sinned and I have done wickedly but these sheep what have they done let thine hand I pray thee be against me and my Fathers house And how did our dear slain Sovereign that meek Christian and tender-hearted King imitate that holy forespoken-of King when he said pag. 142. After-times may see what the blindness of this Age will not and God may at length shew my Subjects that I chose rather to suffer for them than with them Haply I might redeem my self to some shew of liberty if I would consent to enslave them I had rather hazard the ruine of one King than to confirm many Tyrants over them from whom I pray God deliver them what ever becomes of me Here was his Christian Charity shewed indeed whose blessed Soul I confidently believe is crowned in eternal bliss and enjoyes that full happiness there that was but promised To be be made Glorious here But his Martyrdom will make his Name renowned to all generations to come and his Murderers as infamous to all succeeding Ages FINIS As the Covenant is in our Churches Judges 5. 23. Exod. 14 11. Gen. 18. 25. Acts 12. 22. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The wicked fly when none pursue {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} page 179.