Scandal not to concur in all the excesses of Riot and Intemperance that did then defile the Land Whether shall we now turn our Eyes If on this place Luxury Immorality and open Lewdness meet us almost in every corner If on the Country how does Intemperance Injustice and a total neglect if not a resolved scorn of Religion fill most places And the excesses of Drinking have in many parts of the Nation not only corrupted Civil Conversation but vitiated the very Vitals of our Government by the ascendent that such practises have had in so essential and main a part of our security as are the Elections of this great and Honourable Assembly of whom if some generously scorned such methods too many have complied too much with so base and so ignominious a custom If we have thus abused the earthly blessings of Peace and Plenty and have much to answer for on that account Oh what can we say to excuse our selves who have not only brought no fruit to perfection notwithstanding all that seed of the Gospel that has been so plentifully sown among us but have done what we could to defie God himself and to drive him out of our Country being weary of that very dead Form of Religion yet remaining And to bring this home to our present circumstances though we are under great apprehensions of loosing this blessed Light what are we doing to engage God to be on our side We have been now for above two years in great disorders full of allarms and under eminent and visible dangers but what Lust or ill Custom have we parted with What demonstration have we given to God or the World that we consider Religion as it is indeed the Power of God to the Salvation of our Souls Or what do we for our holy Faith that Infidels Mahometans Jews or Papists would not do for their perswasions Do we continue still in our Lewdness Intemperance Oppression Injustice Falshood and ill Nature while we are talking of preserving our Religion and yet are doing all we can to undermine or overthrow it If God is against us all that we can do for preserving Religion or our other just Rights will either by his wise and holy Councils be quite blasted or perhaps the very methods that to us seem the most probable to secure them may in conclusion really introduce that which we fear so much Are our works perfect before God who knows them To make a work perfect it must be good in it self flow from a good principle and be directed to a good end The greatest part of our works are faulty in all these particulars so that neither We nor our Works can be accepted with that God That is of purer Eyes than that he can behold Iniquity Some of our Works may be in themselves good and such is a zeal for the Reformed Religion but if some do not believe that about which they make so much noise or if others have no design but to serve base ends or private Interests which they hid with the pretence of Religion and are ready to throw it off when they have attained that for which they are in truth only concerned shall not God search this out Things may be so dressed up as to have a fair appearance but to God they appear as indeed they are So the true value of us and our works is according to what we are in his sight from whom nothing can disguise us From all these things it is but too evident that our Works are not perfect before God If we will consider more particularly what may be supposed to have been the ground of the Expostulation in my Text with this Apostolick Church of Sardis we shall find the parallel betwixt it and us agrees but too well These Churches had fallen from their first Love and their first Works Oh what sad decays are we come under And how much have we declined from that Zeal and Love which our Fathers bore to the Reformation There were two things that were visible in the practice of those who first embraced it among us the one was the great pleasure they took in reading the Scriptures from whence they were in derisiion called Gospellers When the Bibles were first set up in Churches and went at such rates that ordinary people could not buy them what a running was there to Churches and what crouds gathered all day long about such as could read to hear this blessed Word which is now in all our Hands and yet is scarce ever considered by us Some read it only to abuse it and make themselves merry with some Atheistical jests to which they wrest it Others judge that indecent so because they will make no ill use of it they make none at all and never open it but for fashion some imploy their time in searching into the abstruser parts of it with a prying and vain curiosity some read it meerly to acquire a faculty of talking in such a Stile and so either they pervert the Scriptures by their false Glosses or only learn to defend some Opinions out of it or to Discourse in that Dialect for private Designs to which that is perhaps some way necessary But who read them with a simplicity of Mind to be directed by them and to be inwardly inflamed by the heavenly strains in them So that we have little left among us to entitle us to the Name of Gospellers The other chief Character by which the Reformed were at first known was their applying themselves only to God through Jesus Christ. This was intended to take men off from two fatal Errors in which they had been formerly led the one was relying on such external Works as were really of no Value at all and were only the juglings of those deceitful Guides that had set up Pilgrimages slight Penances and the purchasing Indulgences in the room of that which our Saviour had revealed to the World the other was their imagining that they were justified by the Sacraments upon some slight acts of sorrow or devotion In stead of these things the Reformers set up the applying to God through Jesus Christ according to the methods of the Gospel so that great and frequent addresses to the Father through his Son was the mark by which they were then known This begetting in them a sense of that Love which their Saviour had for them could not but kindle returns of Love sutable to it and that must needs reform the inward man upon which Purity and Holiness of Life will certainly follow This was the main Article of the Reformation and being that upon which the hopes of Salvation depended was indeed the thing of the greatest consequence though it was afterwards managed with too much Metaphysical nicety In sum this being the chief Character of a true Protestant we may soon see how much we have fallen from that Love which our Fathers had to this Truth while they lived and that appeared more signally by their dying for it
not yet come that and God of his infinite mercy preserve us from it We are taught by him that knew our nature well to watch and pray that we enter not into temptation for though the Spirit or our sublimer powers may be forward and willing yet the flesh is weak We are therefore to do all that is in our power and is consistent with that Religion which we prosess to prevent this You of this Honourable Assembly are now entrusted with the keeping this Doctrine as it is a part of the Law of the Land the people have trusted you with all that is dear to them and it is hoped you will acquit your selves as worthy of so great a confidence On this I shall enlarge no further but apply to you the message which Mordecai sent to Queen Esther when her people were marked out for destruction Think not that you shall escape more than all the rest for if you altogether hold your peace at this time there may come enlargement and deliverance to us from another hand but you and your houses shall be destroyed and who knows if you are come into this trust for such a time as this is If any shall either on the one hand give up this holy Religion and those means which are most effectual to secure it for private or base ends of their own or on the other hand shall to gratifie their revenge or to advance any ill design endeavour to drive things to confusion so that we become a prey to a formidable Neighbour where Popery with it concomitant Tyrannie shall subdue us at once These are the betrayers of their Religion and their Country and do entitle themselves to the heaviest curses in the whole Book of God But the Nation hopes better things from you and and as we pray for it so are we confident they shall not be ashamed or disappointed of their hope Your maintaining the Laws or providing such new ones as our present circumstances call for for the preservation of our Religion is not all that you are to do for it there are many other things besides that come under your care which are also necessary that we may Hold fast this our profession I shall name two particulars The one is that there are so many Parishes in this great and rich Kingdom in which there is so little provision left for those that labour in the work of the Gospel that it is not possible humanely speaking to find fit and able Pastors to undertake such a charge upon so mean an encouragement and many of these fall to be the greatest and the most populous Parishes in their Neighbourhood The labourer is worthy of his hire but in many of these the hire will not amount to the meanest and most frugal subsistance that can consist with the decency of that Function If weak or scandalous men are cast on such places so that the people are neither instructed nor edified by their labours but are rather scandalised by them it is worth your serious consideration to find out effectual means for redressing so great an evil by which so many souls are lost and such a door has been opened to seducers and false teachers among us The other is that we will endeavour to secure the Reformed Religion among us by doing all we can to maintain the outworks of it I mean the foreign Churches some of whom are now in a most deplorable and sinking condition The methods that Julian the Apostate used to extirpate Christianity not by the quick and sharp waies of persecution but by flower steps being now taken to root out that which main force could not do To these we ought to extend our compassion and assistance as we would expect the like from others when we may be brought to drink of the like bitter Cup which how near it may be to us God only knows But all these means will prove ineffectual if we have not God on our side except he watch over us and build up our ruines you that build and we that watch shall labour in vain This leads me to the fourth particular which is 4. That the chief use we ought to make of this Doctrine is to reform our hearts and lives to repent of and forsake our sins Repent I shall not here run out into a large discourse of this but sum up in short what is comprehended under it The word imports more than a bare sorrowing for our sins or an external change of our life and does chiefly signifie the inward change and reformation of our minds when we put on a new disposition come under new principles and are inwardly turned in the value and estimate we have of things and in our practical judgements and formed resolutions Repentance is when a man having another sense of God and true goodness another apprehension of vice and sin other thoughts of a future state other impressions of the love of Christ and the truth of the Gospel and all these things growing into formed principles in him his mind is turned to such a detestation of his former course of life as engages him not only to forsake it but to enter upon a quite different Course so that he feels himself inwardly regenerated and changed Oh have I not been discribing a thing little understood Some sorrow for sin which is scarce possible for the worst men to avoid is all the notion too many have of it Others fancy to compound for their sins with some austerities by an outward pageantry or compounding with God or his Sains if they can and doing it effectually where they can with the Priest believing that his absolving them is of some other vertue than a declaration to them of what they may certainly expect if they are sincere in their repentance But if these things come short of a true repentance what is to be sâ—id of those who have not so much who have no remorse for their sins but live on securely in them or do worse Glory in their shame These are far enough from having repented who are growing up daily to a higher pitch in their impieties You have expressed your sense of the necessity of this duty by your addressing about it but if it goes no further than the solemnity of a days vacation from business or abstaining from meat and the hearing some Sermons or joining in prayers this can have no other effect but to raise our guilt higher by our pretending to draw near to God with our Lips when our hearts are far from him Our sins are drawing heavy judgements on us our repentance only can prevent them not such a trifling performance as I have described but a sincere and entire turn to God We ought to be humbling our selves in secret every one for those sins by which we have provoked him and have been adding to that great heap of guilt by which we have been too universally treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath We are apt
A SERMON Preached on the FAST-DAY Decemb. 22. 1680. At. St. Margarets Westminster Before the Honourable House of COMMONS BY GILBERT BURNET D. D. LONDON Printed by J. D. for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1681. Rev. 3. 2 3. I have not found thy Works perfect before God Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard and hold fast and repent If therefore thou shalt not watch I will come on thee as a Thief and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee THere is nothing in which Men of all Religions do so constantly agree as in the Duties we are now about so that it may be justly called The Voice and Law of Nature which directs all people when in great Straits or under great Fears to call on that God whom they serve to implore his Pity and pray for his Assistance I need not tell you how all Heathen Nations do it the Jews practise it Christians of every Perswasion have upon all great Occasions and in all Ages set about it solemnly Some with the Pageantry of Heathenish Processions and others with the simplicity that becomes their Profession as We do this day When the Ship in which Jonas endeavoured to have fled from the Discharge of an uneasie Commission which God had given him was driven in a Storm and brought to great Extremities every Man called upon his God only the guilty Person whose God could only hear and help them lay fast asleep I need not enlarge on the too visible Occasions of our Calling on God at this time a sadness that is spread over the Faces and fills the Hearts of all Men the present Distractions We are under and the greater Mischiefs of which We are afraid speak aloud and need not be further described so that all good Men had in their secret Mournings and in their Wishes for a Publick Humiliation of the whole Nation anticipated the Address of this Honourable Assembly It is well that We pay this visible Homage to Religion and its blessed Author In this Storm We have but one God to fly to and one Lord and Mediator by whom We may Address to him If the guilty Persons will sleep on still or do worse continue Sinning while we are Fasting and Mourning yet if We Cry mightily to God We may reasonably hope that He will ease Us of that load of our Sins which only can and certainly will sink Us if it still hang on Us. When We consider Our present ill Condition and alas perhaps this is but the beginning of Our Sorrows and reflect on the Signal Blessings We have received from God and that We still retain that holy Religion which was revealed from Heaven by Jesus Christ The great High Priest of our Profession We cannot be long to seek for the true Causes of all those Evils which We either feel or fear Truth is still the same and of the same Value with the Author of it and the God of Truth changes not What has then separated between God and Us and what hath raised that thick Cloud that seems to be set over Us and is ready to discharge it self in Fire Brimstone and a horrible Tempest God's Hand is not shortned that it cannot save neither is his Ear heavy that it cannot hear But it is our Iniquities have separated between Vs and our God and our Sins have hid His face from Vs if He will not hear Therefore those whom you Command to plead with You in the Name of God on such Occasions ought to Cry aloud and not spare but with all the plainness that becomes this Place and this time Shew you your Transgressions and your Sins In order to this I have made choice of these words being a part of a short but weighty Epistle written by St. John in the Name of Christ to the Church of Sardis Of it in particular we have so little recorded in the History of the Church that We can gather nothing from thence to give Us a clearer Light into the meaning of these words so I shall go no further than the Epistle it self for setting before You the State in which it was at that time Sardis had a great Name among the other Churches as being one of those planted by the Apostles It had a Name that it lived yet was dead the Power and Life of Religion was under a great decay the remainders of it in some few Persons that had not defiled their Garments were even ready to die they were all that left of those who had at first sincerely embraced the Christian Religion they were but a Remnant of what had been and they were like to drop off soon but for the rest though they retained the outward Profession of their Religion yet Christ knew their Works and though in some things they might be praise-worthy yet they were not full Weight and Measure they were not such as became their Circumstances their Light the Advantages they had nor the Age they lived in in which they ought not only to have been blameless and harmless but to have lookt like the Sons of God and to shine as Lights in the World holding forth the Word of Life In a word their Works were not perfect before God Upon this Direction is given them how to amend what was defective or amiss among them they were to Remember what they had received and heard from the Apostles they were to make that the standard of their Actions they were neither to frame a Religion to themselves out of their own Imaginations or make up a mixture of Heathenism and Christianity to which many were then enclined nor were they to be seduced by any false Teachers from the Apostolical Doctrine which was their Rule to this they were to adhere and to hold it fast They were to maintain it in its Purity uncorrupted while they lived and to deliver it so to their Posterity at their Death They are also directed in the use of it not to preserve it only as a matter of Speculation or as a Denomination by which they were discriminated from others but were to improve it so as to be the better for it To Repent to change their Hearts and Lives If they were not awakned by this Alarm given them from Heaven they were to look for a more terrible blow which should surprize them in the midst of their Securities as a Thief when he is least lookt for which also insinuates the Severity as well as the suddenness of the Stroke Thieves that break in in the Night commonly carry all away with them that is worth their pains On the other hand the Remnant who were then but a few that kept their Garments clean are comforted with the hopes of enjoying God in a State of more perfect Holiness expressed in the Figure of walking with Christ in White and to encourage others to follow their Steps a general Promise is made to all them
answer for We have the Light of the glorious Gospel of Christ among Us and therein the way to Life and Immortality hereafter is opened to Us. This We have freed from all the impure mixtures of Idolatry or Superstition with which it is defiled in other Churches and are delivered from the Tyranny of a foreign Power We have had Our Religion long secured to Us by Law with all the encouragements that can be expected in a Church so happily constituted between the extreams of Ecclesiastical Tyranny one the one hand and Enthusiastical principles on the other hand so that it is only our own fault if We are not the Sanctuary and Defence of all other Reformed Churches as well as We are the chief Object of the practices and designs of Our Enemies at Rome This We have likewise in common with the former Age but I shall next enumerate those blessings that We of this Age have been more particularly favoured with They are great and signal and so obvious that it will be enough to name them We were involved in a long and tragical War at home but were not swallowed up in it Our Neighbour Island drank indeed of a bitterer Cup and was covered almost all over with the Blood and the Carcases of the slain But here the storm was not so terrible The Conquerors were so restrained by that supream Power that governs the World that it is no small wonder there was so little mischief done by those who had the Power to do so much When Our Confusions thickned so upon Us that our Government changed almost as oft as the Weather all things returned of a sudden to their old Chanel the King was restored and the Nation was setled in so serene and calm a manner that it cannot be denied there was a signal hand of Heaven in it The more have We all to answer for that have made so ill use of so extraordinary a blessing since that time we have had plenty and peace at home these twenty years no breaking out nor complaining in Our Streets or Countries We have all this while lived under the clear Light of the Gospel and though many of the Pastors have much to answer for their great failings yet there have been raised up among us not a few eminent and faithful Labourers who have asserted the Truth and demonstrated the power of Religion with as much advantage as hath been done in any Age since Miracles and Persecution ceased and these have frequently given publick and free warning to the Nation Many excellent Books have been writ and Sermons have been published as well as preached which will remain to the next Age to testifie against that we live in God has been calling on Us aloud from Heaven both by his Mercies and Judgments to turn to him and to bring forth fruits worthy of Repentance and meet for the Kingdom of God that is for his holy Gospel A raging Pestilence and a consuming Fire came quick one after another to awaken Us effectually yet though We were then engaged in an expenceful War God did not deliver Us up into the hands of our Enemies though he corrected Us so severely himself These things did perhaps give a little stop to some persons though others went on still publishing their Sin as Sodom but with the return of peace and the continuance of plenty We returned to or still continued in our Sins We have been delivered from another War since and the ill designs of wicked Men were defeated and came to nothing and now for above seven years We have slept in a profound Peace and as profound a security when there was nothing but vastation and misery in the Countries that lie next to us But our Enemies slept not they were contriving how to make Us return back again into Egypt or submit not our Necks only but our Souls and Consciences to that Tyrannical yoke of the Roman slavery and thought the design so well laid for rooting out that which they call a Pestilent Heresie that it was upon the point of being executed Then did it appear that God was still watching over Us for good and he that saw all these secret contrivances so closely carried and cemented with so many sacred ties disappointed all their Councils and brought all their designs to Light when We were least aware of it being though sensible of a great danger hovering over Us yet little apprehensive that it was so near Us and was to break out in such a manner I need not run over all those steps by which Divine providence has brought out what they intended we should never have known till We had felt it and been past the possibility of preventing or redressing it They are well enough known and are often in all our Mouths Oh that they were as much in our Hearts And now put all these things together and see if it may not be said concerning Us what the Prophet Isaias said of the people of the Jews God has planted a vinyard in a very fruitful place with the choicest vine and has fenced it and built a Tower in it In a word what more could have been done in this Vinyard that has not been done in it And therefore as partial as we are apt to be in our own concerns it may be referred to our selves to judge between God and Us. We see and acknowledge what he has done for us let us next consider what Grapes we have brought forth What returns We have made to God Have Our works been perfect before God Alas what do I say perfect Have they not been on the contrary the worst the most impious and immoral that many could think on We have exceeded the Sins of the Jews and the Vices of the Heathens It has not been only a slackning or going back of the Power of Religion but an open revolt against Heaven in too great a part of the Nation a Banner has been set up for Athiesm and Impiety and all have been encouraged to come about it The Sins which our Popish forefathers and our more remote Heathenish Ancestors were so much ashamed of that they committed them in corners We have seen done in the sight of the Sun The belief of a God that sees rewards and punishes the rules of Vertue and the doctrine of Christ have been by some openly assaulted and treated with indignities which no other Nation could endure while others have if not directly consented to them yet looked on as unconcerned have laughed at and been pleased with them Advantages have been taken from the Hipocrisie or Euthusiasme of the last Age to throw off the very appearances of Religion or Vertue in this Age and it has passed for a piece of Gallantry and decent Breeding to be above the fears and apprehensions of a supream Power or a future State Have we forgot how publickly that great blessing of the Kings Restauration was abused It grew to that height that it was thought a
But it is observable that those Nations whom he has more specially favoured are more signally punished when their Sins have been so notorious that it seemed necessary to give publick Evidences of the impartiality of God's governing the World You only have I known of all the Families of the Earth therefore will I punish you for your Iniquities The whole History of the Jews till their final and almost total destruction is one continued Instance of this The Roman Empire when it turned Christian but was not much reformed by that Light was given up to be wasted by swarms of Goths Vandals Huns and other Northern Nations who for near two Ages together laid it so wast that what by the Destruction they made and the Famine that followed upon that which brought after it unheard of Plagues the History of that Time contains a Succession of the most terrible Miseries that can be imagined The African Churches that were the best regulated of any then in the World yet having fallen from their first Love and being rent in pieces by Schism and becoming generally corrupt in their Manners notwithstanding the excellent Bishops that were among them St. Austin in particular who was the last of those that were sent to warn them of the Jugments they might look for which he did faithfully but nothing prevailing they were first destroyed by the Vandals and then so totally by the Saracens and Moors that the Name of Christ is called on no more in them except it be in their Dungeons by those miserable Captives that are kept in such slavery among them that it should tear every Christian's Heart to think on it The Eastern Empire was first by the Goths then by the Huns and the Avares afterwards by the Saracens and finally by the Turks so wasted that the small Remainders of Christianity among them serve only as the Ruins of some great Fabrick to shew what once it was The City of Antioch once among the noblest of the World in which that glorious Name of Christian first began was by a frequent return of most terrible Earth-quakes and devouring Fires so ruinated that it is now but a small inconsiderable Village Sardis in my Text is no better These Seven Churches here writ to are now under the slavery of Mahometans and indeed retain little but the Name of Christian some of them are so entirely destroyed that it is not so much as certain where they stood When we hear of these things we ought wisely to consider of these Works of the Lord Why should we hope to escape if we are as guilty as they were But to turn your Eyes to what is nearer you After the Gospel was planted here in Britain while we were under the Roman Yoke and was watered with the Blood of many Martyrs that suffered under the Heathenish Persecutions The Britons being blest with Peace and Prosperity did soon forget God and fell from their first Love Then what Judgments fell on them The Northern People being more Warlike broke into the Southern Parts who were soft and luxurious These hiring the Saxons to their Assistance were thereby brought under a much more cruel Bondage and those either rooted out the Christian Religion or drove it up into the mountainous parts of this Kingdom What the Sins both of the Clergy and Laity were is set out by Gildas that lived not long after that Time and they resemble our present Condition so much that it gives us cause to fear the parallel shall be as equal in our Judgments as it is now in our Sins When the Reformation began first in England many run into it rather out of hatred to the Clergy and love to their Lands than out of Zeal for the Truth So that the Bishops in King Edward's Time did by some Letters which they sent about among their Clergy call upon them to warn the People of the heavy Judgments of God ready to fall upon them but they went on in their Sins with a high hand so that the Land was full of Oppression and Injustice Adultery and Sensuality God visited them for these things and took away that blessed young King and left them in the hands of a superstitious and bloody Princess who fearing her own Power was not strong enough to alter the established Religion married the Prince of Spain and by a vast Treasure which he brought over into England corrupted the great Men and the Publick Councils of the Kingdom so that all that had been building up in twenty five years was overthrown in a little more than one by Parliaments over whom Spanish Gold had greater influence than the Sense of their Trust or their Regard to God and their Country Shall I put you in mind of the terrible Judgment of God that broke out lately on our neighbouring Island where the Barbarity of the Natives being sharpened by the Cruelty of their Religion and the Practices of their Priests a Massacre and Destruction did almost wholly consume them How near were we brought to utter Ruin and how long were we ruled by the Sword during the late Wars Are all these things forgotten Or do we remember them only to furnish out Discourse with them We at present are all sufficiently apprehensive of our ill condition we see the great danger we are in of Popery's subduing us we see an overgrown Neighbour ready to break in upon us or at least upon that which is but a step from us There is a Fermentation among our selves so high that it is like to involve us in great Confusions The things that belong to our Peace seem to be hid from our eyes Is not all this of the Lord Most of the Evils we either feel or apprehend are the natural effects of our Sins and Vices as well as of the Judgment of God punishing us for them The Vices too common amongst us have corrupted the Minds and darkned the Understandings of many and are like to become their own Punishments All these things are but the beginnings of Sorrows which seem to be coming on us What do we then Do we sit crossing our hands accusing one another or it may be faintly condemning our selves We perhaps imagine if we were rid of Popery all would be well it is certain we should be much better than we are but if the Root of our Distemper remains the carrying off one Symptom will but dispose the way to another God can either plague us by delivering us up to a forreign Enemy who shall have no pity on us or can again send his Arrows among us a Pestilence to sweep away our Inhabitants or a Fire to burn down our Cities He can leave us to bite and devour another till we are consumed one of another And if he come upon us what can we do to withstand his mighty Arm Can we restrain his Thunders or be Proof against his Arrows Oh how weak are all Devices when God blasts them If our Distractions continue we are like the Builders of Babel so divided that nothing but utter and irremediable Confusion is like to be the end of them if we once fall in pieces Well we are yet in Peace we rise up and lie down in quiet how long it will be so we cannot tell We seem to be near great Convulsions we have no reason to desire them We are now full of Wealth our Trade is free and much spread we have a Concurrence both at home and abroad of many things that might yet make us a great and happy People but want the Power to improve it What shall the end of these things be It were too great a presumption in me nor proper for this place or occasion to enter into Particulars but one thing I may adventure on which is If you of this Honourable Assembly who have now bespoke the Prayers of the whole Nation upon your Consultations would frequently address your selves to God and set off such Hours as your Business can admit of for earnest Prayer to God to direct and bless your Councils and to bend all your Hearts to that which is both most for his Glory the Establishment of his true Religion and the Security Peace and Happiness of the Kingdom we might justly hope that God even our God would give his Blessing to Endeavours so begun and so managed Then should the Light of the Gospel which is our Glory still dwell in our Land Mercy and Truth should meet together and Righteousness and Peace should kiss one another Then should the Lord give us that which is good and our Land should yeeld her encrease O that there were such an Heart in us that we might fear him and keep his Commandments always that so it may be well with us and our Children after us for ever To God the Father Son and Holy-Ghost be all Honour and Glory both now and evermore FINIS Jon. 1. 5. Isa. 59. 1 2. Isa. 58. 1. Vers. 2. Vers. 4. Phil. 2. 15. Vers. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Math. 13. 20 21. Gal. 5. 7. Gal. 3. 3. Gal. 4. 15. 1 Cor. 11. 17 18. 1 Cor. 1. 12. Phil. 1. 15 16. Esth. 4. 13 Psal 127. 1. 2 King 24. 4. Ezek. 14. 14. Amos 3. 2.