A Fast-Sermon Preached to the LORDS IN THE High-Court of Parliament Assembled On the Day of SOLEMN HUMILIATION for the continuing PESTILENCE Octob. 3. 1666. And by their ORDER Published By GEORGE Lord Bishop of Chester London Printed for Timothy Garthwait 1666. Psal. seven 9 O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end but establish the just THat our Plague-sick Land may be healed That the destroying Angel after his slaughter of so many thousands and Ten thousands may be bidden to return his Commission as sufficiently executed This is the aim and business of our solemn convention and posture of Humiliation this day a Humiliation which as long as it hath been continued I wish it were yet well begun we are both called and concerned to seek the face of our infinitely incensed God and we have answered Thy face Psal. 27.8 Lord will we seek But that we may seek him not in vain we must seek him in earnest and the holy Prophet is our ready Monitor Isa. 21.12 If you will seek him then seek do it to purpose And he seems me thinks to pull us on whom he sees negligent and dilatory Return come Isa. 21.12 seek him in earnest But so we may and yet in vain if we seek him not in a right order we know there was a breach of God upon his people once for this That they sought him 1 Chro. 15.13 but not in a due order And certainly the right order of removing judgements is a causa ad causatum beginning with the cause taking away that that the effect may cease That a fire may be put out the fuel which feeds it must be withdrawn or well quenched That there may be no foul weather there must be no condensed clouds no foul vapours exhaled That there may be no Plague to be deprecated there must be no plague of the heart cherished for there it begins Psal. 60.2 That the sores and breaches of a Land under which it mourns and shakes may be healed the backslidings of that Land must be healed Jer. 3.22 Here is a short course and a sure issue Let wickedness come to an end let pestilential manners cease and the pestilence hath nothing to seize upon Pray down the one and you pray off the other Now you see the Text is proper natural and right to our purpose God make my sudden thoughts upon it as kindly operative upon all our hearts 2 Tim. 1.13 healing sound wholesome words should be spoken by us at all times but at such a time especially that they may be medicinal and preservative to drive away to keep off infection to restore health to the daughter of God's people the cure is much in ourselves as the cause of the disease is altogether in us Wickedness to come to an end This is not iniquum petere but is it not in auditum petere Well might this be the option the wish rather than prayer of David the good King but the prediction of David the Prophet sure it could not be For to what time could it be calculated or when should these things be Not till there be a new Heaven and a new Earth a more pure holy and happy age then ever yet was and much less is like to be Let the wickedness of the wicked come to its height so as to reach up to Heaven let the measure of iniquity be filled up and running over let the manners of men be so superlatively and profligately vicious that they cannot be worse If the Text had been thus this age would bid fair for the fulfilling of it but not otherwise and to any one who will measure the acceptableness and energy of a prayer by the likelihood of its success and return this looks like a prayer quite lost and sounds like that strange Absolution which was pronounced over a great sinner Deus tui misereatur si vult & condonet quod non credo But God forbid we should cast all those prayers as vain and unacceptable which do not obtain their expressed effect We pray in our Litany That God would have mercy upon all men We know he will not or rather in honour he cannot yet it is a very acceptable piety and duly extensive charity to pray so For would God have all men to be saved and would not we Is it a scruple to put as many into our prayers as our Lord Christ did own dying for Or are we afraid lest the many prepared mansions in Heaven should be over-filled though there were as many blessed Saints as Men My prayer returned into my own bosom said this man after God's heart Psal. 35.13 such a return and reserve at least there is of every good man's Prayer if it obtain no more I do not say this Prayer here did only return into David's bosom I know the contrary His enemies did feel the force of it And whoso looks into the occasion of this Psalm and considers how it was with this best of Kings and Men will see particular urgent reason for this Prayer That wickedness might come to an end For was he not hard beset with inveterate irreconcilable Enemies with false treacherous Friends Of his Council of his Household of his own Loins Plotters against his Person Disturbers of the peace of his Kingdom There was no end of the malignity nor like to be unless the Divine Providence would give a strange check and stop unto it therefore as if he did point at such particular persons the perpetual thorns in his side at Achitophel saith Theodoret but there is no good synchronism in that at Saul say Cajetan and Lyranus he devotes them to the Justice of God and in their destruction assures and foretells his own establishment It may be the unhappy Fate of the best of Princes That all the most obliging graciousness of his Government shall not endear him to ungracious Subjects his Golden Sceptre shall gain no more to his obedience than the Iron Rod of a Usurper did Wickedness will still have its Attempts and there is no security from them Isaiah 7 4 smoking Firebrands laid together will be quickly ready to take fire and set all in combustion but as happy is the issue may help all That wickedness shall come to an end it shall be taken off and shall not be able to hinder the establishment of his Throne and that it may be so prayer must be made to the righteous Punisher or Restrainer of the wicked and establisher of the just O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end But what do we find David here devoutly cursing his Enemies on his knees Tantaene animis Coelestibus Irae Consumet nunc malum impios so the Interlinear He wishes a present Consumption upon them destruction upon them as the Chaldee They who thus understand him do suppose his aim to be only at the more malicious implacable Enemies of God's Kingdom and his according to that other passage of his Psal. 59 5. Be not merciful O God unto them who offend of malicious wickedness to men of Saul's spirit But you may also if you please find some charity and tenderness appearing through all that anger for as elsewhere he said Psal. 141.6 I will pray yet against their wickedness or against their mischiefs not against their persons so here he doth no more It is if you observe destructur malitia not let them but let their wickedness be destroyed and come to an end and to confirm this when David seemed most exasperated so that he could not contain from a Confundantur Let them be confounded yet he did not curse but bless the men even in that as he interprets himself Confound them that is in their imaginations and Psal. 83.16 Let their faces be filled with shame but eo consilio that they may seek thy Name as if he did strike purposely at their wickedness and yet would save their persons if he could And the charitable gloss which Sr. Basil puts upon this prayer of his is That they may repent of their wickedness and be reclaimed and not infect others But how St. Austin Jerom and some others with them primae Cerae could think that David here looked as far as to the Jews Crucifiers of Christ praying That they might accomplish their wickedness and so hasten the accomplishment of the redemption of Mankind I confess I am too purblind to see so far off Well in praying O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end 1. This supposition is clear Wickedness if let alone will be interminable and Infinite there will be no end of the provocation nor of the mischief of it 2. Upon this the Inference will be strongly enforced In Policy as well as in Piety it should not be let alone but provided against and prayed against You have heard it often said by Divines That every ungodly person sins in eterno suo the passage was St. Gregory's Justum ut qui in suo eterno peccavit contra Deum in Dei eterno puniatur If the man we speak of might live so long as his wickedness would live and be continued it would be to the days of Eternity for so saith he again Iniqui voluissent sine fine vivere ut sine fine potuissent in iniquitatibus permanere O God cries out our holy Psalmist shall the Enemy blaspheme thy Name for ever for ever and evermore or for ever and yet for so the Hebrew loves to exaggerate as if it would a term of duration longer than eternity in that he implies Let them alone and they will certainly blaspheme thy Name for ever Our Masters in the Metaphysics do easily determine Non dari actu Infinitum That God himself cannot make another Infinite but if sin could be fitted with a subject to perpetuate itself in it would prove the contrary nay it doth also it is no Paradox prove an actual Infinity For when doth this leave a man when it hath corrupted and worn out his miserable body and brought him to the grave Is this the last mischief of it Alas no the bad works as well as the good do follow men into the other world the sin is as immortal as the soul which it hath polluted and what but that in the guilty Conscience becomes the gnawing worm that never dies As the torments of the damned can be no other than eternal so are their sins also they can no more cease to sin then to suffer Culpa quae est irreparabilis de se habet quod perpetuo duret & ideo ei debetur paena eterna saith Aquinas The petulant and ever-importunate nature of sin how far it would be from giving over and coming to an end the daily practice of men gives Demonstration enough As God said concerning those mad designing Babel-builders Gen. 11 16. This they begin to do and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do So may it be said of all other active sons of wickedness As men begin to do according to the visible wildness of their actings nothing would be restrained from them there would be no end of the mischiefs and confusions they would make The Evil which is done is with both hands earnestly Micah 7.3 as the Prophet most emphatically expresses the impiety By the way Why should not we put both our hands as earnestly the strength of the Brachium Seculare added to our weaker Ecclesiastical Coertions to manacle and hamstring those mighty men in outrageous wickedness who every where confront not us but God being engaged in a continual and open Theomachy In short so far would ungodliness proceed as the not bounded malignity of a Devil could set it on until Heaven itself were turned into a Hell I am quite confounded to think of it It is vulgarly said of the Crocodile That he knows no Maximum quod sic he is always growing bigger and never comes to a certain pitch of Monstrosity so long as he lives Every habituated wicked man would if he were let alone be such a Monster perpetually growing worse for sin doth never cease from him but he from that There is a known expression in Scripture Rom. 2. Treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath doth not that import a perpetual labour of Cumulation and adding to the heap so long as the Divine Justice will permit whence the Apostles 2 Tim. 3.6 mulieres peccatis cumulatas We read of an Ephah going forth a full measure of iniquity Zach. 5.7 Joel 3.13 by this token A Woman was seen sitting in the midst of it and of Fat 's so full that they overflowed I do not suppose such a full measure intimated there that no more would be added but no more is permitted to be added the Actors being taken off We read of Transgression sealed up in a bag Job 14.17 and iniquity sowed up That Seal is not put upon the bag nor is it sown up by the transgressors themselves but by the righteous God whose wearied long-suffering cannot hold out to endure their transgressions any longer and it is so expressed My transgression is sealed up in a bag and thou sowest up mine iniquity I acknowledge also the damning phrase of Fulfilling lusts yet I do not think that ever any man did plenarily fulfil his lusts so that they required no more service of him that he could ask and supererogate this way but that being wholly devoted to them he doth his devoir and spends himself in their service For are lusts ever to be fulfilled and satiated Come to particulars I would know when Covetousness will think itself sufficiently crammed and served That Daughter of the Horse leech crying always Prov. 30.15 Give give certainly as soon will Hell and the Grave say It is enough Though a sordid avaricious wretch should sit brooding on his Bags to multiply them though he could wallow among his heaps of Gold and could grasp as much as his eye can reach and would take the Devil to his word as he is ready to do All these things will I give thee is it possible he should yet account himself full and well-pleased No it is quite otherwise The eye is not satisfied with seeing 1 John 2.16 This is never to be glutted Sacrilege whose mouth is an open Sepulchre Would this ever leave swallowing up and devouring while the Church hath any remaining Patrimony God any house in the Land to be impropriated and taken into possession Will Lust think it hath had gratification enough so long as there is any Marrow left in the bones What God said by his Prophet of the spiritual whoredom is more experienced of the bodily Ezek. 16.29 Thou hast multiplied thy Fornications and yet thou art not satisfied When will Schism sit down as thinking it hath made the rupture wide enough in the Garment of Christ Certainly not till it hath torn all into small pieces so that Lots may be cast for it not till the Church of God be all in fractions quite dis-churched by it There is without all question an infinity of wickedness of itself it would never come to an end What then remains but that it be shortened and cut off that a Providential violence be used upon it Psal. 76. The fierceness of man shalt thou O Lord restrain so the rage of man's wickedness shalt thou restrain Thou who dost put a hook into the nostrils of the Leviathan a bridle upon the Sea and sayest Hitherto shalt thou go and no further and here shall thy proud waves be stayed Thou by the interposal of thy Mighty overruling Coercive Power canst and wilt do this which else will never be done Dissert 4. The ingenious Max. Tyrius hath a grave Dissertation of the The many and those everlasting Torrents of wickedness so multiplied and so strong that they might require and puzzle many Oracles is his word to tell men when there will be a stop of them and no man saith he in my opinion can be blamed for ask inquisitively this Question of the Oracle the very Question of the Text what the end of wickedness will be or whether there will be any end at all To this as he adds Socrates could answer as well as Apollo Pythius and therefore did Apollo adopt and take him in as his Colleague and Assessor because he had as good skill as himself The only way that I know to give an Oracular Answer to this Question will be this When iniquity is full ripe and ready for vengeance than it shall have an end as when the Corn is ripe and yellow the Sickle is called for Joel 3.13 Put ye in the Sickle saith God to his Reapers the destroying Angels for the Harvest is ripe for the wickedness is great It was the sad greeting of unhappy Zedekiah And thou whose day is come when iniquity shall have an end Ezek. 21.25 And when is that in a full and proper sense but when it hath passed all its gradual Acts so that it is now consummate perfected and completed James 1.15 as the Apostles word is sin finished and so the Sept. renders David's sense here by a pregnant word signifying both consumatur and consummetur when it is got to its height acting all the parts of an Imperial Usurper being grown despotical and Absolute Legislative and Imposing and when the Dominion of it is so extended that it is become National and Universal so insolent that it tramples and glories over all Laws of God and Men so impudent that it hath steeled its forehead and is openly shameless boasting of its exploits They declare their sin as Sodom I●a 3 9 they hide it not So wanton also that it racks the brains of men to devise new modes of wildness And indeed to proceed Professors in Vice in the Devil's Academies now doth require more Art and improved ingenuity in ungodliness than those duller and less studied sinners our forefathers could attain unto Simply to commit sin in an ordinary vulgar way is small demerit but to search out iniquities and to accomplish a diligent search Psal. 64.6 our holy Psalmist notes this as a proof of a fair advance of the Devils Vertuosis The Sept. have in an elegant kind of Reduplication expressed the industriousness of men more studiously wicked by their researches of new ways and mysteries of iniquity in that place but men's practice outdoth the expression they studying some more new and formerly unknown ways of ungodliness to accomplish themselves and as if a consultation had been had with the French Italian and all outlandish Devils to advise us of all their several Modes and Fashions of Vice we are so good at following them that indeed we are more complete in them then our Patterns And what when the hearts of men are so full of impiety that they cannot contain from venting James 1.21 the superfluity or overflowing of the gall of wickedness in Atheistical droling scoffs at whatsoever is most Sacred and to be trembled at and our ears tingle to hear such high and frequent dare of Divine vengeance that the most deeply damned in Hell could never be guilty of worse when wickedness is come up to this height Is it not near coming to an end Wonder not if this be the cordolium of all who are faithful and sensible in the land if it put them into the lamenting Prophet Jeremy's Iliaca passio his fit of the Cholich to cry out My bowels my bowels Jer. 4.19 I am pained at my very heart my heart maketh a noise in me I cannot hold my peace 2 Pet. 2.8 It is enough shall I say to vex the soul of a righteous Lot to make a zealously affected Ezra to rend his Garment and his Mantle to pluck off the hair of his head and of his beard Ezr 9 3. Acts 17 16. To raise a Paroxysm of grief and indignation in the holy Apostle Yea truly to make the hearts of all good men to sink and die in them to see how prodigiously lewd and impudent men are grown since that most obliging miracle of our Restoration Seneca declaimed sufficiently as he thought against the vices of his time when he said Certatur ingenti quodam nequitiae certamine Men do play prizes in wickedness as if he were the gallantest man who could be most wicked and Undique velut signo dato that is the phrase of the Scripture too Jer. 8 6. As the Horse rusheth into the battle upon the signal given so do men fearlessly run upon the Pikes of divine wrath through whatsoever wickedness is before them It was bad when he observed such was the generality of all kind of Iniquity Ut Innocentia non rara sit sed nulla He did there in effect cry out with our holy Psalmist Psal. 12. Help Lord for the godly man ceaseth the fidelities fail from among the Children of men such also it seems was the publickness and impudence of vice then Ut scenam desiderent They want only saith he open theatres or Balconies to be seen acting their lewdness upon Omnem omnino pudorem etc. Modesty is put out of countenance nay Adeo lupanar quoque verecundum est a very Brothel house is modest in comparison Tertullian thought he had complained enough and he never wanted expressiveness when he said Delicti durior frons est & ab ipso delicto impudentiam docto etc. and when he taxed some of the other sex calling them Pudoris sui interemtrices & infelicissimas publicarum libidinum victimas I am loath to English it The holy Bishop and Martyr Cyprian thought himself no doubt a sour and severe Reprover when he complained to the Proconsul of Africa that there was no shame of wickedness remaining Cyprian ad Demetrianum and men did so offend Quasi per ipsa peccata placeatur and so Salvian Quasi liceat quasi oporteat but truly all those were soft and gentle redargutions like old Elis Nay my sons which Reverend Du Moulin called whipping them with Rosemary they were not smart enough for this Brawny Age those Times brought forth but Punies and Pigmies in comparison of our Anakims in wickedness Now sure when it is come to such a formidable height it is time for good men to be upon their knees to pray that it may come to an end The general Concernment for this is so great that interim ut fit they being let alone nothing could be imagined to follow but the worst that can be imagined We will dispute no longer in the Schools whether sin be a mere Privation Whether it hath any Positive Entity Be it a privation it is such a one as hath very real influx and is the efficient of most horrdi mischiefs being enough to bring Heaven and Earth together Lord what dismal and amazing changes will this make What Elijah's powerful prayer did for the better this will do for the worse when there is a clear sky like a Molten Looking-Glass Job 37.18 as it is most elegantly called not a Cloud to be seen of the bigness of a man's hand all on the sudden this shall overspread with black Clouds the whole face of the Heavens and make a Meridian night the Sun going down at noonday What effects will it not have upon Nature itself upon every Element Upon the Air to corrupt and poison it till it become Pestilential and make the breath we draw and live by the savour of death unto us our present case and complaint Upon the Earth to make it quake under the Inhabitants or open its mouth to swallow them up Upon the Water to make such an opening of the Windows of Heaven and the Fountains of the deep as shall let in a Deluge to drown a world Upon the Seasons of the Year to make them so unkindly and interfering one with another as if Nature had quite forgot itself Upon the Soil making a fruitful Land barren Upon the very Name of a People changing it from Ammi to Loammi as it changed Pashur's Name to Magor Missabib of which David was the Interpreter Fear on every side was it his Name Psal. 31.13 or is it not ours Upon Cities O thou Enemy thou hast destroyed Cities Psal. 9.6 their memorial is perished with them is a terrible word importing plucking up by the roots utter destruction ipsae periêre ruinae and so that their memorial is perished with them unless it be in the Stories of their ruin there are no remainders of them nay there is more also in it if the Seventy did not mistake for they read with a sound The ruin is so made that the World rings of it Upon a Church what disorders will it not bring Psal. 78.49 what evil Angels or Asmodei will it not send the raisers of all our storms the Authors and Fomenters of all our intestine Divisions Factions and Schisms the setters of all the Close Juncto's for the carrying on of endless Commotions And now if such a world of mischiefs as I cannot name do follow upon wickedness and that also is so far from coming to an end what shall I say or think of our condition We will give glory to God this day though to the confusion of our own faces It was time for thee Lord to lay to thine hand to take hold of Vengeance to spend thine arrows upon us as thou didst once threaten Deut. 32.23 I will spend my Arrows upon them and didst bid the Archers to spare no arrows against Babylon Jer. 50.14 to shoot at her for she hath sinned against the Lord One of those arrows the first commonly of the three which God makes use of and of which we have frequent mention War hath been not only upon the string but drawn and shot so that it sticks still in us and God only knows who is the Lord of Hosts and great Arbiter of War what the issue will be As happily as we have been engaged against our Enemies being blessed with glorious Successes under an excellent Conduct The Apostles counsel is good and proper for us Be not highminded but fear The Alternations of the success of War have been every Ages Experiences Homer's and his was not more elegant than certain And suppose the best I cannot but sadly think what a lost labour what a damp we may put upon all those most hazardous and valiant Engagements of our Friends at Sea if while they do their work to the height of our wishes and prayers making themselves formidable to the flying Enemy we being at such an unhappy distance from God by our unrepented wickedness do seem to enter prohibitions in heaven against our enjoyment of our Successes Alas what is it to prosper and prevail at Sea where the Righteousness of our Cause in the hands of our just God to whom we appealed makes us Victors if in the mean time the unrighteousness of our persons and practices do so continue to provoke God by Land that he cannot but set his face against us and break out upon us We may possibly still beat and Master them but God I am sure will be too hard for us they may flee before us one way but we may be put to flee if we could from God's wrath seven ways we may be potent abroad but feeble and undone at home God give us hearts to consider it The other poisoned Arrow of Pestilence is that which we now sigh and groan under which fires our blood and kills us Haeret lateri lethalis arundo How this hath flown by day and night on this hand of us and on that lighting a little short of us and beyond us how it hath never miss its mark though it could never glance aside to hit any but its mark Thousands have fallen beside us Psal. 91.7 and ten thousand at our right hands Our hearts do yet bleed with the thought of it the perpetual doleful Passing-Bells both day and night in your ears who continued here during the heat of the Contagion did I am afraid make Death too familiar to you so that you have ever since less regarded and considered it it being perhaps with you as it is with the Birds which Nest in your Steeples so used to the noise of Bells rung by them that they hear them not Alas how did people fall then by the righteous but dreadful hand of God as leaves beaten down by a vehemet wind such heaps upon heaps that it might be reasonably hoped the force of this deadly Arrow was spent and it had done its worst it was suspended at least and superseded by that late dreadful Calamity of our Mother City then one Rod of God swallowed up another A strange Cure and Remedy of that Disease was brought by a more fearful Judgement Fires had been formerly made in the Streets of the City to purge the Contagious air but here the activity of the fire upon and within the houses was most unhappily over experimented as if like that old fretting Plague of Leprosy Levit 14.45 when it was so got into the house that it was spread in the walls and no scraping of it within and without could cleanse it there was no cure but demolition all the Stones and Timber were to be pulled down So it seemed here as if there had been no other way to free and prevent infected houses but by firing and destroying them the labour was then saved of shutting up the doors of the infected and setting the Red Cross upon them the Red Cross was all-over and that which opened the Prisons and without fear of an Indictment either of a Rescue a Riot or Burglary did give a Liberate to poor unresponsible Prisoners of Debt yea to Malefactors also that would not do less for God's Prisoners who were shut up for the Pestilence I would not anticipate any thing of the Work of the approaching Fast Day for that Astonishing Conflagration But how can I forbear to drop some tears as I pass to weep over this our Mother-City as our great Example our Lord and Saviour did over Jerusalem Lord What an incredible change have three days made of the Metropolis of England and most famous Emporium of Christendom It might be said but a few days since as Walk about Zion and go round about her Psal. 48 13. tell the Towers thereof mark ye well her Bulwarks Consider her Palaces See and observe O ye Travellers the stateliness and convenience of the Halls of her several Companies the comeliness of her many Churches the liberal accommodation of her Hospitals the fullness of her rich Shops and Warehouses the Royalness of her Exchange and is all this glory so suddenly confounded and buried in a common ruin a new sad comment upon that word which was threatened to proud Women not Cities Burning instead of Beauty Isa. 3.24 nothing remaining but a strange maze and labyrinth of naked Steeples useless Chimneys and pitiful fragments of ragged Walls amidst perpetual heaps of Ashes Stones and Rubbish We have here no continuing City said the Apostle Heb. 13.14 Now we find it so indeed Forgive this little turning aside to see that sad sight we hoped I say that the force of this deadly arrow of Pestilence had been spent and blessed be the good hand that sent it forth it is not so fatal so hot and formidable now in this place as when Moses said Go quickly take a Cencer Numb 16.6 and make an Atonement stand between the living and the dead But how it hath diffused its venom in many parts abroad Telum volat & incandescit eundo What a circulation it may make and how long it may be before both the Head and Body of the Kingdom may be sound and whole or whether ever it shall recover is worth our solicitous thoughts and the propitiating of our angry God is our great and present concernment But suppose the best here also That our supplication this day is heard on high Take away this plague only Are we ever the more secure from after judgements of some other kind Do we not know that God hath many other Arrows in his Quiver as quickly to be drawn Many other ways to ease and avenge himself of his Adversaries Great plagues remain to the ungodly great both for weight and variety Psal. 32.10 is plural many plagues or sorrows In the hand of the Lord is a Cup and the wine is red it is full of mixture etc. A bitter composition of many deadly ingredients and the Dregs of this are reserved you are told for whom The wicked of the earth shall wring them out and drink them Not some one great Fluctus decumanus only but all God's waves and billows shall go over them and in conclusion the evil of men which will be sure to find them out shall inevitably pursue them to their fearful end if they use not a timely Prolepsis to bring that to an end and break it off by Righteousness Now I know I should not need to make use of any other Rhetoric to deter Impenitents from their sinful course than those many angry and judicial passages in Scripture though sounding like so many Tolerations and Licenses as wherein they are bidden to go on and fill up their measure He that is unjust Prov. 22.11 let him be unjust still and he who is filthy let him be filthy still still so and still more so let the grinders of the faces of the poor still keep their Mill going let extorting corrupt Officers go on to pluck off the skin from their indigent suffering fellow subjects M●cah 3.2 and the flesh from off their bones Our Daemone Daemoniores God-damn-me Miscreants may proceed in their affrighting Hellish Ranting all the various uncontrolled and in former ages unexampled wickedness must come to an end Damnation which slumbreth not will much less sleep away from them whose proper portion it is it shall I am sure at last though not presently overtake them The Greeks used to say God is not hasty to animadvert so as to punish the provocations of men and we cannot say he hath been quick with us in the Judgements now upon us he had waited long enough for our repentance and given us many fair warnings before his answering by fire in that dreadful manner but though his wrath be slow-footed it is heavy-handed Tum gravior cum tarda venit Men may be reprieved and respited for a while but how is that Psal. 94.13 Until the pit be digged up for the ungodly they may frolic and dance jovially upon the brink of that bottomless pit but their foot shall slide in due time Deut. 32.35 for the day of their calamity is at hand and the things that shall come upon them make haste What was said of a son of violence Prov. 28.17 he shall flee to the pit let no man stay him will be the infallible fate of all other impenitent trespassers of the Divine Justice But though by that Justice thus provoked and sure to be revealed I may menace and dare men to continue in their course at their utmost peril yet I would much rather use a softer and more ingenious way thus therefore If there were no such Judgement in the way to be seen or feared as this which we now deplore Isa. 14.23 no such Besom of Destruction the Plague is most properly called so making clean work depopulating and sweeping away whole Streets and Cities if this were quite laid aside as useless if this Rod were not held over us as it is or if it had no voice to preach Repentance to us and we were not required now especially to hear it Hear ye the Rod Micah 6.9 and who hath appointed it was Sophocles his known Epithet and the Plague is more peculiarly so Numb 16 46. called therefore wrath from the Lord and the word for the destroying Pestilence some will needs fetch from locutus est this being the loud-speaking word from heaven of God's wrath against men If God had no particular nor National Controversy as our guilty hearts do smite and tell us he hath a great Controversy with us if that which is the longing and prayer of all good people an honourable well-conditioned and well-setled Peace were concluded which is now so far off that it is not within our prospect if this our Jerusalem were established and made again the praise of the Earth for outward splendour and prosperity In short if all were well with us and no Temporal enforcement lay upon us to become penitent and religious yet that all such wickedness as is now in fashion should come to an end and resolutions should be taken up to this purpose I humbly offer to your thoughts upon this only consideration and in this only name because it is the wickedness of the wicked for what is not imported in that Enmity against God deicidium in will though not in effect What but this is the great makebate between God and his people The disquieter as I may say and griever of his Spirit That which makes him humanum pati to be affected filled modo puriori with hatred with jealousy not only smoking but burning like fire That which provokes him to have recourse to his full Magazine of Weapons of War his sharpened furbished and glittering Sword his Battle-axe his Rod of Iron his Threshing-Instrument with teeth his Wine-press his hot Thunderbolts That which makes him press his Stars to fight in their courses I●a 28.21 which puts him upon strange work the work of Judgement is so and will not suffer him without most unsufferable trespasses upon the Honour of his Justice and Righteousness to keep his right hand in his bosom Psal. 74.11 to forbear smiting and punishing Do not I hate them O God which hate thee Should not I set against that with all animosity which sets so hard against thee and makes thee set thy face so severely against men None who now hear me if the whole Nation could be supposed within hearing but should take up this Resolution But in a more particular manner You the the Peers of the Kingdom to whom I am called to speak should take it to heart You well know the due Honour of your Nobility cannot privilege or exempt you from the common Obligation and Law of Religion no more than it can from common Judgements your houses may be entered by a Pestilence or a Fire as soon as others And need I be your Monitor That the greater your Persons and Honours are the more pressing is your obligation to be Religious because your Examples are more leading and imperative and influential The City-houses were not more catching of the flames from one another than your Inferiors are and will be of any Exorbitancies which they can see in you And what is it that Illustrates and Ennobles your Nobility itself making you to shine more gloriously and more serviceably to God and the King but Piety and Religion Religion I say not made your umbrage or pretext nor your diversion and entertainment of leisure hours but your great work and business You have a Proverb I wish there were no worse going Bonus sanguis non mentitur O let it appear so by your virtuous and honourable actions answering the Nobility of your Blood That you who are that was your Name in Athens should a rich and noble word in Homer ever contend to excel in what is most excellent and laudable You who are Optimates should be Optimi the Best wheresoever you are is so necessary and essential to your high Quality that it will make a Solecism and contradiction to be otherwise As therefore you will not endure any filthy spots upon your Robes of Honour upon your Stars your Coronets your Escutcheons disdaining any thing that can leave a stain and blemish upon your Names and Families so generously detest and abominate any thing which hath the Name of wickedness named upon it Take heed also I beseech you of the iniquity of your Heels your Attendants that it compass you not about We are cast to live woe the while in the very dregs of Time The world lieth rather is steeped in wickedness was never so demonstrated a Truth as now But Tu ne cede malis is a good Reserve of holy Wisdom If we cannot make others better yet to be sure hic murus abaeneus that they make not us worse To stem and set vigorously against the stream of highswelling and over-bearing wickedness is a proof of Noble Christian strength To be Virtuous and Religious chaste and Pure Regular and Exemplary even in this Generation when it is so much the Fashion to be otherwise This will be true singular honour fit to be upon Sacred Record and if your Faces shine not here among men yet you shall assuredly shine as Stars in the Firmament among the Blessed Angels hereafter Which God grant unto you all To whom be all Glory and Honour and true Obedience now and for ever Amen Finis