truth of Christ, that great trust and depositum which hath been committed to us. We have accounted it no matter of what opinion or judgment men be in these latter times. It is an universal saying, "No matter what judgment men be of, so they be saints:" as if “truth in the judgment," did not go to the making up of a saint, as well as holiness in the will and affections: as if Christ had not come into the world to bear witness of the truth, which was his great design: as if it were no matter, if God have the heart, so the devil be in the head: as if no matter that be full of darkness, so the heart be for God.

16. The "unsuitableness of our conversation to the gospel of Christ :" It is the only thing the apostle puts the Philippians in mind of, and commits to their care, Phil. i. 27. and truly in these unhappy days it hath been the only thing men have neglected and despised: how little care that our conversations should honour the gospel, &c.

17. "Our living by sense, and not by faith." Surely (my brethren) among all the sins in England that the people of God have cause to be humbled for, there is not any whereby we have more provoked God than by that sin of our unbelief. Murmuring and infidelity have been our two great sins, for which, it is the wonder of God's mercy that he hath not caused our carcases to fall in the wilderness: he may take up that complaint of us that he did of Israel, Num. xiv. 22. "Because all those men

which have seen my glory and my miracles which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice, surely they shall not see the land, &c. And this is the lamentation we may take up, that truly to this very day we have not faith enough to carry us from one miracle to another, from one deliverance to another, from one salvation to another: let one deliverance pass over our head, and no sooner one wave rises higher than another, but we are ready to cry out with Peter," Lord, save me, I perish :"

And well were it if our fears did issue into tears, and cries after Christ: we rather are ready to cry out, as those in Ezek. xxxvii. 11. "Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost, we are cut off for our parts." We are a people that never knew how to honour God in any distress God hath brought us into; never learnt to glorify God by believing: if we cannot see him, we cannot believe him. Surely that which God hath done for us in such a succession of miracles, it might well at least have been found for our faith, during our sojourning. In our pilgrimage we might have learned by all that we have seen, to believe God: we might have made experience to be the food of our faith: and upon all the providences of divine power, wisdom, and goodness, we might have discoursed ourselves into belief, as David, 1 Sam. xvii. 37. "The Lord hath delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine." So Paul," He hath delivered, and doth deliver, we trust he will also deliver."

Oh, my brethren, we dishonour God, and starve our faith, by forgetting our experience, while we proclaim by our own unbelief, that we have a God that we dare not trust. If we perish we may thank ourselves for it; surely if we miscarry, that account may be given for it, that we find, Mat. xiii. 58. "Because of our unbelief." There is a rest of God before us: if we do not enter in it is because of our unbelief.

66

18. Want of sympathy with the bleeding, gasping, groaning, dying, churches of Jesus Christ." They have been in great afflictions round about; have called to us, pity me! Oh pity me my friends! for the hand of God gone out against me. We cannot look any way but we see cause of bitter mourning; but we have not laid the blood of Germany, Lithuania, Piedmont, &c. to heart; therefore God may justly lay it to our charge. Want of fellow-feeling, with our brethren in their afflictions, it is a kind of persecution, a kind of being accessary to their sufferings. That we have not mourned, wept,

bled with them; that we have not lien in the dust, smote on our thighs, &c. God may justly say to us, as Amos vi. 6, 7, "They shall go captive with the first that go captive, because they are not grieved for the afflictions of Joseph." The word in the Hebrew signifies, none of them have been sick for the afflictions of Joseph. Oh, my brethren! When did we go to bed sick for the afflictions of God's people abroad? When did their miseries cost us an hour's sleep? or a meal's meat? When did we lie in the dust, and cry out, Ah Lord! their glory! Because we have not shed tears for their blood, God may justly say, The next turn of persecution shall be yours, because you have not been afflicted in the afflictions of my people, &c.

19. "Our grievous unsensibleness of God's dishonour." Religion never suffered the like as it hath done these latter days, by the pride and hypocrisy of some pretenders to it. God's name hath been thereby blasphemed by an evil and hypocritical generation, the people of God have lien under the greatest reproaches and contempt that ever any did under the heavens; and yet all this while we have not been concerned in it, carried ourselves as if unconcerned in the reproaches of religion: blasphemously reflected upon the name of God, who in these times of blasphemy, have gone in secret, lien in the dust, and cried with holy Joshua, "What wilt thou do unto thy great name?" Josh. vii. 9. We have not laboured to preserve in our own souls, or stir up our brethren, to a holy sense of God's name, as those primitive saints, Mal. iii. 16. Where are they that have been affected with, and afflicted for the sufferings of the name of God? O consider how little is God and religion beholden to us for our tears, sighs, or groans? What is become of that child-like spirit that was wont to possess the spirits of God's people? It is perished, and with it, without special timely repentance, we shall perish also.

20. "That epidemical sin of self-seeking, and selfpleasing." Oh, my brethren, we may revive that complaint of the apostle, "all seek their own, not the things

which are Jesus Christ's," Phil. ii. 21. been the source of all our miseries.

This, this hath

While some had

power in their hands to have done great things for God, what did they do, but neglect the interest and trust in their hands, and fell a feathering their own nest, and building to themselves house and names, that they thought would continue for ever: and to divide the spoil among themselves, as if their own game they hunted, and others in inferior station began to divide, and every one began to snatch, as if the dust of the earth would not serve every one for a handful and in the mean time a sea of error hath been ready to over-turn us. Yea, all men seeking to be pleased, not to please: whereas our duty is to study to please, not to be pleased, &c.

You see in all this I have not mentioned one of those gross profanenesses, that stare heaven in the face, as drunkenness, filthy and abominable whoredom, fornication poured out in every place, horrible blasphemy, contempt of God and religion, profanation of God's sabbath, &c. because I speak now to those that are professors. I have given in a catalogue of the sins of those that profess the name of Christ, that relate to Christ by a special engagement and relation: these have been the sins of God's family. And if we would have God repent of the evil of punishment, we had need to make haste to repent of the evil of sin. We have been a long time in sinning, we had need be a long time in repenting. I tell you, Christians, we have been these late twenty years doing nothing else but sinning against God; and should God let us live twenty years more, it would be too little to weep for the procreation thereof. Learn to lay these and other sins to heart, that God may never lay them to your charge.

The third advice Christ gives here for the prevention of the removal of her candlestick, is reformation, " do thy first works." Reformation indeed is a fruit and evidence of such repentance: repentance is nothing else but the breaking of the heart for and from sin.

E

:

I have spoken of it merely as it is the contrition of the soul for sin I come to speak a word of the other part, as it consists in "turning to God, and doing our first works."

This is the method God prescribes his people, Lam. iii. 39. "Wherefore doth a living man complain, &c." under God's afflicting hand? Instead of reforming, men are prone to fall a complaining; not only naturally as irrational creatures may, under some pinching extremity; but sinfully, i. e. when their natural grief is let out in a distempered and inordinate manner; when natural groans are accompanied with unseriptural affections, which vents itself,

I. Sometimes upon the affliction, as if but one intolerable burden in the world, and God must needs lay that upon them. Lam. i. 12. and iii. 1. and v. 10.

II. Sometimes of instruments. Thus Esau complains of his brother; "is he not rightly called Jacob, a supplanter?" of his father," hast thou but one blessing, &c. ?" Gen. xxvii. 3, 4. of any thing rather than of himself. He doth not say, "Am not I rightly called Esau? What a wretch am I that have despised and sold my blessing?" Mostly we complain of that which deserves no blame, the guilty of the innocent, 1 Kings xviii. 7. Isa. x. 5. Jer. viii. or we pore too much upon second causes, or complain of instruments, not of ourselves, or of wicked men, not of wickedness; of their cruelty, more than of their blasphemy; of their injuries against us, more than as God's enemies; or more of revenge in our complaints than murmuring our complaints concerning their afflicting us, not accompanied with our prayers for their conversion, &c.

III. Sometimes of God himself, not as one of his chil dren, who complains

1. To God, not of God: thus "Christ, my God, my God, &c."

2. With a holy confidence," my God, my God," twe words of faith, for one word of fear, &c.