up the habitations of his people he hath taken away his Tabernacles and destroyed his places of Assemblies the Ramparts and the Walls lament and languish ber Gates are sunk to the ground her Barrs are destroyed Who can express the terror of this fatal Judgment the unexpected eruption the sudden increase the irresistible force the remorsless rage the insatiable voracity of this fiery Judgment the present sufferings the lasting miseries of private persons are inexpressible the publick damage the dangerous consequences it may be unconceivable What thing shall I liken to thee O Daughter of my People Whereunto shall I compare the day of thy Visitation To the destruction of Jerusalem to the great and terrible day of Judgment O the terrors and affrightments the shriekes and lamentations the agonies the confusions of that Day They that were on the house top durst not stay to take any thing out of their houses nor he that was in the field return back to take his Cloaths they that were in the City betook themselves to the Fields and Mountains where they beheld their flaming habitations where they trembled to behold the abomination of desolation raging in the holy places How were the wise men amazed and the strong men terrified despair seised them counsel and strength fled away from them there was no help in them they presently gave all for lost they stood affrighted at a distance gazing at the dreadful spectacle in vain they thought it to contend it looked so like the coming of the Son of Man The breath of the Lord kindled the fire he rode upon Cherub he came flying upon the wings of the wind He made the winds his Messengers and the flames of fire his Ministers He brought the Winds out of his Treasure and to point the flame directly upon the bulk and body of the City through his power he brought in the South-East wind as a thief in the night as pains upon a woman in travel as the lightning that cometh from the East and passeth to the West so came this flaming Judgment and so shall the coming of the Son of Man be I cannot endure to dilate upon this Argument Sorrow and anguish are in the consideration of it Animus meminisse borret luctuque refugit Great is the Judgment and there is reason for us to fear that it may be portending and symptomatical YEt who can tell but God may have mercy upon us but he may yet save us from destruction though our breach be great as the Sea yet is not in it self irreparable though our wounds be deep and gaping they are not desperate or uncurable hitherto we may say with the Apostle We are chastned but not killed afflicted but not in despair The signs and symptoms of an approaching final Judgment are not so decretory and peremptory that we should despair God's signal Judgments have hitherto been accompanied with signs of mercies and this is a plain case that he is not fond of our destruction and that he had rather that we should live He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men He stands pausing and hesitating as he did once before O Ephraim how shall I give thee up O Ephraim O England How shall I give thee up O England What mean else those Alternations and those mixtures and combinations of wonderful Judgments and of wonderful deliverances and mercies which our ears have heard and our eyes have seen We have heard with our ears and our Fathers have told us what wonderful deliverances he wrought in their time of old We have seen vicissitudes great and prodigious mixtures and combinations marvellous in our eyes horrible destructions and wonderful restitutions succeeding one another raging Plagues at home and signal Victories abroad God hath filled us with bitterness and covered us with ashes But it is his mercy that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not If the arm of his Justice and Severity hath been made bare that it might be seen of all the people He hath not left his mercy without witness If his Judgment hath been great and terrible in that which is consumed his Mercy is wonderful and miraculous in that which is preserved Plainly except the Lord had left us a Remnant and visibly interposed to do it we should not have had this place wherein to humble our selves before him We should have been as Sodom and we should have been like unto Gomorrah It was he that in the midst of Judgment remembred mercy when the flaming vengeance was in its height when in the opinion of all men it had arrived at the state of irresistibility and when every mans heart failed him when the hopes of all men were sunk into despair He checked the domineering vengeance he put up the flaming Sword he controul'd the streaming waves of fire and said thus farr shall ye come and no further In a wondeful manner he preserved the Goods and Persons of the poor Inhabitants of the City He restreined the rage of our enemies that cryed concerning our Jerusalem Down with it Down with it Aha! so would we have it He suffered not a foreign Enemy to land nor our domestick foes to make a head in our confusions He was a wall of fire about the the persons of our Gracious Sovereign and his Royal Highness and of those valiant Noble Persons which adventured boldly and strenuously and indefatigably laboured the publique preservation He hath given signal Preservations and Victories to our Fleets abroad he hath restored our High-born and Noble Generals and our Fleet in health and safety He hath given us plenty of all things necessary for the life of man In one great word to sum up an aggregation of great and various mercies he hath upheld our Religion and our Government in peace and for an earnest of his further preservation he hath given us this seasonable opportunity with health and safety in this place to attend the Publique Service to advise and assist in this arduous Juncture of affairs Arduous and difficult indeed it is to restore our City and defend our Country to restore the Houses of God and Publique Buildings to re-edifie ten Thousand private habitations to sustein the poor and needy to preserve the rights and properties of men to find such a temper of Justice and equity that there be no decay no just complaining in our Streets To uphold the Traffick of the Nation and to keep it in order and security free from private Robberies and publick Insurrections and therefore in order to all those ends to uphold our religion in the zealous and effectual exercise in the sincerity and uniformity thereof to preserve it from encroachments and undermining Tolerations ruinous to Religion destructive to the Government of the Nation And all this while to make provision against our dangerous and cruel enemies Gebal and Ammon and Amalek the French Dutch and the Dane who have conspired to our destruction These things are arduous but not insuperable
not convert them nor six Trumpets awaken them nor six Judgements subdue them nor six preservations allure them to repentance Then John beheld and he saw another mighty angel cloathed with a cloud and he set his left foot upon the earth and his right foot upon the sea and he cryed as when a lyon roareth and he lifted up his hand to heaven and sware by him that liveth for ever That there shall be time no longer APPLICATION I Have now done with the persons in the Text and the observations arising from them Suffer me for a word of Application humbly to pray that ye will come near and consider the things that have been spoken That ye will search the Scriptures and see whether it be as you have heard or no that you will ponder the matter and weigh the concernment of it that ye will not hear it as a song or slightly pass it by Is it nothing unto you O all ye that pass it by I shall not undertake to make a precise Interpretation or Application of this Vision of the seven Angels and seven Trumpets I know the destiny of the bold expositors of the Apocalypse He frustrateth the tokens of the lyars and maketh diviners mad The Vision indeed speaks of Angels and Trumpets Gods Messengers and his loud alarms of plagues and prefervations of a remnant kept alive It tells of extraordinary thunder and lightning of blasting of grass and of trees of the death of hoves and cattel of part of the Sea turned into bloud of mountains of fire cast into the Sea and a third part of the Ships destroyed Of two unusual Stars or Comets of smoke issuing from the bottomless pit it may be groundless fears and jealousies of Locusts which sometimes are said to have no king but in this place to have Abaddon or Apollyon for their King It tells us of men killed by fire and by smoke and by brimstone by gunpowder Yet all these things shall not extoit from me a literal and particular Application of this Vision to our selves I know there are many things which cannot I trust the sad Catastrophe shall not be so applyed However methinks it may be lawful in a general way to quicken my self and all that hear me to examine our selves touching the considerations laid before us in reference both to our personal and our national concernments Is there any one person that hears me this day upon whom God hath not called aloud and often that they would repent with whom he hath not contended sundry ways and in divers manners to turn them from the evil of their ways By powerful instructions and personal experiences by signal mercies and wonderful deliverances by checks of conscience by happy diversions and wholesome disappointments by a well-timed sickness by the wind which bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof and knowest not whence it cometh For God speaketh once yea twice though man perceiveth it not In a dream in visions of the night Is there any man so stupid as not to have considered national invitations to repentance the Angels and the Trumpets the warnings of Gods Ministers the loud alarms of his Providence the interchanges and intermixtures of National mercies and National judgements which we have had Since the day that he brought our fathers out of Egypt his Book hath been opened his Trumpet hath given a certain sound he hath sent his Messengers rising every day and sending them The Lord gave the word great were the company of the Preachers precept hath been upon precept line upon line Hath any Nation had the experiences which we and our fathers have had Enquire from one end of the heaven to the other My song shall be of mercie and judgement Concerning Gods own people once we read of it as a wonder that their land had rest forty years Twice forty years together God was pleased to deliver the land of our Nativity from forreign invasion and domestick rebellion He put to flight the armies of the aliens he scattered the Armada's that called themselves invincible The virgin the daughter of Sion laughed them to scorn They came forth one way and returned seven He disappointed the insolent invader he said he shall not come into this city nor shoot an arrow there nor come before it with shield nor cast a bank against it The horse and his rider were thrown into the sea He disappointed the plots and stratagems of domestick traytors the gates of hell could not prevail he suffered not their devilish machinations to succeed Peace and plenty and the publick profession of the true Religion flourished there was no decay no leading into captivity no complaining in our streets No! but there was pride and idleness and fullness of breaed the sins of her ancient sister Sodom the cry thereof went up to heaven and suddenly we tasted of the fire of Sodom and the brimstone of Gomorrha The bottomless pit was opened and the smoke arose of absurd and groundless fears and jealousies and the Sun and the Moon were darkned by reason of the smoke And there came out of the smoke Locusts Their faces were as the faces of men they had breast-plates of iron their sound was as many horses running to the battel They had a king which is the angel of the bottomless pit in Hebrew Abaddon in greek Apollyon Twenty years the Nation lav under the dreadful scourge of war and confusion the most horrible kind of war the most lamentable of confusions The fire came out of the bramble and consumed the cedars of Lebanon The anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits the breath of our nostrils our king and our princes were among the gentiles The law was no more the prophets received no vision from the Lord. Hunted we were from form to form emptyed from vessel to vessel scattered like the bones which the prophet saw in the valley which were very many and very dry When behold another interchange of providence sudden and wonderful There was a noise and behold a shaking and the bones came together bone unto his bone loe sinews and flesh came upon them and the skin covered them they were restored as at the first breath came into them and they lived and stood upon their feet and were a great army Five years are not compleated since we are tryed again by such a miraculous restitution indeed by an absolute resurrection And now since that time how various have been the mixtures how quick and sudden have been the changes of his providence Three years he expected fruit of his barren fig-tree he let it alone the fourth also saying If it bear fruit well and if not he seemed to say I will cut it down He called a destroying Angel he put a new sword into his hand and with it a commission to kill and to destroy his thousands ten
difficult but not to be despaired of Concerning Jerusalem burned and laid wast by the Assyrians Daniel foretold that the streets and the walls thereof should be rebuilded even in troubleous times and when the time came that they were reedified we read in Nehemiah that the labourers in one hand held the trowel and the other held a weapon one half of the people laboured in the work and the other half held the Spears and the Shields the Bows and the Habergeons because of their cruel enemies on every side If God shall be pleased to give us a spirit of Understanding and teach our Senators Wisdom If he shall pour out a publick spirit upon our Councils a spirit of tenderness and compassion of Justice and Equity Temperance and Frugality Fortitude and Magnanimity If all Orders and Degrees amongst us Civil and Military and Ecclesiastical shall take to themselves the spirits of Christians and of men If our Counsels and endeavours shall be answerable to the care and benignity to the servour and strenuous industry of our gracious Sovereign and to the alacrity and magnanimity of our couragious and generous Country-men then speaking humanely and abstracting from our Deservings we need not greatly fear but we may yet subdue the pride and insolence of our barbarous Enemies we may yet behold our City rising out of its ashes in greater splendour than we have seen it heretofore Wherefore arise and gird your selves O ye Princes ye Nobles ye Rulers of our Israel Consult Consider and give sentence Men Brethren and Fathers let us arise and labour let us up and be doing be strong and of good courage and the good hand of our God shall be upon you he shall give you the honour to be the defenders of your Country he shall make you repairers of the breaches restorers of our City to dwell in Yet I cannot I may not forbear to put you in remembrance of this one thing Except the Lord build the City their labour is but lost that build it It is not our wisdom or industry much less our confidence that will do it unless God be for us neither will God be for us unless we turn from the evil of our ways except we repent we have reason to fear that what we have seen hitherto will be no more but the beginning of our sorrows The Prophet Esay tells us That the Lord sent a word unto Jacob and it lighted on Israel and all the people shall know that say in the pride and stoutness of their hearts the Bricks are fallen but we will build with hewn Stones the Sycamores are down but we will change them into Cedars Therefore the Lord will set up their adversaries and joyn their Enemies together the Syrians before and the Philistims behind and they shall devour Israel with open mouth Because this people turneth not to him that smiteth them Wherefore turn you turn you every one from the evil of his ways Let us search our hearts and try our ways and turn to him that hath smitten us Turn unto him with all our hearts with fasting and with weeping and mourning be hath smitten us and he will heal us because his compassions fail not Come and let us reason together saith God though your sins were as scarlet they shall be white as snow There is yet a way open to take away the terror of our Particular Judgment and to prevent a final Judgment from falling upon the Nation We are yet in the Land of hope and space is given for Repentance the door of mercy is not yet shut upon us nor the ears of our Judge sealed against us O that men would therefore praise the Lord for his Goodness and declare the wonders that he hath done for the children of men that hath not dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us according to our Iniquities that hath not cut us off in the midst of our sins nor in the height of our impenitencies snatched us away to Judgment that hath not dealt with us as with the Apostate Angels and with Thousands of our Brethren who were better and more righteous than we Let us once more then return into our selves Let us consider our condition let us veiw over and ballance the grounds of our hopes and the reasons of our fears Let us take an exact account of our whole estate and interest in reference to all our concernments National and Personal Temporal and Eternal Let us deliberate and advise what is to be done and what is to be avoided Did I say deliberate Whether we shall save our souls from utter darkness and everlasting burnings Whether we shall save the Nation from final ruine and desolation Nay rather Let us break off our sins by repentance and our Iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor Let us make our selves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness that when we fail we may be received into everlasting habitations Let us lend unto the Lord that we may have treasure in Heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt nor thieves break through and steal Let us fast the fast that the Lord hath chosen Loose the bands of wickedness feed the hungry cloath the naked he that hath two Coats let him give to him that hath none and he that hath meat let him do likewise Such an occasion scarce happens in many hundreds of years and for motives to charity they are all comprised in that great argument of the Judgment to come When the Son of Man shall come to Judgment and shall sit upon the Throne of his Glory When all Nations shall be gathered before him and he shall set the Sheep on his right hand and the Goats on his left This shall be the mark of their discrimination He shall say to those on his right hand I was hungry and ye fed me thirsty and ye gave me drink naked and ye cloathed me sick and in prison and ye visited me Come ye blessed of my Father receive the Kingdom prepared for you And he shall say unto them on the left hand I was hungry and ye fed me not thirsty and ye gave me no drink c. Wherefore go ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels The way is short and compendious to save all our interests What doth the Lord require of us but to do justly to love mercy to walk humbly before the Lord our God Let us be merciful therefore as our heavenly Father is merciful and let us humble our selves under the Almighty hand of God as we pretend to do this day Let us betake our selves afore-hand to our Judge and pour out our complaints before him Let us confess our wickedness and be sorry for our sins Let us lay hold on the feet of our Blessed Redeemer and give him no rest till he hath sealed our pardon Let us bathe with our tears the wounds that we have made Let us cry mightily to the Throne of Grace Let us wrestle and strive
purer eyes than to behold iniquity that he will wound the head of his enemies and the hairy scalp of such an one as goes on still in his wickedness If a man will not turn he will whet his sword and bend his bow If a Nation will not repent then smite with thy hand stamp with thy foot and say alas for it shall fall by the sword by the famine and by the pestilence Now the general inference of all these is still the same this is still the Logick of the Scriptures Our God shall come and shall not keep silence wherefore consider this ye that forget God We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ Knowing therefore the terrour of the Lord we perswade To this end we find the Lord sometimes disputing logically to convince and sometimes with divine and noble Oratory endeavouring to perswade sometimes by signal instances of pardoning mercies and of avenging judgements to induce men to repentance He speaks to their reason to their affections to their very senses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Come now and let us reason together saith the Lord if ye be willing and obedient ye shall eat the good of the land if ye rebel ye shall be devoured Are not my ways equal are not your ways unequal Again He expostulates with them sometimes upon the principles of ingenuity Thus saith the Lord What iniquity have your fathers found in me that they are gone away from me O my people what have I done unto thee wherein have I wearyed thee Testifie against me O Israel what doth the Lord thy God require of thee Sometimes he expostulates upon the point of interest How long shall vain thoughts lodge in your hearts How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity what will ye do in the end thereof Again he sets before us a multitude of glorious instances to shew that never any penitent was rejected however heinous however numerous were their sins The prodigal devoured his substance with harlots Mary Magdalen had seven Devils Peter denyed his Master with horrid oaths and imprecations Saul was exceedingly mad against him yet upon their repentance were accepted He had delivered Israel seven times and they forsook him and he said he would deliver them no more but they repented and his soul was straight-way grieved and he delivered them Instead of many consider that one instance of Manasses the evil son of good King Hezekiah He set up altars for Baalim and worshipp'd all the host of heaven Altars in the court of the temple an idol in the very temple he caused his sons to pass through the fire he observed times used inchantments dealt with familiar spirits and with wizards made Judah and Jerusalem to do worse than the heathen And the Lord spake to him and he would not hear After all this in his afflictions he humbled himself and then God was intreated and heard his supplication His ways are not as our ways He forgave Nineveh and Jonah was displeased exceedingly he taxes him with easiness in relenting he charges him as if he had an ancient known infirmity of flexibility to his veracity and the honour of his Prophets Lord saith he was not this my saying and therefore I prevented it to flee to Tarshish for I knew that thou art merciful therefore take I beseech thee my life from me His thoughts are not as our thoughts when Nathan had told David a story of a poor man who had his ewe Lamb ravished from him then David was exceeding wroth and he swore As the Lord liveth the man that hath done this thing shall surely dye But when David who had taken Bathsheba and murthered Vriah said I have sinned Nathan said unto David The Lord hath put away thy sin thou shalt not dye On the other side we have instances of horrible judgements for Impenitency whereof I shall after take occasion to speak Now considering all these things is it not strange that men should not repent That no consideration of ingenuity or of interest should move them to it That neither the Law written in their hearts nor that which was delivered by the mediation of Angels nor the Gospel given us by the Son of God should bring them to it That neither reason nor experience neither mercies nor judgements neither the sweetness of a good conscience nor the torments of a bad the beauties of vertue nor the deformity of sin the shortness of life nor length of eternity the lightness of things present nor the exceeding weight of those which are to come That neither Death nor Life nor Angels nor Trumpets nor things present nor thing to come nor height nor depth nor any other thing should be able to separate men from the love of sin Is it not strange The Apostles the Prophets were astonished at this nay God himself seems to be affected with wonder Hear Oheavens and give ear O earth Be astonished O ye heavens and be horribly afraid they have for saken me This is that wonder considered in it self according to common reason the object of our first observation drawn from the form and manner of the words by way of Epiphonema expressed by the particle yet yet they repented not II. The second Observation was taken from the matter of the words However such impenitency is very strange to common reason considered in the Theory yet it is too frequent in practice and in common experience The rest of the men repented not This is that grand contradiction that fatal paradox of the life of man His very being consists in rationality his acting is contrary to all the reason in the world Man only was created under the Law of Reason man only maintains a constant opposition to the law and reason of his creation He appointed the moon for certain seasons and the sun knoweth his going down The blustring winds the raging storms the unruly Ocean the Lyon the Tiger and the Bear these all pursue the law of their creation these all are obedient unto his word charmed to it by that powerful voice whereby they were created Man only stops his ears and refuses to hear the voice of this Almighty charmer charm he never so wisely so loudly or so variously The general ways and methods of his charming have been already mentioned I am now to lay before you the general success of those methods The success 1. Of his word and his messengers 2. Of his works of 1. Mercy 2. Judgement Single Intermixed 1. For the success or rather the unsuccessfulness of his word for the entertainment or rather the barbarous usage of his messengers how often do we find God and his Prophets Christ and his Apostles complaining and as it were fretting themselves with indignation As for the word sometimes they will not hear it More than seven times Jeremy complains almost in the very same words