flesh which would rather sleep or play or drink at home than go to Church to worship Christ but we fear that many of us will finde cause for ever to curse our selves for taking and you for giving us this woful liberty That you commend not to us by your Authority some publick Confession of Faith to be learned and owned by us which might be as a touchstone to try the Doctrines which we hear and a preservative against the cursed endeavours of those men that seek to rase the foundations of our holy Religion for as the Creed the Lords Prayer and ten Commandements many of us have quite forgotten them seldome or never hearing any mention of them in our Churches That you do not injoyn a more reverend and seemly deportment of the body in our publick Assemblies wee finde all helps and advantages too little to raise our drousie hearts to true devotion but when we are inforced to behold the rude and unreverent carriage of others in our Congregations we find that it mightily hinders and abates the intention and devotion of our spiritis in the worship of God nor can we think that you would well approve such rudeness and disorder in mens addresses to your selves That you assign no more Ministers to our greater Congregations many thousands of us sometimes have but one if one to lead us in our spiritual welfare In your civil wars where the enemies are less dangerous you have many Officers for every hundred men And can you think that one man is sufficient to instruct exercise and conduct many thousands against a more subtil vigilant and formidable enemy That you have appointed no means to discover who are listed as our fellow-souldiers under Christ in the Sacrament of Baptism which we suspect will leave no small scruple upon our children and others when we are gone if by the infinite mercies of God Christian Religion should still be continued in this Nation you have removed the Diptyches or books of Record out of the hands of our Ministers and put them into other hands but not injoyned them to record the baptism of any which giveth occasion to adversaries to think that you set but little price upon that sacred Ordinance That you have let loose so many ravening Wolves upon us who go up and down seeking to devour venting their poysonous soul-destroying errors both publickly and privately whereby we the more ignorant are often shaken in the very fundamentals of our holy Religion and left in doubt what we should beleeve how much better were it for us if you suffered men to poyson and infect our bodies to the destruction of this our life natural than thus to poyson our souls to the evident hazzard of our everlasting ruine Consider we beseech you our ignorance and weakness and have compassion on our souls and let it appear by the intention of your care and watchfulness in order to our spiritual good that our Governors are real Christians and know the worth of that which Christ hath purchased at so dear a rate that he may own you as his faithful stewards and we may bless God for you as tender nursing Fathers unto us O you the Ministers of Christ whom he hath set as watchmen to discover dangers and give warning as Captains and Leaders in his Army as Stewards in his Famisy to give to every one his portion in due season you are set to be the Lights of the world the Salt of the earth yea Clouds to distil the precious dews upon us from you we expect not alone directions from your heavenly Doctrine but light from your graceful walking strength from your servent prayer and sweet refreshings from your fatherly compassions that you in imitation of the great Shepherd should carry the Lambs in the bosome of your love and gently lead the feeble of the flock And blessed bee God amongst you wee have found some truly loving and compassionate Samaritans who have pittied us in our distress have bound up our wounds and layed out your selves to the utmost of your strength for our eternal comfort for whose faithfulness in order to our souls we hope many of us shall celebrate the name of God with everlasting praises But against many of you our doleful case mournfully declareth that notwithstanding the holinesse of your function and the great trust by Christ committed to you yet you seem carelesse and regardlesse of our immortal soules more minding your own temporal advantage in the world than the eternal condition of the people committed to your charge incumbring your selves so much with worldly business that you cannot give attendance to reading exhortation and to doctrin and whilst you have left your watch-tower and are busy in those lower vallies the enemy alwaies vigilant for mischief surprizeth us to the eternall hazzard of souls That divers of you perform the work belonging to your high Calling with so much coldness and remisness that you occasion us to question whether you bee in good earnest or do your selves beleeve what you deliver unto us our houses are on fire and you knock softly at our doors a dreadful deafnesse is upon us and you whisper in our cars our necessities require that you should cry aloud and lift up your voices like trumpets to make known to us our sin and danger and you speak with so low a voice as it you were afraid to wake us That you attend no more to the sure laying the foundations of religion in our hearts by frequent catechizing and plain Preaching the fundamentals clearing up to us the grounds upon which these great things of eternity are to be owned by us through ignorance of these your Sermons though otherwise excellent are made in great part unprofitable to us you are upon the finishing whilst wee stick at the foundation you read in a manner all your lectures to Schollers of the higher form whilst wee the more ignorant are neglected as not being able to understand the terms in which these great things of God are by you delivered to us That some of you deny unto your children the sacred body of our Christian profession the Sacrament of Baptism wee would bring our Children in our Arms and present them unto Christ for his Blessing but you thrust us back we would ingage our Children unto Christ to live and dye his servants but you will not permit us but inforce us to leave them free to serve the Devil if they please as if you had conspired with our enemies to thrust our posterity back again to Heathenism That many of you permit us not to celebrate the memoriall of our dying Saviour in the Sacrament of his last Supper and so deprive our souls of that heavenly food that our dear Lord hath with so much cost provided for us wee would after many sad violations renew our Covenant with Christ and ingage our souls more firmly to him but you will not permit us You complain of the loosnesse of our spirits whilst
hardning nature and that long neglect of duty will dissolve the sense of obligation and we cannot but fear that if we be now neglected by you it may come to pass that our hearts may bee so hardned that if God should afterward raise up some Hezekiah who should call and invite us or ours to ingage our selves unto the Lord in these sacred Ordinances either we or ours should answer such gracious invitations after the same manner as the most of Israel did the summons of that holy King with scorn and contempt 2 Chron. 30. 20 O let this our imminent danger be weighed in your most advised thoughts you see how many have already turned their backs on Christ and all his Ordinances and are wholly gone after Satan and how industrious they are to draw others after them and then think what dangerous temptations you put us the weaker sort upon to revolt unto the enemy whilst you refuse to entertain us in the Camp of Christ Minde seriously we beseech you that great account that you must give to your and our Master the Lord Jesus Christ of your faithfulness in all your administrations in order to the souls of men and consider what answer you will make to him if you sleight or neglect so great a part of the purchase of his blood or what excuse you will finde when he shall arise to plead with you Did not I come from heaven and give my dearest life for the redemption of these poor souls Did not I with great endeavours even with the expence of the blood of many my holy Martyrs bring them under solemn bonds and ingagements to my self And when I saw them neglected by their former guides did not I by wondrous providences rescue them and deliver them over into your hands that you should feed and teach them And is this your faithfulness to me and mine to withhold the precious food that I provided for them to leave them to wander in the wilderness as sheep without a Shepherd yea to let loose many ravenous Wolves upon them to devour them and for an excuse of this your sloathfulness and treachery to deface my marks and badges which you found upon them that so you might plead they were none of mine Seemeth it a small thing to you O Rams and Hee-goats Ezek. 34 21. you fattest of the flock that you have taken the best of the pasture for your selves but that you have thrust with the shoulder and the side and pusht with the horns the weak and diseased of my flock till you have scattered them abroad O consider what answer you will make to the Lord Jesus when he shall arise and plead with you on our behalf and how sad your case will be if the blood of so many thousand souls perishing through your neglect and carelesness shall plead against you in the day of wrath We have indeed deserved from the Lord Jesus Christ by our unfruitfulness and many other sad miscarriages to be by him totally rejected and that his Gospel-sight should be wholly taken from us But what have we done to you that you should deal so hardly with us that you should be the instruments to bring this dreadful night of darkness on us Or that you should not rather endeavour our emendation and salvation What evil have you observed in us from which your joynt endeavours might not hope to rescue us Are wee blinde and ignorant Yet surely not so uncapable of instruction but that your joynt endeavours might even inforce the most ignorant of us to learn the fundamentals of Religion and so much as being practised would save our souls Are we wrapt and intangled in sinful lusts Surely your earnest and joynt endeavours might by the blessing of the Lord break these cords of sin and bring us by an holy violence to the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ we cannot but think that noble King Josiah had as ignorant and stubborn a people to deal withall as you and yet he not alone ingaged them to the Lord in that his solemn Passeover but made them serve the Lord all 2 Chron 34. 33 his dayes We know the donation of life supernatural lieth not in your power but it lieth in your power to acquaint us with the waies of life to cause us to attend upon the means of grace to restrain us from the outward acts of sin yea to set and keep us in such waies of worship and obedience unto Christ as that you might comfortably hope by Gods blessing on your Christian endeavours to behold us as the Crown of your labour at the great day Now consider we beseech you in your serious thoughts whether a general reformation of the body of the people of this Nation a re-ingaging them in Covenant and keeping them at the least in an external obedience unto Christ will not be more for the honour of him to whom the Nations are promised for an inheritance more agrecable to your own former Vowes and Covenants and a more likely way to make you a blessing to the people and them to you than to leave the main bulk of the people to be overgrown with thorns and briars to degenerate into an howling wilderness whilst all your care is laid out upon the culture of some few small inclosures What comfort can it be to you O Magistrates to have the bonds between Christ Jesus and this Nation continued through the revolutions of so many hundred years dissolved in your dayes Or to you O Ministers to have the foundations of Religion which you found laid in the hearts of the generality of the people of this Nation quite demolished under your administrations Or to you that call your selves the godly party to have the Christian Religion which formerly did over-spread the whole surface of this Nation now abridged to your few separate Congregations Or what heart that is not altogether stupid can behold the great endeavours and high professions for Religion found in the beginning of these times and in a sad revolt of so great a part of the Nation back again to heathenism or the like abominations and not bewail it with a flood of tears We have thus spread our mournful case before you hoping that the God of all grace and mercy in whose hand are the hearts and wayes of all the sons of men will incline your hearts to pity our sad condition and more compassionately to apply your selves unto our help for which purpose we now make our humble addresses unto him who gave his pretious blood a ransome for us O Glorious Prince and Saviour Jesus Christ the faithful and merciful high Priest of our Profession who didst for our sakes suffer and wert tempted that thou mightest be touched with the feeling of our infirmities and know experimentally to pity us in our temptations have mercy upon us have mercy upon us O blessed Saviour and grant that these our mournful complaints and supplications may pierce the ears and hearts of thy Vicegerents and Ambassadors with all the more eminent of thy pretious servants amongst us that our eternal welfare may be more cordially regarded by them that they may more faithfully and diligently lay out themselves and al their abilities for the salvation of those souls whom thou hast bought with thy pretious blood Let our Magistrates inherit the zeal of Hezekiah Josiah and other famous nursing Fathers of thy Church of old Let our Ministers as thy dear Apostle Paul be willing to spend and be spent for our salvation Let the impressions of thy tender mercies be upon all the more knowing of thy servants that they may compassionately imploy all their abilities for our emendation and salvation O thou that wept over thy Jerusalem when they would not own thee Let us who though unworthy are called by thy Name and have taken hold of thy Covenant taste of thy tender compassions Look down from heaven the habitation of thine holiness Where is thy zeal and thy strength and the sounding of thy bowels towards us Doubtless thou art our Redeemer though our Fathers be ignorant of us and our Elders will not own us thou art our Redeemer and thy name from everlasting O do not suffer us to erre from thy wayes do not harden our hearts from thy fear Wee cannot expect the like compassions from sinful man as from thee O blessed Immanuel who felt the pains of our redemption not Paul but thou O Christ wert crucified for us we cannot repose in any other arms but thine who carriest the feeble lambs in the bosome of thy love Though the Priest and Levite pass by on the other side yet thou the good Samaritan have compassion on us and poure thine oyl and wine into our wounds and the more we are neglected by men the more forcible and alluring let the cords of thy love be to us though the hearts of men melt not over our misery yet let thy bowels of compassion yern upon us and let us not lose our hold of thy Covenant but still be refreshed with thy protection and rejoyce under the shadow of all thine Ordinances Look down from heaven and behold this Vineyard and the Vine which thy right hand hath planted in this Nation make up the hedge of thy providence about it and let not the Boar of the Forrest continue to waste it or the wilde beast of the field to devour it Return O Lord and let it repent thee concerning thy servants and let not the evil that is already come upon us appear little before thee Heal thou the dreadful breaches and distractions which the cruel enemy hath caused amongst us repair the ruined walls of thy Jerusalem Grant the spirit of unity and charity to thy people of this Nation that thy family here may be truly a family of love and on their doors engraven Here is no strife for we are brethren O Lord hear O Lord forgive and heal our desolations remember not against us former iniquities let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us wee are brought very low Help us O God of our salvation for the glory of thy name deliver us and purge away our sins for thy names sake So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture shall give thee thanks for ever and teach our children to celebrate thy praise to all Generations FINIS
Gemitus Plebis OR A Mournful Complaint AND SUPPLICATION In behalf of the more weak and ignorant of the people of this Nation Drawn up for them by a Friend whose deep sense of his own ignorance and weakness hath taught him to be compassionate towards all that labour under the same infirmities By C. RAIE We roar all like Bears and mourn sore like Doves we look for judgement but there is none for salvation but it is far from us Isa 59. 11. Tolerabilius est Deo quempiam cum ignorantia in humilitate jacere quam cum elatione alta sapere Greg. in Mor. Si propter eos solos Christus mortuus est qui certa intelligentia possunt ista discâ—rnere penè frustra in ecclesia laboramus August Epist 102. LONDON Printed by R. Ibbitsan for Tho. Newberry at the Sign of the Three Lyons in Cornhil 1656. To the Honourable the Knights and Burgesses chosen for this present Parliament in the County of Suffolk NOBLE PATRIOTS THis Supplication which now presents it self unto your Honours view was drawn up in much grief and anguish of spirit lamenting to see the sad condition of the people of this Nation in order to their souls and everlasting state whilst after a long expectation of some happy Reformation they are found partly sinking by degrees into the gulf of Prophaneness and Atheisme partly hurried on by the wind of strange doctrines upon the rocks of Heretical opinions destructive to the very foundations of our holy Religion Not much unlike the case of that ship wherein St. Paul was driven to Malta whereof Act 27. 7 one part stuck fast in the earth the other part was broken and driven away by violent waves The sad apprehensions hereof caused me with a weak and trembling hand to draw up this Petition imploring the aid of God and men in this our sinking condition It was indeed intended to be sent abroad in the world as a desolate orphan without any discovery whence it came or to whom in particular to apply it self But after that divine providence had ordered the convention of this great Assembly and assigned your Honours to bear a part in that trust I was easily perswaded to presume so far upon your Christian charity as to direct it first unto your doors humbly casting both it and my self down at your Honours feet beseeching you in behalf of the people of this Nation as the passionate Father mentioned in the Gospel did our Saviour in behalf of his son If you can Mark 9â— do any thing have compassion on us and help us A case of higher concernment cannot be presented unto you than this wherein the honour of Christ and salvation of so many thousand souls is ingaged And my hope is that nothing will be more in your thoughts than restoring beauty to Sion and repairing the walls of Jerusalem so ruined every where They seem to me too unreasonably to debase your honourable station who would exempt the case of Christ and the eternal salvation of souls from your care leaving onely the petty businesses of this world unto your cognizance yea to deal most injuriously with you perswading you to neglect that the care whereof is your greatest honour and security and the neglect whereof would certainly blast all your other proceedings Now the Lord vouchsafe to your selves and the rest of that Honourable Assembly a large portion of that Spirit which he put upon Christ the head of all powers A Spirit of wisdome and understanding of counsel and might Isa 11. 2. of knowledge and the fear of the Lord and make you quick of sent in what concerns the honour of Christ the free course of his Gospel and everlasting good of the people and cause that all the mountains of difficulties that now lye in your way may be turned into plains before Zach. 4. 7. you that in the end the languishing hopes of the faithful in the land may be revived the vowed Reformation of Religion accomplished that we and the following Generations may call you blessed as being under God the happy instruments of repairing our breaches and restoring our paths Which is and shall be the daily prayer of Your Honours and of all that love the Lord Jesus a worthless servant C. RAIE Wast Sept. 16 6. To all those Faithful Ministers of Christ in the land whose hearts are mourning under the Present distractions and breathing after an happy reformation amongst us Reverend Fathers and Brethren THat so weak and worthlesse a creature hath presumed to speak thus loud in your ears and by way of petition to suggest to your wisdom some things which will scarcely agree with the principles or practice of diverse whose more eminent piety and learning hath made them worthily pretious and honourable in the Churches of Christ I can give no better account than what David mentioneth as forcing words unwillingly from him My heart was Psal 39. 3 hot within mee thenspake I with my tongue The Principal thing which hath stirred these passions hath been the Consideration of the sad condition wherein the people of this Nation are left whilst not alone some of their eminent Pilots seem to sit down in dispair as if nothing were to bee done in these stormy times but onely to pray and wait for a calm but even diverse of those whose more industrious spirits provoke them to action appear to attend nothing more but to get with the best of their goods unto the boat leaving the ship to sink in the Sea contenting themselves with such a reformation wherein not alone the viler sort whose open profaneness and desperate contempt of God and Religion proclaimes them unworthy the name or priviledge of Christians but even the main body and bulk of the people are left either in the state of absolute heathens having none to take any pastoral care of their souls or any other priviledge for themselves or their children then Jews or Turks might enjoy if they lived amongst us or else entertained as semi-Christians neither fully owned nor cashiered but wearing by halves the colours of Christ Of how exceeding dangerous concernment such a reformation may prove seems to mee not hard to conjecture especially being attempted in such a juncture of time wherein the Magistrate hath in great part withdrawn his coercive power as to things of Religion leaving men to themselves and the Devil hath so many agents at work to seduce men from the very profession of Christ and to intice them back into the Camp of the enemy Suppose this course were taken with some mutinous or dubious army that 1 The more faithful part of the Souldiery were withdrawn from communion with them 2. Their voluntary tenders of renuing their ingagement to their rightful Prince were rejected 3. The most desperate mutineirs who are always soliciting a total revolt were permitted and continued amongst them It were easy to guess what were like soon to become of that Army The deep apprehension