of disciplin, together with the great labour that private admonition of each offender would cost us. Now, to all this I answer—

1. Are not these reasons as valid against Christianity itself, especially in some times and places, as they are against discipline? Christ came not to send peace on earth: We shall have his peace, but not the world's; for he hath told us that it will hate us. Might not Bradford, or Hooper, or any that were burned in Queen Mary's days, have alleged more than all this against the duty of owning the Reformation? Might they not have said, "It will make us hated, and it will expose our very lives to the flames ?" He is concluded by Christ to be no Christian, who hateth not all that he hath, and his own life, fɔr him; and yet we can take the hazard of worldly loss as a reason against his work! What is it but hypocrisy to shrink from sufferings, and to take up none but safe and easy works, and make ourselves believe that the rest are no duties? Indeed this is the common way of escaping suffering, to neglect the duty that would expose us to it. If we did our duty faithfully, ministers would find the same lot among professed Christians, as their predecessors have done among Pagans and other infidels. But if you cannot suffer for Christ, why did you put your hand to his plough? Why did you not first sit down and count the cost? This makes the ministerial work so unfaithfully executed, because it is so carnally undertaken; men enter upon it as a life of ease, and honour, and respectability, and they resolve to attain their ends, and have what

they expected by right or wrong. They looked not for hatred and suffering, and they will avoid it, though by the avoiding of their work.

2. As for the making yourselves incapable of doing them good, I answer, That reason is as valid against plain preaching, reproof, or any other duty which wicked men will hate us for. God will bless his own ordinances to do good, or else he would not have appointed them. If you publicly admonish, and rebuke the scandalous, and call them to repentance, and cast out the obstinate, you may do good to many whom you reprove, and possibly to the excommunicated themselves. I am at least sure it is God's means; and it is his last means when reproofs will do no good. It is therefore perverse to neglect the last means, lest we frustrate the foregoing means, when the last are not to be used but upon supposition that the former were all frustrated before. However, those within and those without may receive good by it, if the offender should receive none; and God will have the honour, when his church is manifestly distinguished from the world, and the heirs of heaven and hell are not totally confounded, nor the world made to think that Christ and Satan do but contend for superiority, and that they have the like inclination to holiness or to sin.

3. But yet let me tell you, that there are not such difficulties in the way, nor is discipline such a useless thing as you imagine. I bless God upon the small and too late trial which I have made of it myself. I can speak by experience, that it is not

in vain; nor are the hazards of it such as may excuse our neglect.

I confess, if I had my will, that man should be ejected as a negligent pastor, that will not rule his people by discipline, as well as he is ejected as a negligent preacher that will not preach; for ruling I am sure is as essential a part of the pastor's office as preaching.

I shall proceed no further in these confessions. And now, brethren, what remaineth, but that we all cry guilty of these fore-mentioned sins, and humble our souls for our miscarriages before the Lord ? Is this "taking heed to ourselves and to all the flock?" Is this like the pattern that is given us in the text? If we should now prove stout-hearted and un-humbled, how sad a symptom would it be to ourselves, and to the church! The ministry hath oft been threatened and maligned by many sorts of adversaries; and though this may show their impious malice, yet may it also intimate to us God's just indignation. Believe it, brethren, the ministry of England are not the least nor the last in the sins of the land. It is time, therefore, for us to take our part of that humiliation to which we have been so long calling our people. If we have our wits about us, we may perceive that God hath been offended with us, and that the voice that called this nation to repentance, did speak to us as well others. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear" the precepts of repentance proclaimed in so many admirable deliverances and preservations; he that hath eyes to see, let him see them written in so many lines

of blood. By fire and sword hath God been calling us to humiliation; and as "judgment hath begun at the house of God," so, if humiliation begin not there too, it will be a sad prognostication to us and to the land.

What! shall we deny or extenuate our sins, while we call our people to free and full confession? Is it not better to give glory to God by humble confession, than, in tenderness to ourselves, to seek for fig-leaves to cover our nakedness; and to put God to it, to build his glory, which we denied him, upon the ruins of our own, which we preferred before him; and to distrain for that by yet sorer judgments, which we refused voluntarily to surrender to him? Alas! if you put God to get his honour as he can, he may get it, to your everlasting sorrow and dishonour. Sins openly committed, are more dishonourable to us when we hide them, than when we confess them. It is the sin, and not the confession, that is our dishonour. We have committed them before the sun, so that they cannot be hid; and attempts to cloak them do but increase our guilt and shame. There is no way to repair the breaches in our honour, which our sin hath made, but by free confession and humiliation. I durst not but make confession of my own sins: and if any be offended that I have confessed theirs, let them know, that I do but what I have done by myself. And if they dare disown the confession of their sin, let them do it at their peril. But as for all the truly humble ministers of Christ, I doubt not but they will rather be provoked to lament their sins more solemnly, in the face of their several congregations, and to promise reformation.

K

SECTION II.

'HE DUTY OF PERSONAL CATECHISING AND INSTRUCTING THE FLOCK PARTICULARLY RECOMMENDED.

HAVING disclosed and lamented our miscarriages and neglects, our duty for the future lies plain before us God forbid that we should now go on in the sins which we have confessed, as carelessly as we did before. Leaving these things, therefore, I shall now proceed to exhort you to the faithful discharge of the great duty which you have undertaken, and which is the occasion of our meeting here to-day; namely, personal catechising and instructing every one in your parishes or congregations that will submit thereto. And because this is the chief business of the day, I must take leave to insist somewhat the longer on it.

First, I shall state to you some motives to persuade you to this duty.

Secondly, I shall answer some objections which may be made to this duty.

Lastly, I shall give you some directions for performing this duty.

PART I.

MOTIVES TO THIS DUTY.

Agreeably to this plan, I shall proceed to state to vou some motives to persuade you to this duty.