rantable to pray for the Perpetuity of his Life amongst us, and Reign over us, we could not do it in Words more proper and significant for that purpose, than that God would vouchsafe to preserve the One, and continu e the Other, till we should defire to fee a Change of Either. To which God, the Great King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, be rendered and aScribed, as is most due, all Praise, Might, Majesty, and Dominion, both now and for. evermore. Amen. A A SERMON Preached before King CHARLES II. AT HIS CHAPPEL in WHITEHALL, ON THE Thirtieth Day of Jan. 166. BEING THE ANNIVERSARY FOF THE Execrable MURDER Of the Late King CHARLES I. Of Glorious Memory. ILLUSTRIOUS, BLESSED, AND Never-Dying Memory OF CHARLES I. KING OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE and IRELAND, Cauflefly Rebelled against, Unhumanly Im prifon'd, and at length Barbaroufly Murder'd before the Gates of his own Palace, by the Worst of Men, and the most Obliged of Subjects. : JUDGES XIX. 30. And it was fo, that all that Jawit, faid, there was no fuch deed done or feen, from the Day that the Children of Ifrael came up out of the Land of Egypt, unto this Day: confider of it, take advice, and speak your minds. T HE Occafion of these Words was a Foul and Detestable Fact, which had happen'd in one of the Tribes of Ifrael; and the Occafion of that Fact was (as the Text not obfcurely intimates) the Want of Kingly Government amongst the Ifraelites at that Time. It being noted as a Thing of particular Remark in Judges xxi, and the last, that this Villany was committed, wher E4 when there was no King in Israel; and when (as a natural Confequent thereof) Men resolved to live at large; every one, without Check or Controul, doing (as the Text tells us) what was right in his own eyes; or (according to the more Sanctify'd Language of our late Times) as the Spirit moved him. Such a Liberty of Conscience (it seems) had they then got, for ferving the Devil after his and their own Way. As for the Infamous Actors in this Tragical Scene, we have them boldly owning their shameless Fact in open Field, avowing it with Sword in Hand; and for fome Time defending the fame with Victory and Success, againft their Brethren, then the peculiar People and Church of God, twice routed and flaughtered before them in a Righteous Cause; a Cause managed by all the rest of the Tribes engaged in it, and that not more with the proper Arms of War in one Hand, than with a Commiffion from God Himself in the Other. In which, and the like respects, so great a Resemblance must needs be acknowledged between this, and the late Civil War amongst ourselves here in England; that the Proceedings of Forty One, and some of the following Years, may well pass for the Devil's Works in a second Edition, or a foul and odi ous |