God's Mind in his Footsteps, or in his Word? This is, as if when we have a Man's Handwriting, we should endeavour to take his Meaning by the measure of his Foot.

But still, Conscience, Conscience is pleaded as a Covering for all Enormities, an Answer to all Questions and Accusations. Ask, what made them fight against, imprison, and murder their lawful Sovereign? Why Confcience. What made them extirpate the Government, and pocket the Revenue of the Church? Conscience. What made them perjure themselves with contrary Oaths? what makes Swearing a Sin, and yet Forfwearing to be none? what made them lay hold on God's Promises, and break their own? Confcience. What made them sequester, persecute, and undo their Brethren, rape their Estates, ruin their Families, get into their Places; and then say, they only robbed the Egyptians? Why, till this large capacious Thing, their Lonfcience; which is always of a much larger Compass than their Understanding. In a word, we have lived under such a Model of Religion, as has counted nothing Impious but Loyalty, nothing Abfurd but Restitution.

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But, O Bleffed God; to what an Height can profperous, audacious Impiety arife! Was it not enough, that Men once Crucify'd Chrift;

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Christ; but that there should be a Generation of Men who should also Crucify Christianity itself? Muft he, who taught no Defence but Patience, allowed no Armour but Submission, and never warranted any Man to shed any other Blood but his own, be now again mocked with Soldiers, and vouched the Patron and Author of all those hideous Murders and Rebellions, which an ordinary Impiety would stand amazed at the hearing of? and which in this World he has so plainly condemned by his Word, and will hereafter as severely sentence in his own Person? Certainly, these Monsters are not only the Spots of Christianity, but so many standing Exceptions from Humanity and Nature: And fince most of them are Anabaptifts, it is pity that in repeating their Baptifm, they did not Baptize themselves into another Religion.

5. For the fifth and last place, let us view the Horridness of the Fact in the fatal Consequences which did attend it. Every great Villany is like a great Absurdity, drawing after it a numerous Train of Homogeneous ConSequences; and none ever spread itself into more than this. But I shall endeavour to reduce them all to these two Sorts. 1. Such as were of a Civil,

2. Such as were of a Religious Concern.

1. And first for the Civil, Political Consequences of it.

There immediately followed a Change of Government, of a Government, whose Praise had been proclaimed for many Centuries, and enrolled in the large fair Characters of the Subjects Enjoyment and Experience. It was now shred into a Democracy; and the Stream of Government being cut into many Channels, ran thin and shallow: Whereupon the Subject having many Masters, every Servant had so many distinct Servitudes.

But the Wheel of Providence, which only they look'd upon, and that even to a Giddiness, did not stop here; but by a fatal, ridi culous Viciffitude, both the Power and Wickedness of those Many, was again revolved, and compacted into One: From that * One again it returned to Many, with feveral ar tending Variations, till at length we pitch'd upon + One again; One beyond whom they could not go, the Ne plus ultra of all Regal Excellency, as all Change tends to, and at last ceases upon its acquired Perfection.

Nor was the Government only, but also the Glory of the English Nation changed; Distinction of Orders confounded, the Gen

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* Cromwell:

† King Charles II.

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try out-braved, and the Nobility, who va ted the Bishops out of their Dignities in Parliament, by the just Judgment of God, thrust out themselves, and brought under the Scorn and Imperious Lash of a Beggar on Horseback; || Learning discountenanced, and the Univerfities threatned, their Revenues to be fold, their Colleges to be demolished; the Law to be Reformed after the same Model; the Records of the Nation to be burnt. Such an Inundation and Deluge of Ruin, Reformation, and Confusion, had spread itself upon the whole Land, that it feemed a kind of Resemblance of Noah's Deluge, in which only a few Men survived amongst many Beasts.

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2. The other fort of Consequences were of a Religious Concernment. I speak not of the Contempt, Rebuke, and Difcouragement lying upon the Divines, or rather the * Preachers of those Days; for they brought thefe Miseries upon themselves, and had more cause a great deal to curse their own Seditions Sermons, than to curse Meroz. They founded the first Trumpet to Rebellion, and like true Saints had the Grace to persevere in what they first began; courting and recognizing an Ufurper, calling themselves his † Loyal and

|| All this was sir Henry Vane's Villanous and Monstrous Ad

vice.

2.

Obedient Subjects, never enduring fo much as to think of their Lawful Sovereign, till at length the Danger of Tythes, their Unum neceffarium, scared them back to their Allegi

ance.

I speak not therefore of these. But the great destructive Consequence of this Fact was, that it has left a lasting Slur upon the Proteftant Religion. Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in Askelon, left the Daughters of the Philistines triumph, left the Papacy laugh us to scorn; as, if they had no other fort of Proteftants to deal with, I am fure they well might.

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I confefs, the Seditious Writings of fome, who called themselves Proteftants, have fufficiently bespattered their Religion. See Calvin warranting the three Estates to oppose their Prince, 4 Instit. ch. 20. Sect. 31. See Master Knox's Appeal, and in that his Arguments for refifting the Civil Magistrate. Read Mr. Buchanan's Discourse de jure Regni apud Scotos. Read the Vindicia contra Tyrannos, under the Name of Junius Brutus, writ by Ouoman the Civilian. See Pareus upon the thirteenth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, where he ftates Atrocem aliquam Injuriam, a large Term, and of very easy Application, to be a fufficient Reason for Subjects to take up Arms

against their King. A Book, instead of the Author,

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