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READER concerning the following SERMON.

W

Hosoever shall judge it worth his time to peruse the following Difcourse, (if it meets with any such) he is desired to take notice, that it was penned, and prepared to have been preached at Westminster-Abbey, at a folemn Meeting of such as had been bred at Westminster School. But the Death of King Charles II. happening in the mean time, the Design of this Solemnity fell to the ground, together with him, and was never resumed since; though what the reason of this might be, I neither know, nor ever thought it worth while to enquire. It being abundantly enough for me, that I can with great truth affirm, that I never offered myself to this service, nor fo much as thought of appearing in a post so manifestly above me, but that a * very great Perfon, (whose word was then Law, as well as his Profession) was pleased mero motu (to Speak in the Prerogative Style, as best suiting fo commanding a Genius) to put this Task upon me, as well as, afterwards, to fuperfede the performance of it: The much kinder Act this of the two, I must confess, and that in more respects than one, as saving me the trouble of delivering, and at the same time blushing at so mean a Discourse, and the Congregation also, the greater, of hearing it. But what farther cause there was, or might be of So much uncertainty in this whole proceeding, I cannot tell; unless possibly, that what his Lordship as Chief Justice had determined, he thought fit as Chancellor to reverse.

Nevertheless, out of an earnest (and I hope very justifiable) desire, partly to pass a due Encomium (or such an one at least as I am able) upon so noble a seat of the Muses, as this renowned School has been always accounted hitherto; and partly to own the Obligation and Debt lying upon me to the place of my Education, I have here at length presumed to publish it. So that, although neither at the time appointed for that folemn Meeting, nor ever since, have I had any opportunity given me to preach this Sermon myself; yet now that it is printed, possibly some other may condescend to do it, as before in several such cases, the like has been too well known to have been done.

PROV. XXII. 6.

Train up a Child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

W

HEN I look back upon the old Infamous Rebellion and Civil War of Forty One, which like an irrefiftible Torrent broke in upon, and bore down the whole frame of our Government, both in Church and State; together with the principal concerns of private Families, and the personal interests of particular Men, (as it is not imaginable, that where a Deluge overtops the mountains, it should spare the valleys); and when I consider also, how fresh all this is in the remembrance of many, and how frequent in the discourse of most, and in both carrying the fame face of horror (as inseparable from fuch reflexions): I have wondered with myself, and that even to astonishment, how it should be possible, that in the turn of so few years, there should be so numerous a party of men in these Kingdoms, who (as if the remembrance of all those dismal days between Forty and Sixty, were utterly erased out of the Minds of Men, and struck out of the Annals of Time) are still prepared and ready, nay, eager and impetuoufly bent to act over the same Tragical Scene again. Witness, first of all, the many virulent and base Libels spread over the whole Nation against the King and his Government. And in the next place, the design of feizing his Royal Person, while the Parliament was held in Oxford in the Year 1682. And likewise the Rye-Confpiracy, formed and intended for the Affaffination of the King, and of the Duke his Brother, in the Year 1683. And lastly (though antecedent in time) the two famous City-Cavalcades of Clubmen in the two Years of 1679 and 1680, countenanced and encouraged under that filly pretence of Burning the Pope, but carry'd on with so much infolence and audacious fury, and fuch an open barefaced contempt of all authority; as if the Rabble had in plain terms bid the Govern