was for her faith famous through all the world; Rom. i. 8. Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt; Isaiah xxix. 1. Our own once good estate may aggravate our misery, can never secure our happiness. Son of man, what shall become of the vine, of all plants? saith the Prophet, The more noble it is, the worse it speeds, if fruitless. Oh, let us not be high minded, but fear.

England was once, yea lately was, perhaps is still, the most flourishing Church under heaven; that I may take up the Prophet's words, The glory of Churches, the beauty of excellency; Isaiah xiii. 19: what it may be, what it will be, if we fall still into distractions and various sects, God knows, and it is not hard for men to foresee. Surely, if we grow into that anarchical fashion of Independent Congregations, which I see, and lament to see, affected by too many, not without woeful success; we are gone, we are lost, in a most miserable confusion: we shall be, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah; and it shall be with us, as the Prophet speaks of proud and glorious Babylon, The shepherds shall not make their fold here: wild beasts of the desert shall lie here, and our houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell, and satyrs shall dance there; and the wild beasts of the island skall cry in our desolate palaces; Isaiah xiii, 20, 21. I take no pleasure, God knows, to ominate ill to my dear nation, and dear mother the Church of England; for whose welfare and happiness I could contemn my own life: but I speak it in a true sorrow of heart to perceive our danger, and in a zealous precaution to prevent it. O God, in whose hands the hearts of princes and all the sons of men are, to turn them as the rivers of waters, put it into the heart of our King and Parliament, to take speedy order for the suppression of this wild variety of sects and lawless Independencies, ere it be too late.

II. Thus much for the Subject and Terms of this change: the AGENT follows; He turneth.

Never was there any sterility, whereof there may not be a cause given. Either the season is unkindly parching with drought, or drenching with wet, or nipping with frost, or blasting with pernicious airs, or rotting with mildews: or some mis-accident of the place; inundations of waters, incursions and spoil of enemies, sudden mortalities of the inhabitants: or some natural fault in the soil; or misdemeanour of the owners; idleness, ill-husbandry, in mistiming, neglect of meet helps, unculture, ill choice of seed: but, whatever be the second cause, we are sure who is the first; He turneth. Is there any evil in the city, and he hath not done it?

Alas, what are all secondary causes, but as so many lifeless puppets? There is a Divine Hand unseen, that stirs the wires, and puts upon them all their motion: so, as our Saviour said of Pilate, we may say of all the activest instruments both of earth and hell, Thou couldest have no power over me, unless it were given thee from above. Is Joseph sold to the merchants, by the villany of his envious brethren? The Lord sent me before you; Gen. xlv. 5. Do the Chaldeans and Sabeans feloniously drive away the herds of

Job doth the Devil by a tempestuous_gust_bluster down the house, and rob him of his children? The Lord hath taken ; Job i 21. Is a man slain by chance-medley, the ax-head slipping from the helve? Dominus tradidit. So, whether they be acts of nature, of will, of casualty; whether done by natural agents, by voluntary, by casual, by supernatural; Digitus Dei est hic; He turneth. What can all other causes either do or be, without Him, who is the original of all entity and causality?

There is much wisdom and justice, in distinguishing causes, and giving each their own; whereof, while some have failed, they have run into injurious and frantic extremes: while, on the one side, wild and ignorant heretics have ascribed all to God's agency, without acknowledging secondary causes; on the other, atheous fools ascribe all to the second and immediate causes, not looking up to the hand of an overruling and all-contriving Providence. We must walk warily betwixt both: yielding the necessary operation of subordinate means, employed by the divine wisdom; and adoring that infinite wisdom and power, which both produces and employs those subordinate means to his own holy purposes.

own.

Tell me then, art thou crossed in thy designs and expectation? Blame not distempers of times, disappointment of undertakings, intervention of cross accidents. This is, as some shifting alchymist that casts all the fault of his mis-success upon his glass or his furnace: but kiss that invisible hand of power, which disposeth of all these sublunary events; if against thy will, yet according to his Even nature itself will teach us, to reduce all second causes to the first. Behold, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens; they shall hear the earth; the earth shall hear the corn, wine, oil; and they shall hear Israel; Hos. ii. 21, 22. scale, whereof no staff can be missing. without corn, wine, oil? How should the without the yieldance of the earth? How should the earth yield these, without the influence of heaven? How can heaven yield these influences, without the command of the Maker?

Lo here is a necessary How should Israel live corn, wine, oil, be had

When I meet, therefore, with a querulous Husbandınan, he tells me of a churlish soil; of a wet seed-time; of a green winter; of an unkindly spring; of a lukewarm summer; of a blustering autumn: but I tell him of a displeased God; who will be sure to contrive and fetch about all seasons and elements, to his own most wise drifts and purposes.

Thou art a Merchant: what tellest thou me of cross winds; of Michaelmas flaws; of ill weathers; of the wafting of the archangel's wings, when thou passest by the Grecian promontory; of tedious becalmings; of piratical hazards; of falsehood in trades, breaking of customers, craft and undermining of interlopers? All these are set on by heaven, to impoverish thee.

Thou art a Courtier, and hast laid a plot to rise: if obsequious servility to the great, if those gifts in the bosom which our blunt ancestors would have termed bribes, if plausible suppalpations, if restless importunities will hoise thee, thou wilt mount: but some

thing there is, that clogs thy heel, or blocks thy way: either some secret detractor hath forelaid thee by a whispering misintimation; or some misconstruction of thy well-meant offices hath drawn thee into unjust suspicion; or the envy of some powerful corrival trumps in thy way, and holds thee off from thine already swallowed honour. There is a hand above, that manageth all this. What are we, but the keys of this great instrument of the world, which he touches at pleasure; drepressing some, while others rise, and others again stand still ?

Yea, let me make higher instances of you Men of State, that sway the great affairs of kingdoms; and, by your wise and awful arbitrements, decree, under Sovereignty, of either war or peace; and either take up or slacken the reins of commerce: so framing the many wheels of this vast engine, that all may move happily together. You may rack your brains, and enlarge your fore gn intelligences, and cast in the symboles of your prudent contribu tions to the common welfare; but know withal, Frustrà nisi Dominus: let your projects be never so fair, your treaties never so wise and cautious, your enterprises never so hopeful, if he do but blow upon them, they are vanished. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor yet bread to the wise; Eccl. ix. 11. What should we do then, but, first, look up to that Almighty Hand, that swayeth all these sublunary, yea and celestial affairs? It is the weak fashion of foolish children, to ascribe all their kindnesses or discontents to the next cause. If good befal them, it is the Tailor, to whom they are beholden for their coat; the Con fectionary, for their sweet-meats: not their Parents, who pay for all these. Again, if the knife be taken away from them the Ser vant is blamed; and beaten with their feeble, but angry hand: not the Mother, that commanded it. Yea it is the brutish fashion of unreasonable creatures, to run after and bite the stone; not regarding the hand that threw it. We Christians should have more wit: and, since we know that Nature itself is no other than God's ordinance of second causes, and Chance is but an ignorance of the true causes, and our freest wills are overruled by the First Mover; oh let us improve our reason and Christianity so much, as to acknowledge the secret, but most certain hand of an Omnipotent Agent in all the occurrents of the world: for, certainly, there cannot be a greater injury to the great King of Heaven and Earth, than to suffer second causes to run away with the honour of the first, whether in good or evil.

Secondly; what should we do, but kiss the rod, and him that smites with it; patiently receiving all chastisements from the hand of a powerful, wise, just God? Had we to do with an agent less than an Omnipotent, we might perhaps think of him as one said of the Egyptian Magicians, They could hurt, but they could not heal; they could do evil, but not good: or we might fear something might betide us against, beside, without, his will: finite agents cannot go beyond their own sphere were the power of great princes as large as their wills,

none of their designs should be ineffectual. Or, had we to do with a powerful agent that were not also infinitely wise, we might think he might be overreached in his plot. But now, that infinite power and wisdom are the very essence of God, let us, whatever doth or may befall us, take up that holy resolution of good Eli, It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good; 1 Sam. iii. 18.

But, in the mean time, let not those wicked wretches, by whose unjust hand the just God thinks good to scourge his own, comfort themselves, with the hope of an impunity, because they are unwittingly used in his executions: no; they are no whit the more innocent, because God beats his own with their malice: neither shall they be less avenged, because they have heedlessly done God's will, while they despitefully do their own. Ashur is the rod of God's wrath: when God hath sufficiently whipt and drawn blood of his Israel by him, he casts him into the fire: the fire of that wrath, which Ashur feels from God, is a thousand times hotter, than the fire of that wrath, which Israel feels from Ashur. Shortly, God will have his due honour, both in afflicting his own, and in plaguing those that afflicted them: his agency is equal in both; He turneth a fruitful land into barrenness.

III. Hitherto the Agent: now follows the MERITING CAUSE of this Change; The wickedness of them that dwell therein.

God is an absolute Lord; Domini est terra. He is not accountable for any reason of his change. Whether of barrenness or plenty, there needs no other ground to be given, but, Quia voluit. And even so it is in this stirring piece of earth, which we carry about us. Why this womb or those loins are sterile, that fruitful; yea, why this or that soul is so; he needs not give any reason, but his will.

Yet, so far doth he condescend to us, as to impart to us an account of the ground of his proceedings. Man suffereth for his sin, saith the Prophet; and the earth suffereth here, for the wickedness of the inhabitants. Evermore God hath some motive for the inflicting of evil. As it is in the main point of a man's eternal estate, man's salvation is ex mero beneplacito, The gift of God is eternal life; but his damnation is never without a cause in man, The soul that sinneth shall die: so it is in this case of lesser good or evil; when God speaks of turning wildernesses into ponds of water, in the following words ye hear no cause assigned but mere mercy; but, when he speaks of turning fruitful lands into barrenness, now it is for the wickedness of in-dwellers. This is a most sure rule therefore; All judgments are inflicted for sin: Chastisements are out of love, but punishment out of justice. Yea, so doth God order his judgments commonly, that in the punishment we may read the sin; and in the sin we may foresee the punishment: and can confidently define, where punishment is, there hath been sin; and where sin is, there will be punishment.

I have heard and seen some ignorant impatients, when they have found themselves to smart with God's scourge, cast a sullen frown back upon him, with Cur me cædis? or with the male-contented

mother of the striving twins, Why am I thus? Alas, what merėj what miserable strangers are these men at home? There is nothing in the world, that they do more mis-know, than themselves: had they ever but looked in, if but at the door, yea at the window, yea at the key-hole of their own hearts or lives, they could not choose but cry out with holy Job, I have sinned, what shall I do to thee, O thou Preserver of Men? They would accuse, arraign, and condemn themselves; and would rather bethink, which of those many thousand sins, which they have multiplied against heaven, they are called to reckoning for; and would have no word in their mouth, but mea culpa, mea culpa.

Now, as where punishment is there was sin; so, where sin is there will be, there must be punishment. If thou dost ill, saith God to Cain, sin lies at the door; Gen. iv. 7. Sin, that is, punishment for sin: they are so inseparable, that one word implies both: for the doing ill is the sin, that is within doors; but the suffering ill is the punishment, and that lies like a fierce mastiff at the door, and is ready to fly in our throat when we look forth: and, if it do not then seize upon us, yet it dogs us at the heels; and will be sure to fasten upon us, at our greatest disadvantage: Tum gravior, cùm tarda venit, &c. Joseph's brethren had done heinously ill: what becomes of their sin? it makes no noise; but, follows them slily and silently in the wilderness: it follows them home to their father's house: it follows them into Egypt. All this while, there is no news of it; but, when it found them cooped up three days in Pharaoh's ward, now it bays at them, and flies in their faces: We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, &c. Gen. xlii. 21.

What should I instance in that, whereof not Scripture, not books, but the whole world is full; the inevitable sequences of sin and punishment? Neither can it be otherwise. Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right? saith Abraham; Gen. xviii. 25. Right, is to give every one his due: wages is due to work; now the wages of sin is death: so then, it stands upon no less ground, than very necessary and essential justice of God, that, where wickedness hath led the way, there punishment must follow.

There is more need to apply than to prove so clear a truth. How then, I beseech you, Honourable and Beloved, stands the case with us? Where is the man, that dare flatter us so much, as to say there is not store of wickedness found in our hands? Woe is me! we are in the eyes of all the world, no less eminent in God's favours, than our own sinfulness. It is past our power, to either conceal, or deny, or excuse our abominable iniquities. Certainly, if we change not, we are sure God will not. What can we then expect from that just hand of the Almighty, but that he should turn our fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of us that dwell in it? I may not be so saucy, to presage by what course he will do it. That Almighty Arbiter of the World hath a thousand ways to his own ends: but it is not an improbable note of the author of our Fasciculus Temporum, that there is Trifarius cursus rerum;