soul and spirit was even lost in clay and rubbish, and made poor, and low, and grovelling by the disciplines of a long captivity. How were these able to have looked Pharaoh and his armies in the face, who had so long trembled under the frown and lash of the meanest of his taskmasters! What could their trowels have done against the Egyptian swords; their aprons against the others' armour and artillery! They could be confident of nothing, but of sinking under the inequality of the encounter.

And could there be a greater deliverance than thus to fetch a lamb out of the jaws of the lion, to wrest weakness out of the hands of power, and the captive from the clutches of the strong! This was the case of the Israelites.

And surely we shall find that it was our own too. For could there be a greater disproportion than there was between us and our oppressing enemies? Were they not, even in the very day of our deliverance, as strong, as mighty, and well armed as ever? Were their hands at all weakened, that they could not strike, or their swords blunted, that they could not wound? Naturally speaking, I am sure they were not: but whether their hearts were for the present changed by an immediate impression from heaven, or their hands overruled by the art and conduct of that great restorer of his country; certain it is, they were like men in amaze, and not able to act the habitual villainy of their principles and dispositions. So that we saw our king returning to his own triumphantly, at the head of that army by which he had been driven and kept out; an army with their swords in their hands, and, for the most part, with their old principles in their

hearts. And had not this deliverance all the marks of greatness and prodigy, that (be it spoke with reverence) almightiness itself could stamp upon it? Search the annals of story, run over all the records of antiquity, and give it a parallel, if you can. It could be none but the Almighty's doing, and therefore ought to be marvellous in our eyes. It carried its author in its front, and every circumstance of the transaction was noted with the traces and signatures of a divine power and contrivance. It was too great for the measures of any finite, created agents.

2dly, A second property of the deliverance vouchsafed to the Israelites at the Red sea, was its unexpectedness. Their wits failed them to contrive an escape, as well as their power to make good a resistance. The enemy was behind, and the sea before them; that is, death both faced them and pursued them too: and could they expect, that either the hardened heart of a Pharaoh should relent, and bid them return, or the devouring element forget its cruelty, and turn their sanctuary to protect them?

It is true, indeed, that if any people in the world might have expected such miraculous countermands upon nature, they were the Israelites, to whom custom and frequency had made miracles so familiar, as even to offer them to their expectation. Yet we know they were far from inferring their future preservation from their former deliverance, and that the God of their fathers would act as miraculously in one, as he had done in the other; and thereupon we read these worthy expostulations of their infidelity, striking directly indeed at Moses, but tacitly reflecting upon God himself: Exod. xiv. 11, 12, Be

cause there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us out of Egypt? Did we not say to thee in Egypt, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? for it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness. Death was their belief, death their fear, nothing but death their expectation. But now how welcome, how sweet, and even transporting must such a deliverance needs be, as steps in between a great mischief and a great fear; as disappoints and confutes the terror of a man's expectations, and (as I may so say) baffles him according to his heart's desire? For the expectation and hope of a good fulfilled, is not so pleasing as the expectation and fear of a great evil defeated. It does not affect the mind with so sensible, so quick, and so exalting a delight. The reason of which is, because enjoyment in this state of mortality does not so much gratify, as misery does afflict us; and consequently nature more desires to be delivered from one, than to be possessed of the other. If ever there is a picture of silver, to set forth an apple of gold, it is when the mercy of the deliverance is set forth and enhanced by the precedent fears and despairs of him that is delivered: for can any delight be greater, than for a man to set his foot upon the neck of that enemy, by whom but three minutes before he expected certainly to die? To behold that sea opening itself as a bosom to embrace, which he could not expect to be any other than a grave to swallow and consume? With these circumstances of endearment did God deliver the Israelites.

And with the very same did he advance the mercy of our deliverance: for it was a thing so much beyond men's expectation, before the doing of it, that they could scarce believe it when it was done; the astonishing strangeness of the thing made men almost question the reports of their own eyes and ears, and disbelieve the information of their very senses, so that we might in that day have took up those emphatical words of the prophet David: Lord, when thou didst turn the captivity of thy people, then were we like unto those that dream. The matter and subject of our joy was so strange and unlikely, that, like men in a dream, we seemed to enjoy it rather by the flattering representations of fancy, than to possess it by any reality of fruition.

For so improbable was it, a little before it happened, that foreign princes and nations began to lay aside all hope of the king's restoration; and our next neighbours, together with their hopes of that, began to give over also their respects to his person, banishing him out of their territories, without any consideration of his near alliance of blood, and (which ought to have been the warmest argument in the breast of kings) the distress of majesty by such an act of inhospital barbarity, as before was unheard of, and perhaps never practised but by themselves. And as for affairs here at home, factions and animosities grew higher and higher, clashing indeed amongst themselves, but unanimously conspiring against the royal interest. Nay, and did not the wonted fidelity and courage of many begin to warp and decline, while they were willing to buy a settlement under any usurped government, with

the price of their allegiance to the right and lawful: so that the title of the just heir was looked upon as forlorn and desperate, and the restitution of it exploded as a thing impracticable; and that by many virtuoso's who now enjoy so much under it, that they forget what formerly they deserved from it. And so far did things then seem to settle upon another bottom, that as the Israelites said, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians; so all parties, but the royal and episcopal, were recognising and courting the new puny protector, and adoring that rising ignis fatuus as the Persians do the sun, comparing him (forsooth) to a peaceable Solomon, succeeding in the throne of his warlike father David; and there is no doubt, but the father was just as like David for his piety, as the son was like Solomon for his wisdom; much at one.

But so little did their covenant put them in mind of their king, that his highness's most loyal and obedient subjects, especially of the schismatical preaching order, desired no change, nor ever thought of any, till the ministerial maintenance (so much as remained of it) began to reel and totter, and be made a prey to those whom they themselves had preached into such principles, as would in the issue have certainly devoured them.

And as these persons desired no change, so the hearts even of the loyal and the faithful began to fail, and scarce to expect any; at least in such a manner as it came to pass. For who could have believed, that so many parties, whom both their guilt and interest had made so inveterate against their prince, could ever have fallen down at the feet of offended majesty, but in the field? That those whose