but slavery. The honour went first, and the estate stayed not long behind. This is a summary account of the mischiefs we then groaned under.

And a merciful Providence was pleased to deliver us from every one of them. For we have had a peace at home, a peace, enabling us to make war abroad; and this under a prince of an undoubted title, and an unparalleled goodness: a prince, representing God, not only in point of majesty by vicegerency, as all princes do, but eminently, and beyond example, in that his beloved attribute that must save the world, his pardoning mercy: which he has imitated so far, even towards his bitterest enemies, that he has pardoned more and greater offences, than they themselves could, with any face or modesty, have expected.

But how has this goodness been answered? Have not pardons been followed with plots? the blessings of peace and settlement been entertained with murmurings, repinings, and reflections upon his government, not to say, upon his person also, under whose shadow they enjoy all this? Have those who have been restored to the privileges of their birthright and nobility, behaved themselves with that gratitude to him, that, under God, is the fountain of honour? And have they pursued those courses that must give a lustre to titles, and ennoble nobility itself? Have those that have been restored to their estates, stretched out their hands, and opened their bowels to their indigent fellow-sufferers, who served the same master, and whose fortunes fell sacrifices to the same cause; who fought with them, or rather for them but have not these been rather neglected and scorned for their poverty, the effect of their fidelity;

and, at length, been even ground to powder, by that which was designed for their relief? I am afraid, if we come to be arraigned with these questions, we must be forced to plead guilty to them all.

Having thus despatched the two first things proposed from the text, to wit, the Israelites' unworthy and ungrateful behaviour towards God, upon a great deliverance, together with the aggravation of it; as also shewn how much their case has been made ours, in both respects; I proceed now to the third and last thing proposed from the words, namely, the cause of this unworthy behaviour, which was their not understanding the designs of mercy in the several instances of it: they understood not thy wonders in Egypt. Now in every wonderful passage of Providence, two things are to be considered; first, the author, by whom; second, the end for which it is done neither of which were understood by the Israelites, as they ought to have been.

It is more

1st, And first for the author of it. than probable, that many of the Israelites ascribed most of those wonders to the skill of Moses transcending that of the Egyptian magicians, or to his working by the assistance of an higher and more potent spirit than that which assisted them. Or in case they did believe them to have been the effects of a divine power, yet they did not inure their minds seriously to consider it, so as to have a standing awe of that power imprinted upon their hearts by such a consideration: and he that considers great and concerning matters superficially, in the language of the scripture, does not understand them.

Now I believe this will be found to have been

many, who think atheism a piece of ingenuity, ascribe the whole passage of the king's restoration to chance and accident, or to this man's prudence, or that man's miscarriage; not considering how impossible it was for any human contrivance to lay a train of so many causes, so many accidents, so exactly, and to make so many opposite interests and cross circumstances fall into a direct and perfect subserviency to the composing this one grand work : a work so incomparably great, that to adjudge the entire accomplishment of it to any creature under heaven, would be to rob God of the honour of one of his greatest actions, and to take the crown off from Providence, and to set it upon the head of human counsels. And then, no wonder if ingratitude for a blessing follows, where the author of it is neither understood nor acknowledged.

2dly, The other, and the chief thing to be considered in every wonderful deliverance, is the intent and end of it. Which surely is not, that men should forget it as soon as it is done, or turn it into wantonness, and make it minister to the excesses of pride, luxury, and intemperance. God neither dried up the sea, to bring the Israelites into a land flowing with milk and honey, that they might debauch, revel, and surfeit upon that mercy: nor did he, by a miracle as great, reinstate a company of poor, distressed exiles in the possession of their native country, that they should live at that rate of vanity and superfluity, that the world nowadays cries out upon them for. God did not work wonders to clothe and feed a few worthless parasites with the riches of a kingdom, to fill their cups with the blood of orphans and the tears of the widows. God did not intend

that so universal a blessing, big enough for us all, should be diverted under-ground, into the obscure, narrow channel of a few private purses; leaving so many loyal, suffering, undone persons, to sigh and mourn over their destitute condition, in the day of a public joy. God did not restore us to scoff at religion, and to malign his church, as if the nation and the government might stand well enough without a church, but not without plays. No; surely, this was not the intent of this miraculous deliverance, whatsoever has been made the event of it. The voice of God in it calls us to humility, to industry, to temperance, to public-mindedness, to great and generous actions, for the good both of church and state. And if, instead of these, we resolve to spit in the face of mercy, by still pursuing a vain, luxurious, profane course of life, we shall find, that he who rules in the kingdoms of men, and appoints over them whomsoever he will, can turn the stream of our happiness, and destroy us after he has done us so much good.

To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON XXXIV.

MATTHEW Xvii. 21.

Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. IT was a general received command, and an acknowledged rule of practice in all ages and places of the Christian world, that we are to hear the church; except only of late, since we began to be wiser than the world, and holy above the scripture ; from which this text has been, as it were, discanonized, and its authority struck out of date. But no wonder if the church then had no jurisdiction, when it had scarce so much as a being; and that men did not use to hear it, when it grew almost impossible for them to see it; and if the disciples of those days regarded not much the casting out of evil spirits, who were chiefly busied about rejecting God's ministers.

But heretofore, when men were led by the written word, and not by the ignis fatuus of a bold fancy, styling itself divine revelation, the church was always recognised as Christ's court here upon earth, fully empowered and commissioned from him to decide all emergent controversies, to interpret doubtful commands, and to make wholesome sanctions and institutions, as particular occasions and the circumstances of affairs should require; that so it might appear, that the assistance of the Spirit promised to the church was not a vain thing or a mere verb.

Now it seemed good to the primitive church, acted