every thing else is made subservient to you ? You expect from your servants all possible obedience; though both you and they came into the world, and shall go out of it again, upon equal terms; though your bodies are formed of the same materials, and your souls have one common extraction; yet except every thing be done for you just as you would have it, you storm and rage, make large demands upon your dependants, and exact the most punctual compliance from them; which if they fail in paying, they are sure to suffer for it; to be scourged, or starved, or choked; to be laden with irons, and, it may be, to rot in a noisome dungeon, while all this time you consider not your profession, that God is your master, though you exercise upon a man, like yourself, such a savage tyranny. Wherefore be your sufferings from the hand of God never so severe, though he should pour upon you at present all the vials of his wrath, you have deserved the worst of them; and it concerns you farther to take notice, that if they have no effect, and do not with all their terrors turn you to God, he hath still a prison in reserve for you, from whence you shall never come out, a fire which never shall be quenched, and an everlasting punishment, which no cries will ever mitigate; where God will not hear you, because you will not now hear him, who by the voice of his prophet hath called to you, and said, "Hear the word of the Lord, ye

children of Israel; for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away." God, you may observe, doth here declare his displeasure, that there is no knowledge of him in the land, that his name is not confessed nor feared. He resents and arraigns these heavy crimes of lying, lusting, and cheating; he threatens the cruelty, the impiety, and madness of the age; yet no one is reformed by it. You see and feel the execution of his menaces, and yet your present evils have no such effect upon you as to put you upon any care of guarding against future. In the midst of those heavy pressures which lie so hard upon you, that you are almost stifled by them, you yet find leisure for a farther progress in wickedness, and, even in the height of your danger, for turning your censures and reflections upon others rather than yourselves. You think it hard that God should be displeased with you, as if your ill lives had really deserved his favour, or the measure of your sufferings had exceeded that of your provocations.

4. You, whose province it is to be a judge of others, exercise for once your office upon your own person, and judge yourself; look impartially into the secrets of your conscience; and, as now there is no where left any fear or shame in offending, and men sin with as much confidence as if they were to make a merit of it; I beseech you to see yourself, and you will find, I am persuaded, upon the self-examination which I am now recommending to you, that covetousness makes you an extortioner, or that anger provokes you to cruelty, or that gaming tempts you to profuseness. And can you then wonder that the wrath of God against man increases, when the offences of man against God increase; or that the vengeance of the one rises in proportion to the provocations of the other? You complain of new wars and enemies; when yet, alas! if they did not appear from abroad, they would be found at home; and if you could suppress at pleasure the attempts of foreigners and barbarians, you would have a much harder task of it to stop the injuries and insolences of domestic oppressors. You think the barrenness of the earth, and the prevailing famine, great and mighty grievances; as if they really made more havoc, or did more mischief, than your greediness of gain, and your monopolies of corn, which raise the price of it as much as the greatest scarcity. The heavens, you object, are shut up, and withhold the rain from you; whilst yet you suffer your barns to

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be shut up, and to withhold from the inhabitants of the earth, what should nourish and sustain them. There is not, you say, the usual increase, either of vegetables or of animals. Why, if there were, the poor, you are sensible, would be never the better for it. You are disturbed at the continuance and progress of this same epidemical distemper; when yet it discovers the latent wickedness of some, and gives an occasion to the increase of it amongst others; as the sick have no compassion extended to them, and as the survivor's covetousness expects their death, with impatience, whose life withholds him from falling on the prey. Our greatest quarrel with you is, that you vent your rage and fury upon the innocent, and, to the great dishonour of God, you vex and persecute his faithful servants. It is a small matter, it seems, with you, to corrupt your lives and manners with all the varieties and kinds of wickedness which can be thought of; to subvert the great ends of all true religion by your superstitious practices; to drop all regard and reverence for the majesty of the supreme being; but you must add, besides, to all this load of guilt, the farther aggravation of oppressing those who are devoted to his service, and would give him the glory due unto his name. Is it not enough that you do not, in your own person, worship the true God? Wherefore must you needs be so hard upon those who do? You neither will do it yourself, nor suffer it to be done

by others. Not only they who worship dumb idols, and images made by the hands of man, but even they who pay their religious addresses to monsters, to things which have no resemblance to them in nature, it seems, can please you; only the worshipper of the true God is peculiarly unfortunate, and can find no acceptance with you. Your temples and altars are kept always warm and smoking with your sacrifices; and yet the true God hath no altars but what we are forced to conceal. Crocodiles, and apes, and stones, and serpents have religious worship paid to them; whilst the true God can have none, or, however, none with safety to the persons of the worshippers. You banish, you fine, you throw into chains and prisons; fire, and sword, and wild beasts execute your vengeance upon men who are innocent and upright, and favourites of heaven. Nor are you pleased to put us presently out of our pain, or to dispatch us speedily; but you invent for us lingering torments, you multiply upon us various instruments of cruelty; nor is your rage contented with accustomed or common punishments, but you labour hard to find out such as are new, and as yet unheard-of. What savage rage, what cruelty of disposition, and appetite to torment us, is this, whereof your practice towards us makes a discovery! Take which part you please of the following dilemma, and try if you can justify it. It is either a crime, or no crime to be a christian :