affections reign; when public spiritedness decays, and religion declines, and charity waxes cold; the natural effect and result hereof can be nothing else but the desolation, the misery, the ruins of a land: so that men may justly blame themselves for the calamities of their own making. But blessings and comforts are more directly and plainly the work of God. No device or art of man could ever be able to procure even the ordinary comforts of life, without God's special assistance: and as to extraordinary turns and revolutions of State, such as we this day commemorate, his interposal in such cases is often clear and manifest. They are brought about by surprising incidents, and by some marvellous train of providences; to show that the whole contriving, conducting, and completing them are entirely his. I proceed then, II. To apply the general doctrine to the particular case of our late troubles, and our deliverance from them in the happy Restoration. We must first take a brief, summary survey of those calamities, under which this Church and nation had for many years groaned. Whoever will be at the pains to peruse the black history of those rebellious times, will there find such amazing circumstances of distraction, horror, and confusion, as are scarce to be paralleled in any Christian annals: such insolencies, oppressions, rapines, murders, treasons, so openly carried on, without remorse or shame, among Christians, reformed Christians, neighbours of the same kingdom, and brethren of the same household; and all this with such a glozing show of piety and devotion, with hands and eyes lift up to heaven, seeking the Lord, as the phrase then was: such a scene, I believe, as was never before seen or heard of; and when it was, might have made a generous mind almost disdain the relation he bears. to the species, or even to blush for the reproach of being reckoned to the kind. Misguided zealots took upon them to set rules to their superiors; to trample on all laws, sacred or civil; to involve three kingdoms in a dreadful war, wherein were lost above two hundred thousand lives; the bravest blood of the country spilled, the worthiest families stripped, plundered, and undone. Under pretence of espousing liberty and property, those wretched patriots pulled down all the ancient fences made for the security of both; showing at length what kind of liberty it was that they affected: liberty to imprison, banish, plunder, and destroy all that had either loyalty to provoke their resentments, or revenues to supply their avarice: liberty first to deface, spoil, and crush the monarch, and next to accuse and condemn, and in the end to murder the man: liberty to tread under foot all authorities, to set up and pull down parliaments, or to model them at pleasure; to abolish a whole House of Peers, and almost to extinguish the nobility, raising up the very dregs of the populace to usurp their places: in a word, liberty to turn a kingdom upside down, and to leave it languishing, and well nigh expiring in its miserable distractions and most deplorable confusions. Such was the sad and mournful estate of this unhappy island in its civil capacity. But its religious one was still worse, and of more melancholy consideration; inasmuch as the concernments of it are higher, and reach farther than the other. Our excellent Church was soon vanquished and trodden down, after the King, its nursing father, had lost his head in defence of it. When monarchy once failed, episcopacy could not long survive: that venerable, ancient, apostolical order fell a sacrifice to misguided zeal and blind popular fury. Then began conceited ignorance to triumph wide and far over learning and sound knowledge; novelty over antiquity; confusion over order; schism, heresy, and blasphemy, over unity, orthodoxy, and sincere piety. This was refining upon the Church of England! These our reformers! It were endless to proceed in the melancholy story of the Church, and most deplorable state of religion in those times; when it seemed all to degenerate into a solemn cant, or into the vilest hypocrisy; was mostly outside, cover, and pretence, to beguile some persons out of their estates, and others out of their lives. But I forbear: let us come to the consideration of God's overruling providence in those sad calamities. It may sound harsh to say it, but so it was; the hand of the Lord was in all this. Those deplorable distractions were his judgments; the enraged multitudes were the ministers of his vengeance: and what they did wickedly, traitorously, rebelliously, was by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, wisely, righteously, and even graciously permitted. Perhaps for the trial and exercise of good men, to improve their virtues, and to heighten their rewards perhaps, to teach us, by dear-bought experience, to set the higher price and value upon good order and regularity, and to make us for ever after abhor such principles or such practices as tend to overthrow them. Perhaps for the greater honour of our excellent Church, permitted, for a while, to lie bleeding of the wounds received from her enemies; that as in most other circumstances she had come the nearest to the primitive churches, so she might not be far behind them in sufferings also. However dark and mysterious the designs of Providence may be, one thing however is evident, that God's avenging justice was particularly seen in those times of trouble; justice upon a sinful nation, upon all orders and degrees of men, upon all kinds, sects, and parties; as all, more or less, contributed either to the rise, or growth, or continuance of them. Faults there were, many and great, on all sides; and all in their turns suffered for them. The churchmen and royalists, many of them, for being too full of heat and resentment, for taking unwarrantable steps at the beginning, and making use of unseasonable severities, and some unusual stretches of prerogative; which gave great offence, and first paved the way to our future troubles. And these were the first that felt the weight of the ensuing calamities. The disciplinarians as justly suffered for the lengths they ran in the rebellion; for their unreasonable prejudices against the crown and the mitre; and for the desperate steps they took to introduce their discipline, and to new model our religion. They were remarkably defeated and disappointed in all their fairest hopes and most promising expectations; the Divine justice, at length, raising up a new sect to be a scourge for them, as they had been to others. And even the new sect, or medley of sectaries, (as they were then called,) they did not long enjoy the spoils of their iniquity, but were many of them grievously oppressed and harassed by the tyrannical power which themselves had set up. Thus was the Divine justice visibly exercised upon all parties one after another: which at length happily ended in disposing all to accept of their true and only cure, the Restoration. The Sovereign resumed his throne; the nobility their ancient grandeur, and seats in parliament; the Bishops their sees; the loyal gentry their estates and privileges; the commons their rights and franchises; the whole kingdom their freedom, safety, and tranquillity. The power military again became regularly subject to the civil; and now law and justice flowed in their ancient channels: mutiny and discord ceased; all things reverted to their primitive order and regularity, calm, quiet, and composed: nothing but joy and gladness seen in every face; some few only excepted, whom their crimes had made desperate, and who were left to repine in corners. "This was the Lord's doing, and it is yet mar❝vellous in our eyes:" that so many jarring factions, and disunited parties, with so many different views, divided interests and affections, should yet unite together in one common design, should join heads, hearts, and hands. in the Restoration; though they had most of them again and again entered into solemn resolutions and repeated oaths, covenants, and engagements to the contrary. What could ever have brought about so surprising a revolution, so easily, so suddenly, so irresistibly, but an Almighty arm presiding over kingdoms, and bearing sovereign sway over the very hearts and wills of men? I need not proceed farther in describing the happiness of the Restoration: I have been doing it in effect, and perhaps in the strongest and most awakening manner, while I have been setting forth the many and dreadful miseries which preceded it, and from which we were delivered by it. All happiness in this world is but comparative, and is never so clearly seen, or sensibly perceived, as when we duly consider or experimentally know what it was to want it. The blessing of health is then best understood after we have felt the pain, the wearisomeness, the anguish of an acute disease or a long sickness. The fruits of liberty have the more grateful relish after the uneasy hours of a close and tedious confinement. How welcome is repose and rest after great toils and fatigues! How comfortable is peace after the doubtful hazards and hardships of a consuming war! And how exceedingly delightful and transporting must good order and government appear, after recounting the miseries of popular tumults, the distracting scenes of anarchy and confusion! Seeing then it hath pleased Almighty God thus miraculously to heal our breaches and to bind up our wounds; what remains, but that we "rejoice in the day which the "Lord hath made," and that we endeavour proper and suitable returns of praise and adoration, of obedience and service to him? Which brings me to my last general head, namely, III. To point out the proper use and improvement to be made of all. And here I need not go farther than the advice of the text; "In the day of prosperity be "joyful;" but consider also that the day of adversity may come. Therefore prepare for it, and guard against it. And in order thereto, out of many good rules which might be proper to this end, I shall mention two only, that I may draw to a conclusion. 1. The first is, to be watchful over the beginnings, over the first tendencies to public broils or distractions. To what a hideous length did many run in our late troubles, who at first never intended it? But one thing insensibly drew on another; and many unforeseen incidents drove men on, when once entered, beyond their first |