themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance. If they unthankfully scorn and reject our teaching, and bid us look to ourselves, and care not for them, yet must we hold on. We have to deal with distracted men, that will fly in the face of their physician, but we must not therefore forsake the cure. He is unworthy to be a physician that will be driven away from a frantic patient by foul words, KalaπEρ οι μαινόμενοι και τὸν ἰατρὸν i. e. " Sicut insani etiam medicum impetere conantur, ita et illi," saith Chrysostom of the Sodomites. Hom. 43. in Gen. "Et alibi, Medici ferant ægrotum calcibus ferientem, incessentem contumelis, et convitiis, nec offenduntur; quia nihil aliud quam salutem ægroti quærentes, licet facientis indecora, non ideo à cura desistant, sic concionator licet mala patiatur ab auditoribus, &c." If we tell them that natural men savour not the things of the Spirit, and are besides themselves in matters of salvation, we must measure our expectations accordingly, and not look that fools should make us as grateful a return as the wise. These are things that all of us can say, but when we come to the practice with sinners that reproach and slander us for our love, and are more ready to spit in our faces, than to give us thanks for our advice, what heartrisings will there be, and how will the remnants of old Adam, pride and passion, struggle against the meekness and patience of the new man! And how sadly do many Ministers come off in this part of their trial!

Having given you these Twelve concomitants of our Ministerial labour, as singly to be performed by every Minister, let me conclude with one other that is necessary to us as we are conjoined, and fellow-labourers in the work; and it is this: We must be very studious in Union and Communion among ourselves, and of the unity and peace of the churches that we oversee. We must be sensible how needful this is to the prosperity of the whole, the strengthening of our common cause, the good of the particular members of our flock, and the further enlargement of the kingdom of Christ. And therefore Ministers must smart when the church is wounded, and being so far from being the leaders in divisions, that they should take it as a principal part of their work to prevent and heal them. Day and night should they bend their studies to find out means to close such breaches. They must not only hearken to motions for

unity, but propound them and prosecute them. Not only entertain an offered peace, but even follow it when it flieth from them. They must therefore keep close to the ancient simplicity of the Christian faith, and the foundation and centre of catholic unity. They must abhor the arrogancy of them that frame engines to harass and tear the church of God, under pretence of obviating errors, and maintaining the Truth. The Scripture-sufficiency must be maintained, and nothing beyond it imposed on others; and if Papists, or others, call to us for the standard and rule of our religion, it is the Bible that we must shew them, rather than any Confessions of Churches, or writings of men. We must learn to difference well between certainties and uncertainties, necessaries and unnecessaries, catholic verities " quæ ab omnibus, ubique et semper sunt retentæ," as Vincent, Licen. speaks, and private opinions; and to lay the stress of the church's peace upon the former, and not upon the latter. We must therefore understand the doctrine of antiquity, that we may know what way men have gone to heaven by in former ages, and know the writings of later Divines, that we may partake of the benefit of their clearer methods and explications; but neither of them must be made the rule of our faith or charity. We must avoid the common confusion of those that make no difference between verbal and real errors, and hate that 'rabies quorundan theologorum,' that tear their brethren as heretics, before they understand them. And we must learn to see the true state of Controversies, and reduce them to the very point where the difference lieth, and not to make them seem greater than they are. Instead of quarrelling with our brethren, we must combine against the common adversaries; Ministers must associate, and hold communion, and correspondence, and constant meetings to those ends; and smaller differences of judgment are not to interrupt them. They must do as much of the work of God in unity and concord as they can; which is the use of Synods: not to rule over one another, and make laws; but to avoid misunderstandings, and consult for mutual edification, and maintain love and communion, and go on unanimously in the work that God hath already commanded us. Had the Ministers of the Gospel been men of peace, and of catholic rather than factious spirits, the Church of Christ had not been in the case it is now; the notions

of Lutherans and Calvinists abroad, and the differing parties here at home, would not have been plotting the subversion of one another, nor remain at that distance, and in that uncharitable bitterness, nor strengthen the common enemy, and hinder the building and prosperity of the Church as they have done.

OUR business here this day is to humble our souls before the Lord for our former negligence, especially of Catechising and Personally instructing those committed to our charge; and to desire God's assistance of us in the employment we have undertaken for the time to come. Indeed, we can scarcely expect the latter without the former. If God will help us in our future Duty and amendment, he will surely humble us first for our former sins. He that hath not so much sense of his faults, as unfeignedly to lament them, will hardly have so much more as may move him to reform them. The sorrow of Repentance may be without the change of heart and life; because a passion may be easier wrought than a true Conversion; but the change cannot go without some good measure of the sorrow. Indeed, we may justly here begin our confessions: it is too common with us to expect that from our people, which we do little or nothing in ourselves. What pains take we to humble them, while ourselves are unhumbled! How hard do we press them by all our expostulations, convictions, and aggravations, to wring out of them a few penitent tears, (and all too little,) when our own eyes are dry, and our hearts are little affected with remorse, and we give them an example of hardheartedness, while we are endeavouring by our words to mollify and melt them. O, if we did but study half as much to affect and amend our own hearts, as we do our hearers, it would not be with many of us as it is! We do too little for their humiliation; but I fear it is much less that some of us do for our own. Too many do somewhat for other men's souls, while they seem to forget that they

have any of their own to regard. They so carry the matter, as if their part of the work lay in calling for Repentance, and the hearers in repenting; theirs in speaking, tears, and sorrow, and other men's only in weeping, and sorrowing; theirs in preaching duty, and the hearers in performing it; theirs in crying down sin, and the people's in forsaking it.

But we find the Guides of the Church in Scripture did confess their own sins as well as the sins of the people; and began in tears for their own and the people's sins. Ezra confesseth the sins of the Priests as well as of the people, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God. (Ezra ix. 6, 7; x. 1.) So did the Levites. (Neh. ix. 32—34.) Daniel confesseth his own sin, as well as the people's, (Dan. ix. 20,) and God calleth such to it, as well as others. (Joel ii. 15-17.) When the Fast is summoned, the people gathered, the congregation sanctified, the Elders assembled, the Priests, the Ministers of the Lord, are called to begin to them in weeping, and calling upon God for mercy. I think if we consider well of the duties already opened, and withal how we have done them; of the Rule, and of our unanswerableness thereto, we need not demur upon the question, nor put it to a question, whether we have cause of humiliation. I must needs say, though I judge myself in saying it, that he that readeth but this one exhortation of Paul in Acts xx, and compareth his life with it, is too stupid and hardhearted, if he do not melt under a sense of his neglects, and be not laid in the dust before God, and forced to bewail his great omissions, and to fly for refuge to the blood of Christ, and to his pardoning grace. I am confident, brethren, that none of you do in judgment approve of the Libertine doctrine, that crieth down the necessity of confession, contrition and true humiliation; yea, and in order to the pardon of sin! Is it not a pity then, that our hearts are not more orthodox as well as our heads? But I see our lesson is but half learned when we know it, and can say it. When the understanding hath learned it, there is more ado to teach it our wills and affections, our eyes, our tongues, and hands. It is a sad thing that so many of us do use to preach our hearers asleep; but it is sadder still if we have studied and preached ourselves asleep, and have talked so long against hardness of heart, till our own grow hardened,

under the noise of our own reproofs. Though the head only have eyes, and ears, and smell, and taste, the heart should have life, and feeling, and motion, as well as the head.

And that you may see that it is not a causeless sorrow that God calleth us to, I shall take it to be my duty to call to remembrance our manifold sins, or those that are most obvious, and set them this day in order before God and our own faces, that God may cast them behind his back; and to deal plainly and faithfully in a free Confession, that He who is faithful and just, may forgive them; and to judge ourselves, that we be not judged of the Lord: wherein I suppose I have your free and hearty consent, and that you will be so far from being offended with the disgrace of your persons, and of others in this office, that you will readily subscribe the charge, and be humble self-accusers; and so far am I from justifying myself by the accusation of others, that I do unfeignedly put my name with the first in the bill; for how can a wretched sinner, of so great transgressions, presume to justify himself with God? or how can he plead guiltless, whose conscience hath so much to say against him? If I cast shame upon the Ministry, it is not on the office, but on our persons, by opening that sin which is our shame. The glory of our high employment doth not communicate any glory to our sin, nor will afford it the smallest covering for its nakedness; for "sin is a reproach to any people," or persons. (Prov. xiv. 34.) And it is myself as well as others on whom I must lay the shame and if this may not be done, what do we here to-day? Our business is to take shame to ourselves, and to give God the glory; and faithfully to open our sins, that he may cover them; and to make ourselves bare by Confession, as we have done by transgression, that we may have the white raiment that clotheth none but the penitent; for be they pastors or people, it is only he that confesseth and forsaketh his sins, that shall have mercy, when he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief." (Prov. xxviii. 13.)

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And I think it will not be amiss, if in the beginning of our Confession we look behind us, and imitate Daniel, and other servants of God who confess the sins of their forefathers and predecessors. For, indeed, my own judgment is so far from denying Original sin, even the imputed part, with the ancient opposers of it, or those of the new Edition,