then passed for sin. And when such changes come, we that should have been content with God's obligations, do find ourselves ensnared in our own rash vows.

And I wish that it teach no other men the way of dividing impositions, either to cut the knot, or to be even with the cove

nanters.

IX. I greatly rejoice, that family religion is so conscionably kept up among you, that your children and apprentices, seem to promise us a hopeful continuation of piety among you.

X. And I thank God, that so great a number of persons, eminent for holiness, temperance, humility and charity, are safely got to heaven ́already, since I first came among you, and being escaped from the temptations and troubles of this present evil world, have left you the remembrance of their most imitable examples.

And having all this comfort in you, as to what is past, I shall once more leave you some of my counsels and requests, for the time to come, which I earnestly intreat you not to neglect.

I. Spend most of your studies in confirming your belief of the truth of the gospel, the immortality of the soul, and the life to come, and in exercising that belief, and laying up your treasure in heaven; and see that you content not yourselves in talking of heaven, and speaking for it; but that your hopes, your hearts, and your conversation be there; and that you live for it, as worldlings do for the flesh.

II. Flatter not yourselves with the hopes of long life on earth, but make it the sum of all your religion, care, and business, to be ready for a safe and comfortable death; for till you can fetch comfort from the life to come, you can have no comfort that true reason can justify.

III. Live as in a constant war against all fleshly lusts, and love not the world, as it cherisheth those lusts. Take heed of the love of money, as the root of manifold evils: think of riches with more fear than desire; seeing Christ hath told us, how hard and dangerous it maketh our way to heaven. When once a man falls deeply in love with riches, he is never to be trusted, but becomes false to God, to all others, and to himself.

IV. Be furnished beforehand with expectation and patience, for all evils that may befal you; and make not too great a

matter of sufferings, especially poverty, or wrong from men. It is sin and folly in poor men, that they overvalue riches, and be not thankful for their peculiar blessings. I am in hopes, that God will give you more quietness than many others, because there are none of you rich; it is a great means of safety to have nothing that tempteth another man's desire, nor that he envieth you for; despised men live quietly, and he that hath an empty purse, can sing among the robbers; he that lieth on the ground, feareth not falling. When Judea (and so when England by Saxons, Danes, &c.) was conquered, the poor were let alone to possess and till the land, and had more than before. It was the great and rich that were destroyed, or carried, or driven away. Is it not a great benefit to have your souls saved from rich men's temptations, and your bodies from the envy, assaults, and fears, and miseries that they are under ?

V. Take heed of a self-conceited, unhumbled understanding, and of hasty and rash conclusions; it is the fool that rageth, and is confident: sober men are conscious of so much darkness and weakness, that they are suspicious of their apprehensions : : proud self-conceitedness, and rash, hasty concluding, causeth most of the mischiefs in the world; which might be prevented, if men had the humility and patience to stay till things be thoroughly weighed and tried. Be not ashamed to profess uncertainty, where you are indeed uncertain. Humble doubting is much safer than confident erring.

VI. Maintain union and communion with all true Christians on earth; and therefore, hold to catholic principles of mere Christianity, without which you must needs crumble into sects. Love Christians as Christians, but the best most; locally separate from none, as accusing of them further than they separate from Christ, or deny you their communion, unless you will sin. The zeal of a sect as such, is partial, turbulent, hurtful to dissenters, and maketh men as thorns and thistles; but the zeal of Christianity as such, is pure and peaceable, full of mercy, and good fruits, mellow, and sweet, and inclineth to the good of all. If God give you a faithful, or a tolerable public minister; be thankful to God, and lovè, honour, and encourage him; and let not the imperfections of the Common Prayer make you separate from his communion; prejudice will make all modes of worship different from that which we prefer, to seem some heinous, sinful crime; but humble Christians are most careful about the frame of their own hearts, and conscious of so much faultiness in

themselves, and all their service of God, that they are not apt to accuse and aggravate the failings of others, especially in matters which God has left to our own determination, Whether we shall pray with a book, or without, in divers short prayers, or one long one; whether the people shall sing God's praise in tunes, or speak it in prose, &c., is left to be determined. by the general rules of concord, order, and edification. Yet do not withdraw from the communion of soberly, godly non-conformists, though falsely called schismatics by others.

VII. Be sure that you maintain due honour and subjection to your governors: "Fear the Lord and the king, and meddle not with them that are given to change." (Prov. xxiv. 21.) And that in regard of the oath of God, (Eccles, viii. 2,) "Curse not the king, no not in thy thought, and curse not the rich in thy bed-chamber; for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter." (Eccles. x, 20.) Obey God with your first and absolute obedience, and no man against him, but obey the just commands of magistrates, and that out of obedience to God; and suffer patiently when you cannot obey. And if God should ever cast you under oppressing and persecuting governors, in your patience possess your souls; trust God and keep your innocency, and abhor all thoughts of rebellion or revenge; he that believeth will not make haste. Do nothing but what God will own, and then commit yourselves and your way to him. Repress wrath, and hate unpeaceable counsels; our way and our time must be only God's way and time. Self-saving men are usually the destroyers of themselves and others. Peter, that drew his sword for Christ, denied him the same night, with oaths and curses. Fools trust themselves, and wise men trust God: fools tear the tree, by beating down the fruit that is unripe and harsh; and wise men stay till it is ripe and sweet, and will drop into their hands: fools rip up the mother for an untimely birth; but wise men stay till maturity give it them. Fools take red-hot iron to be gold, till it burn their fingers to the bone; they rush into seditions and blood, as if it were a matter of jest ; but wise men sow the fruit of righteousness in peace, and as much as in them lieth, live peaceably with all men: all men are mortal, both oppressors and oppressed: stay a little, and mortality will change the scene; God's time is best. Martyrdom seldom killeth the hundredth part so many as wars do: and he is no true believer that taketh martyrdom to be his loss and Christ is

more interested in his gospel, church, and honour than we. Queen Mary's cruelties, and the bishops' bonfires, made religion universally received the more easily when her short reign was ended. We may learn wit of the fool, that seeing great guns and muskets, asked, what they were to do; and the answerer said to kill men' saith he, 'Do not men die here without killing? In our country they will die of themselves.' VIII. Be sure that you keep up family religion; especially in the careful education of youth. Keep them from evil company, and from temptations; and especially of idleness, fulness, and baits of lust. Read the Scripture and good books, and call upon God, and sing his praise; and recreate youth with reading the history of the church, and the lives of holy men and martyrs instruct them in catechisms and fundamentals.

IX. Above all, live in love to God and man; and let not selfishness and worldliness prevail against it. Think of God's goodness, as equal to his greatness and wisdom; and take yourselves as members of the same body with all true Christians. Blessed are they that faithfully practise those three grand principles which all profess, viz., 1. To love God as God above all, (and so to obey him.) 2. To love our neighbours as ourselves. 3. And to do as we would be done by. Love is not envious, malignant, censorious; it slandereth not; it persecuteth not; it oppresseth not; it defraudeth not; it striveth not to gain by another's loss: get men once to love their neighbours as themselves, and you may easily prognosticate peace, quietness, and concord; happiness to the land; and salvation to the people's souls.

66

Finally, brethren, live in love, and the God of love and peace shall be among you. The Lord save you from the evils of which I have here, and often warned you. Remember with thankfulness, the many years of abundant mercy which we have enjoyed, (though too much mixed with our sins, and vilified by some.) Comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do; and I beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love, for their work sake, and be at peace among yourselves." (1 Thess. v. 11-13.) And the Lord deeply write on all our hearts these blessed words, "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." (1 John iv. 16.) And remember,

"Seeing all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.' (2 Peter iii. 11-13.)

I need not lengthen my counsels further to you now, having been called by the will and providence of God to leave behind me a multitude of books, which may remember you of what you heard, and acquaint the world what doctrine I have taught you, and if longer studies shall teach me to retract and amend many failings, in the writings or practice of my unripe, and less unexperienced age, as it will be to myself as pleasing as the cure of bodily disease, I hope it will not seem strange or ungrateful to you; though we must hold fast the truth which we have received, both you and I are much to be blamed, if we grow not in knowledge, both in matter, words, and method: the Lord grant that also we may grow in faith, obedience, patience in hope, love, and desire to be with Christ.

Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work, to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (Heb. xiii. 20, 21.)