A SERMON OF REPENTANCE. 345 you have the people to be better than yourselves? Or can you expect to be obeyed by others, when you will not obey the God of heaven and earth yourselves? We beseech you, therefore, for the sake of a poor, distressed land, let our recovery begin with you. God looks so much at the rulers of a nation in his dealings with them, that ordinarily it goes with the people as their rulers are. Until David had numbered the people, God would not let out his wrath upon them,though it was they that were the great offend- ers. If we see our representative body begin in loathing them- selves for all their iniquities, and turning to the Lord with all their hearts, we should yet believe that he is returning to us, and will do us good, after all our provocations. Truly, gentlemen, it is much from you that we must fetch our comfortable or sad prog- nostics of the life or death of this diseased land. Whatever you do; I know that it shall go well with the righteous ; but for the happiness or misery of the nation, in general it is you that are our best prognostication. If you repent yourselves, and become a holy people to the Lord, it promiseth us deliverance ; but ifyou harden your hearts, and prove despisers of God and holiness, it is like to be our temporal, and sure to be your eternal undoing, if saving grace do not prevent it. And I must needs tell you that, if you be not brought to loathe yourselves, it is not because there is no loathsome matter in you. Did you see your inside, you could not forbear it. As I think it would somewhat abate the pride of the most curious gallants, if they did but see what a heap of phlegm, and filth, and dung, (and per- haps crawling worms,) there is within them ; much more should it make you loathe yourselves if you saw those sins that, are a thou- sand times more odious. And to instigate you hereunto, let me further reason with you. 1. You can easily loathe an enemy ; and who hath been a greater enemy to any of yoù than yourselves? Another may injure you ; but no man can everlastingly undo you, but yourselves. 2. You abhor him that kills your dearest friends; and it is you by your sins that have put to death the Lord of life. 3. Who is it but yourselves that have robbed you of so much precious time, and so much precious fruit of ordinances, and of all the mercies df the Lord ? 4. Who is it but yourselves that hath brought you under God's displeasure? Poverty could not have made him loathe you, nor any thing besides your sins. 5. Who wounded conscience, and bath raised all your doubts and fears ? Was it not your sinful selves ? 6. Who is it but yourselves that bath brought you so near the gulf of misery, and endangered your eternal peace? VOL. II. 44
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