TO THE READER. CHRISTIAN reader, understanding that my sermon, which was preached three years since before the Honourable House of Commons, on the day of their solemn humiliation, was to he reprinted, I thought fit to peruse, transcribe, and enlarge six other sermons, in which I had at mine own charge in the country, on the ensuing fast days, briefly explained and applied that whole chapter, (a portion only whereof was in the first handled,) and to send them forth together with it unto the public. Which I was the rather induced to do for these two reasons. . 1. Because it hath pleased God in his righteous and holy providence to make me, by a long infirmity, unserviceable to his church in the principal work of the ministry, the preaching of the gospel, which is no small grief unto me. So that there remained no other means whereby my life might, in regard of my function, be useful to the church, and comfortable to myself, than by inverting the words of the Psalmist, and as he made his tongue as the pen of a ready writer, so to make my pen the tongue of an unready speaker. 2. I considered the seasonable- ness and suitableness of these meditations unto the condition of the sad and disconsolate times wherein we live, very like those which our prophet threatened the ten tribes withal throughout this whole prophecy, unto which this last chapter is a kind of use, and a most solemn exhortation pressing upon all wise and prudent men such duties of humiliation and repentance, as might turn threats into promises, and recover again the mercies which by their sins they had forfeited and forsaken: which being restored unto them according to their petition, they are here likewise further instructed in what manner to return unto God
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