God also, how holily, justly and unblamably we have behaved ourselves among you? How ready have we been both to assist and support you? How constant have we been preaching in season, and out of season, opening the whole councils of God to the flock committed to our charge? How careful are we in examining and instructing those who come to us for orders and institutions? How frequent in confirming, and in the other duties, belonging to our function? So that we may say, what have we done, or what have we left undone to merit the unkind returns we meet with? What reason have we given to the world by our manner of living to think we had our posts only for the advantages we reap by them, and that we do it even against our consciences, and are only waiting an opportunity to be tray them?

This is such a pitch both of impiety and baseness, that few of the worst sort of libertines are capable of it; and yet how oft have we been charged with it? If this had come only from the enemies of our present constitution, on design to destroy the reputation to which we hope we have some right, it was what we might expect from active and indigent writers, who are looking for another face of things, hoping then to be enriched by our spoils. But that those who have taken all the oaths enjoined by law, and who daily concur in all the public devotions, should entertain and spread such calumnies, and act as the under-workmen to those who seek our ruin, is that which deserves the

severest censures.

Great regard is indeed due to such as avow their principles, and act according to them; especially when

they are loosers and sufferers by it; even their passions and frailties are to be lamented and gently censured. But the impiety of men's taking oaths against their consciences, and, in hope to compensate for that, their acting contrary to them, is of so monstrous a nature, that our language does not afford words black enough. to set out its deformity.

We are soon to go off the stage, to a region of peace and love, where malice and envy cannot follow us; he to whom our integrity is known, will pardon all our frailties, snd éven all our omissions, and will deal with us according to our sincere endeavours; from whose hands we may expect to receive the more entire reward, the less of it that we receive from men.

Our late blessed Primate was persecuted by malice to his grave: and that has followed him ever since he was laid in the dust. His great concern at those black efforts of malice, that he was pursued with, was, because he saw they stood in the way to defeat all the good designs with which his mind laboured. It is true, that retirement to which his high post lead him, he never embarking in designs that he thought foreign to it, gave him leisure to review and retouch the noblest body of sermons, that I hope I 'may be allowed to say, this nation or the world ever saw; which I mention the rather here, because they have been published since this book was first printed.

His chief support next to his own conscience, and his confidence in God, was from our late blessed Queen; who was incessantly employed in possessing 'her mind with the best schemes that were either laid before her by others, or suggested to her by her own

royal heart, for correcting every thing that was amiss, and improving every thing that wanted finishing among us. And she was waiting for a happy peace to set about the executing them: She had arrived at such a superior degree of knowledge, and had such a force of reasoning, with an irresistible sweetness of temper, that if our sins had not provoked God to blast all those hopes, by her early admission to a better crown, we might have seen a glorious face put on our church with relation to all its concerns.

I am in some sort obliged to mention her, because I writ this book by her order, as well as by our Primate's, as an attempt to prepare the scene to many noble designs, which may be opened at some time or other, if ever we are so happy as to endeavour to carry on our constitution to perfection; which in our present distracted, if not desperate state, is far out of view, and therefore must be reserved to a more proper occasion.

But to return to the sad view of our distractions at home: The Bishops who find themselves so unjustly censured, and their designs so unhappily obstructed, ought to humble themselves before God; for it is meet to be said to him, I have born chastisement, that which I know not teach thou me. They ought to examine and consider how far their other sins may have provoked God to deny his blessing to their best endeavours; they' ought to ask themselves, what they have done to render them unworthy to build up the house of God, and to repair its breaches; they ought to mourn in secret, both for their own sins, and for the sins of those who set themselves against them. They ought to search

and try their own hearts, to find out if their pride or vanity, their love of ease and pleasure, or any other secret sin is at root, and defeats all their labours; they ought to pray more earnestly both for themselves and their families, for their clergy and their people, and in so doing they may hope either to draw down a blessing from heaven on all that they set about; or at least that their prayers shall return into their own bosom.

They ought also to cry mightily to God, that if they are to have a share in the fiery trial, they may be so strengthened in the inner man, that they may by no unbecoming practices decline or avoid it; but may rejoice if they are called to suffer for the name of Christ, and to seal that doctrine which they have so long preached, with their blood; and so may glorify him by their patient continuance in well doing, till they receive their crown. This will be through the blessing of God an effectual mean, either to dissipate the clouds that seem to gather, and are ready to break out into a storm and horrible tempest, or to procure such a measure of divine assistances to them in their sufferings, as may make their blood a seed for a noble spring of a better state of things among us. If with Bishops so employing their time, many both of their clergy and laity did concur in lying in the dust before God and turning to him with their whole hearts, we might hope to see better times, than we have now in view. God has often delivered us, when we were near the last extremities; we have seen in our own time such a chain of kind providences happily interposing, when we saw no reasonable prospect that we ought not

to give all for lost, how dark soever the face of things may look, if we bring ourselves to such a state that, we may have still a right to hope for the like protection.

It cannot be denied but the appearance is formidable, when we see that prince who has engaged the longest and the deepest in the design of extirpating our religion, get out of all his troubles, and accomplish his vast designs that seemed once to be so blasted, that they could not be retrieved: Another scene is now opening to him that promises all he can wish for, and must bring such an accumulation of power and treasure to him, that humanly speaking, nothing can stand in his way. When a great alliance once quite dissolved, and when a word so often broken, and edicts so often violated, are trusted to and relied on; such an unexpected turn will no doubt be. constructed as a reward from heaven for his zeal against heresy: And may very probably encourage him to finish what he has done at home, by bringing us under the same calamity.

We know what engagement he lies under to a dying prince; but we cannot know how far his bigotry may even out-do these, when he finds himself at the height of power and wealth that he is almost possessed off: Promises and oaths can work but feebly on one so accustomed to break through them.

When not only dispensations, but solicitations from Rome, with the practices of a confessor, the view of that glory that the work must bring him on earth, with the imaginary view of a more eternal weight of glory in heaven, concur; what may not be apprehended from thence? Chiefly when such of that religion, whose interests