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[1 Kings viii. 38.]

SERM. be of our reckoning! What a sad score of aggravations,— that is, of so many mercies and graces, so many wrestlings of His Spirit with sin, all grieved and repelled by us,—and consequently what a pile of guilts toward the accumulating of our flames. What is the natural and the only salvo to this intricacy, I suppose it is prone to any man to divine; why, to reform the fundamental error, which can no otherwise be repaired after; to begin, if it be but now, to edify, and to be the better for stripes; to set every man to this one late, but necessary resolution, and not to be content to have done somewhat at home in private, every man in mending one, as they say, though if that were done uniformly it would. serve the turn, but every man, "whose heart the Lord hath stricken" to be a convert-humble-mourner for the iniquity of his people, for the provocations of this Church and kingdom, and for the " plague of his own heart,"-to go out, and call all the idle by-standers in the field, to draw as many more as it is possible into that engagement, and in this sense to bring into the service a whole army of covenanters and reformers, every man vowing hostility against those wasting sins of his that have thus long kept a tortured, broken kingdom and Church upon the wheel, which can never get off, till we come whole shoals of suppliants and auxiliaries to its rescue; nay, till the sins that first brought it to this execution become the avτífvxo, be delivered up cheerfully to suffer in the stead. That this work be at length begun in some earnest, you will surely give God and His angels, and your friends leave to expect with some impatience; and it were even pity they should any longer be frustrated. If they may at last be so favoured by us, our state will be as great a riddle of mercy and of bliss as it was even now of sadness and horror. Let God do what He please to us for the turning or for the continuing our captivity, it will be matter of infinite advantage and joy to us. If He continue us still upon the cross, after the consummatum est, after the work is done, after it is a reformed, purified nation, O that is a superangelical state, a laying a foundation in that deep, for the higher and more glorious superstructure of joy and bliss in another world; nay, if He should sweep us away in one akeldama, this were to the true penitent but the richer

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boon, a transplantation only, a sending us out a triumphant, SER M. not captive colony to heaven. Or if we be then taken down from the cross, and put into the quiet chambers or dormitories, if there be seasons of rest and peace yet behind upon this earth in these our days, O they will be rich seasons of opportunity to bring forth glorious proportionable fruits of such repentance, a whole harvest of affiance and faithful dependance upon heaven, a daily continual growth in grace, in all that is truly Christian; in a word, of rendering us a kingdom of angelical Christians here, and of saints hereafter; which, whether it be by the way of the wilderness, or of the Red sea, by all the sufferings that a villainous world can design, or a gracious Father permit and convert to our greatest good, God of His infinite mercy grant us all, even for His Son Jesus Christ His sake, to whom with the Father, &c.

SOME

PROFITABLE DIRECTIONS

BOTH

FOR PRIEST AND PEOPLE,

IN

TWO SERMONS,

PREACHED BEFORE THESE EVIL TIMES:

THE ONE TO THE CLERGY,

THE OTHER TO THE CITIZENS OF LONDON.

BY

HENRY HAMMOND, D.D.

These two following Sermons were subjoined by the Author to the review of his Annotations on the New Testament, published 1657, with this Advertisement.

TO THE READER.

My fear that these additional notes may fall into some hands, which for want of sufficient acquaintance with the larger volume, may miss receiving the desired fruit from them, hath suggested the affixing this Auctarium of two plain, intelligible discourses; the one prepared for an auditory of the clergy, the other of citizens or laity, and so containing somewhat of useful advice for either sort of readers, to whose hands this volume shall come. That it may be to both proportionably profitable, shall be the prayer of

Your Servant in the Lord,

II. HAMMOND.

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