Such representations are undoubtedly necessary: I pray God, they may in this instance be as effectual, as they are sincere. I am,

First, To endeavour to make you sensible of the greatness of this deliverance, which God has now granted us, by the panic with which he seems to have struck the leaders and abettors of that unnatural rebellion, which he hath permitted to arise amongst us; that so our hearts may be dis posed to those returns of gratitude which he demands.

Now to this purpose I shall consider it,- -first, in a more general view; and then, in some particular circumstances, which may farther heighten our grateful sense of it.

I. I would consider the deliverance out of the hands of our enemies, which God is now opening upon us, in a more general view.

Here I shall take a view of it in general, with regard to the aspect which it has upon our substance,our liberties,

our religion,—and our posterity. And each view will convince us of its importance, and do its part towards awakening our gratitude.

To make you more sensible of this, let me now lead you to imagine, though the imagination is painful and shocking, what must have been our case, if the progress of the rebellious arms of our enemies had been carried on with a rapidity, like that which they at first boasted; if they had been supported by powerful succours from abroad; and if, according to their vain hopes, considerable numbers from the southern part of our island had joined them; so that they had marched on to our capital, and taken possession of it, either destroying or driving away that illustrious prince whom God has set over us, and those numerous branches of his royal family around him, whom we have so long beheld with delight as the pledges of peace and happiness to succeeding generations. Consider, how our possessions, and liberties, our religion, and posterity, would have beer affected by such an event; and then judge, what an aspect our deliverance has upon each.

1. As to our worldly substance.

This, among so many dearer names, may seem less worthy of our mention. A generous and manly spirit will indeed bear the diminution of it with a calm steadiness; and the true Christian

will be conscious of a better and a more enduring substance*, laid up beyond the reach of violence and rapine. Yet some value is justly to be set on what we here possess, as the gift of providence, and as that by which we are enabled, not only to make some comfortable provision for those whom God has committed to our immediate care, but likewise to do good to many others, by a variety of humane and charitable actions, which may greatly adorn our religious profession. And whether our wealth be the acquisition of our own industry, or have descended to us by inheritance from our fathers, there is something in each of these considerations, which makes the loss of it grievous; how gradually soever it may be impaired, and though no circumstance of external violence deprive us of it, but we seem, according to the remarkable expression of the prophet, To put our money into a bag with holest. Much more grievous then must it be, to be stripped on a sudden, and above all, in such a way; to see our enemies possessed of what we just before called our own, and perhaps taking a malicious pleasure, not only to use, but to destroy it before our eyes.

The great Author of our nature, who most fully knows its frame, does sometimes mention this among the saddest consequences of invasion and conquest. So the distress and vexation of it is pathetically represented, in the message he sent to Israel by Moses, Thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof; thine ass, the usual beast of burden among them, and answering to our ordinary horses, shall be violently taken away before thy face, and shall not be restored to thee: Thy sheep shall be given to thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue them: The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which thou knowest not, eat up: So that thou shalt be mad, for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see‡.

While our enemies have been traversing the northern part of our island, and penetrating even to its centre, thousands have known the literal accomplishment of these words. And I hope, we shall never forget, that the cup was just passing to us: So that had not God, and that brave prince whom he made the instrument of our deliverance, turned them back, they had in a few hours entered our houses with haughty violence: And had we staid till they arrived there, we might have beheld our provisions greedily devoured, yea profusely wasted; perhaps too, had we not been sufficiently obsequious to these detestable inmates, our furniture wantonly destroyed; our houses plundered;

*Heb. x. 34.

+ Hag. i. 6.

Deut. xxviii. 31, 33, 34.

our very garments stripped off; and beyond all peradventure, heavy contributions levied, the amount of which in one day might have been much greater, than the necessary taxes which the legislature, though with reluctance, are compelled for the public safety to demand; or than charity to the families of those who are gone out to fight our battles, inclines us voluntarily to advance for their support. This might have been our fate, in their march towards our capital; and in a more extreme de. gree, in their return. And when this tumultuous scene had been over, what could we have expected, but much heavier exactions, than even the present distress requires? With this painful difference, that instead of advancing our money for the assistance of those who guard and defend us, it must then have been given as a reward to our oppressors and spoilers; I had almost said, as a fee to our executioners. When therefore you enter your peaceful habitations, when you sit down to your plentiful tables, and repose yourselves as under your own vines and fig-trees, remember to whom you owe it, that you can call them your own, and be thankful for this deliverance out of the hands of your enemies: A deliverance, which will be felt in proportion to the degree in which it is considered; and which we are next to view,

2. In the aspect which it bears on our liberties.

As bondage renders plenty and magnificence tasteless to a generous spirit; so poverty itself puts on a cheerful smile under the blessings of liberty, which makes, if I may allude to the words of David, A little that a freeman hath, better than the abundance of many slaves *. Were liberty the portion of the whole human race, and would to God that it were, each of them should prize it as, next to religion, his choicest treasure. But it is well known, that by the proud usurpation of princes or priests, and generally by their collusive combination to support the tyranny of each other, it has been almost entirely banished from the Continent, and seems, if not to have sought its last refuge, at least to have fixed its favourite abode, in the British dominions; where it now reigns, in the person of our gracious Sovereign, as its guardian genius, who understands the rights and honours of royalty so well, as to make it his chief glory to be so. It is here, if I may be permitted so to speak, the law that rules supreme; and the greatest and best of our princes most justly esteem it the noblest point of their ambition, to be

Psal xxxvii. 16.

its protectors and vicegerents: As it is indeed a glorious ambition to defend a system of wise and equitable laws, which the inhabitants of Britain from age to age, in their own persons, or by their representatives, have chosen to impose on themselves and their posterity, for their common security and happiness.And could we have borne to see them insolently trampled under foot, and arbitrary will established in their stead? I hope, we could not have endured it, while heaven had left us any force to oppose it; but that, according to the animated expression of a celebrated writer, "we should rather have chosen to die the last of British freemen, than to live the first of British slaves." Yet what but slavery could we have expected, had our throne been filled by one, trained up in the oppressive maxims of the French and the Roman courts? Who had also so many arrears to discharge, that it is absolutely impossible he should have done it, without impoverishing us to a degree which only a nation of slaves could have submitted to: For surely we must have been bound, before we could have permitted ourselves to have been stripped so bare.

Great reason indeed have we to believe, notwithstanding all his empty and absurd pretences "of establishing us in the possession of what we never lost," that if we should ever be so unhappy as to see the pretender possessed of the power he so unreasonably claims, The manner of our King would be like what Samuel so strongly describes to the men of Israel +; by whom, he tells them, their children would be abused, and their estates taken away, or the product of them subjected to such impositions, that they who retained the titulary right to them, would be little better than tenants and servants to their haughty monarch. Had we, like the Israelites, ourselves concurred in making such a king, we might like them have reasonably expected, that when we had cried out under this load of oppression, the Lord should not have heard us.

Let us always remember, that it is our indispensable duty, to exert ourselves to the utmost to prevent so fatal a change in our constitution: And let us bless God every day of our lives, that they who were weak or wicked enough to attempt it, have found themselves Unable to perform their enterprize ‡; and that, through the special care of divine providence, Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers; that the snare, which would have hampered us, not only to our vexation, but

See that incomparable Discourse, intitled, The Occasional Writer; or an Answer to the Pretender's Second Manifesto, &c.

+1 Sam. viii. 11—18,

Job v. 12.

to our destruction, is happily broken, and we are escaped free and unhurt. A simile, which in this application of it will appear more evidently just, when we survey our deliverance,

3. In the aspect which it has upon our religion.

If religion be any thing at all significant to a man, it is beyond all comparison more than every thing else. A nation does not easily change its Gods †, be they what they will: And to have merely some particular forms of a religion, in the main acknowledged to be true, obtruded contrary to a man's relish, and especially contrary to his conscience, is an insufferable evil. What then must it be, to have our religion violently torn away from us, so far as it can be torn away; to see it at least injured, oppressed, and insulted, if not immediately borne down and extirpated? That pure, holy, and perfect religion, which Christ and his apostles planted upon earth; and which our pious forefathers have delivered down to us, in all its evidence, with such faithful care, sealed with the blood of so many martyrs and confessors!-To exchange this, (or to be urged at length, by penal, perhaps by sanguinary laws, to exchange it,) and for so erroneous and superstitious, so absurd and idolatrous a heap of tenets, ceremonies, and usages, that it seems almost profaning the word to call it a religion: To give up our bibles to the flames; to lay aside this rational and devout manner of worshipping God (as we assuredly believe) in the most scriptural and acceptable way, for the unintelligible jargon of a mass; to bow down to images, as if we had been trained up in the most stupid heathenism; and to adore a piece of bread, as the Saviour of the world! How much is the thought worse than death? Yea, how beautiful must death appear, as met in opposition to such a change?

And is the supposition I am now making at all unnatural ? We will make all the most candid allowances: We will suppose the disposition of all the branches of the aspiring family, which urges its divine right to rule us, to be ever so gentle : We will grant, (what indeed I verily believe,) that many who have been bred up in popery, would abhor the cruelties of persecution, and grieve to see their protestant neighbours, among whom many of them have lived so long unmolested, perishing in gaols, or expiring in flames. Yet were that corruption of christianity restored amongst us, it would not be in their power to prevent it. The iniquity is established by a law; and (as several ex