have now a fourfold application to draw from it.

The first application shall be to the malignant enemies of the cause and
people of God at this time, who deserve Jeremiah's black mark to be put
upon them: "Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay,
they wore not at all ashamed, neither could they blush," Jer. vi. 15;
viii. 12. When he would say the worst of them, this is it: "Thou hadst a
whore's forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed," Jer. iii. 3. There are
some sons of Belial risen up against us, who have done some things
whereof, I dare say, many heathens would have been ashamed; yet they are
as far from being ashamed of their outrages as Caligula was, who said of
himself, that he loved nothing better in his own nature than that he could
not be ashamed: nay, their glory is their shame, Phil. iii. 19; and if the
Lord do not open their eyes to see their shame, their end will be
destruction. Is it a light matter to swear and blaspheme, to coin and
spread lies, to devise calumnies, to break treaties, to contrive
treacherous plots, to exercise so many barbarous cruelties, to shed so
much blood, and, as if that were too little, to bury men quick? Is all
this no matter of shame? And when they have so often professed to be for
the true Protestant religion, shall they not be ashamed to thirst so much
after Protestant blood, and in that cause desire to associate themselves
with all the Papists at home and abroad whose assistance they can have,
and particularly with those matchless monsters (they call them subjects)
of Ireland, who, if the computation fail not, have shed the blood of some
hundred thousands in that kingdom? For our part, it seems they are
resolved to give the worst name to the best thing which we can do, and
therefore they have not been ashamed to call a religious and loyal
covenant a traitorous and damnable covenant. I have no pleasure to take up
these and other dunghills, the text hath put this in my mouth which I have
said. O that they could recover themselves out of the gall of bitterness,
and bond of iniquity, Acts viii. 23; O that we could hear that they begin
to be ashamed of their abominations, "Lord, when thy hand is lifted up,
they will not see: but they shall see, and be ashamed for their envy at
the people," Isa. xxvi. 11; the Lord "shall appear to your joy, and they
shall be ashamed," lxvi. 5.

But now, in the second place, let me speak to the kingdom, and to you whom
it concernet