rmation, but is not ashamed of former defilements,
is in danger both of God's displeasure, and of miscarrying in his judgment
about reformation. It is far from my meaning to discourage any who are,
with humble and upright hearts, seeking after more light than yet they
have; I say it only for their sake, who, through the presumption and
unhumbledness of their spirits, will acknowledge no fault in anything they
have formerly done in church matters.

I cannot leave this application to the kingdom till I enlarge it a little
farther. There are four considerations which may make England ashamed and
confounded before the Lord.

1. Because of the great blessings which it hath so long wanted. Your
flourishing estate in the world could not have countervailed the want of
the purity and liberty of the ordinances of Christ. That was a heavy word
of the Prophet, "Now for a long season Israel hath been without the true
God, and without a teaching priest, and without law," 2 Chron. xv. 3. It
hath not been altogether so with this land, where the Lord hath had not
only a true church, but many burning and shining lights, many gracious
preachers and professors, many notable defenders of the Protestant cause
against Papists, many who have preached and written worthily of practical
divinity, and of those things which most concern a man's salvation. Nay, I
am persuaded, that all this time past, there have been in this kingdom
many thousands of his secret and sealed ones, who have been groaning under
that burden and bondage which they could not help, and have been "waiting
for the consolation of Israel," Luke ii. 25. Nevertheless, the reformation
of the church of England hath been exceedingly deficient, in government,
discipline and worship; yea, and many places of the kingdom have been
"without a teaching priest," and other places poisoned with false
teachers. It is said (1 Sam. vii. 2), that all the house of Israel
lamented after the Lord, when they wanted the ark twenty years. O let
England lament after the Lord, until the ark be brought into the own place
of it!

2. There is another cause of this great humiliation, and that is, the
point in the text, to be ashamed "of all that you have done." Sin, sin is
that which blacketh our faces, and covereth us with confusion as with a
mantle, and then most of all when we may read our sin in some judgment of
God which lieth upon us; therefore the Septuagint here, instead of being
"ashamed of all th