while men are constrained not only to cease from
sports on that day, but from labouring the ground, and from other works of
their calling upon other days? What should I speak of the lusts and
uncleanness, gluttony and drunkenness, chambering and wantonness,
prodigality and lavishness, excess of riot, masking, and balling, and
sporting, when Germany and the Palatinate, and other places, were
wallowing in blood, yea, when there was so much sin and wrath upon this
same kingdom? Will not you say now, that for this the Lord God hath caused
your "sun to go down at noon," and hath turned your feasts into mourning,
and all your songs into lamentations? (Amos viii. 9, 10.) Or what should I
say of the oppressions, injustice, cozenage in trading and in merchandise,
which yourselves know better than I can do how much they have abounded in
the kingdom? Doth not God now punish the secret injustice of his people by
the open injustice of their enemies? Do ye not remember that mischief was
framed by a law? And now, when your enemies execute mischief against law,
will you not say, Righteous art thou, O Lord, and just are thy judgments.
One thing I may not forget, and that is, that the Lord is punishing blood
with blood, the blood of the oppressed, the blood of the persecuted, the
blood of those who have died in prisons, or in strange countries,
suffering for righteousness' sake. He that departed from evil did even
make himself a prey, Isa. lix. 15. There was not so much as one drop of
blood spilt upon the pillory for the testimony of the truth but it crieth
to heaven, for precious is the blood of the saints, (Psal. lxxii. 14.)
Doth not all the blood shed in Queen Mary's days cry? And doth not the
blood of the Palatinate and of Rochel cry? And doth not the blood of souls
cry? which is the loudest cry of all. God said to Cain, "The voice of thy
brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground," Gen. iv. 10. The Hebrew
hath it, "Thy brother's blood," which is well expounded both by the
Chaldee Paraphrase and the Jerusalem Targum, the voice of the blood of all
the generations and the righteous people which thy brother should have
begotten crieth unto me. I may apply it to the thing in hand: The
silencing, deposing, persecuting, imprisoning, and banishing of so many of
the Lord's witnesses, of the most painful and powerful preachers, and the
preferring of so many either dumb dogs or false teachers, maketh the voice
of bloods to cry to heaven, eve