he miseries and calamities of the last times, but
from the sins and iniquities of the last times. It is sin and iniquity
that make times truly perilous. Sin, and sin only, takes away God's love
and favour from a nation, and makes God turn an enemy to it. Sin causeth
God to take away the purity and power of His ordinances from a nation.
Sin makes all the creatures to be armed against us, and makes our own
consciences to fight against us. Sin is the cause of all the causes of
perilous times. Sin is the cause of our civil wars. Sin is the cause of
our divisions. Sin is the cause why men fall into such dangerous errors.
Sin brings such kinds of judgments, which no other thing can bring. Sin
brings invisible, spiritual, and eternal judgments. It is sin that makes
God give over a nation to a reprobate sense. Sin makes all times
dangerous. Let the times be never so prosperous, yet if they be sinful
times, they are times truly dangerous. And if they be not sinful, they
are not dangerous, though never so miserable. It is sin that makes
afflictions to be the fruits of God's avenging wrath, part of the curse
due to sin, and a beginning of hell. It is sin, and sin only, that
embitters every affliction. Let us for ever look upon sin through these
scripture spectacles.

The apostle, in four verses, reckons up nineteen sins, as the causes of
the miseries of the last days. I may truly call these nineteen sins,
England's looking-glass, wherein we may see what are the clouds that
eclipse God's countenance from shining upon us; the mountains that lie
in the way to hinder the settlement of church-discipline: even these
nineteen sins, which are as an iron-whip of nineteen strings, with which
God is whipping England at this day; which are as nineteen faggots, with
which God is burning and devouring England. My purpose is not to speak
of all these sins; only let me propound a divine project, how to make
the times happy for soul and body. And that is to strike at the root of
all misery, which is sin and iniquity: to repent for and from all these
nineteen sins, which are as the oil that feeds and increases the flame
that is now consuming of us. For, because men are lovers of themselves,
_usque ad contemptum Dei et republicae_; because men drive their own
designs, not only to the neglect, but contempt of God and the
commonwealth. Because men are covetous, lovers of the world, more than
lovers of God. Because they are proud in head, heart, looks a