many Millions of people, who day and night do
interceed with him: The _Priests_ and Ministers _of the Lord weeping
between the porch and the Altar, and saying, Spare thy people O Lord,
spare thy People, and give not thine Inheritance to reproach_.
And now I have said what was upon my Spirit for your sake, when, for the
satisfaction of such as (through its effect upon your soule) this Addresse
of mine may possibly come to, I have religiously declared, that the Person
who writ it, had no unworthy or sinister design of his owne to gratifie,
much lesse any other party whatever; as being neither _Courtier_,
_Souldier_, or _Church-man_, but a plain Country Gentleman, engag'd on
neither side, who, has had leisure, (through the goodnesse of God)
candidly, and without passion to examine the particulars which he has
touched, and expects no other reward in the successe of it, then what
_Christ_ has promised in the _Gospels_: The _Benediction{5} of the peace
maker_; and which he already feels in the discharge of his Conscience
being for his own particular, long since resolv'd with himself, to persist
in his Religion, and his loyalty to the death; come what will; as
wrongfully perswaded, that all the persecutions, losses, and other
accidents which may arrive him for it here, _are not worthy to be compared
to that eternall{6} weight of glory which is to be revealed hereafter_;
and to the inexpressible consolation, which it will afford on his
_Death-bed_, when all these guilded pleasures will disappear, this noise,
and empty pompe, when God shall _set all out sins in order before us_; and
when, it is certain, that the humble, and the peaceable, the charitable
and the meek shall not loose their reward, not change their hopes, for all
the Crownes and the Scepters, the Lawrells and the Trophies which
ambitious and self seeking men contend for, with so much Tyrannie and
injustice.
Let them therefore no longer deceive you, dear Sr. and as the guise of
these vile men is, tell you they are the Godly-party, under which for the
present they would pass, and _courage themselves in their wickedness_,
stoping their ears, and shutting their eyes against all that has been
taught and practised by the best of Christians, & holiest of Saints these
sixteen hundred years: _You shall know them by their fruites, do men
gather Grapes of Thornes, or Figs of Thistles?_ But so, being miserably
gall'd with the remembrance of their impieties, and the steps by
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