he
family worship at all, others only singing a psalm and reading a chapter
without praying, and others making a fashion of all, but very
perfunctoriously, formally, and indifferently, and scarcely once in a
day. And ministers also making little conscience of visiting families to
see how this duty is performed, not pressing it upon the negligent, nor
stirring up the formal to a more spiritual way of performing it, nay,
some giving bad examples to their flocks, by neglecting it themselves in
their own families. _The nobility, gentry, and barons, who should be
examples of sober walking unto others, are very generally ringleaders of
excess and rioting_. We have been far from amending our lives and
promoting a personal reformation, and going before one another in the
example of a real reformation, when we have been examples of deformation
in our personal practices and public transactions, and being
too-familiar and too far united with the patrons and patterns of the
land's deformations. "Our fathers also acknowledged, albeit they were
the Lord's people engaged unto him in a solemn way; yet they had not
made it their study that judicatories and armies should consist of, and
places of power and trust be filled with men of blameless and Christian
conversation, and of known integrity and approved fidelity, affection,
and zeal unto the cause of God. And not only those who were neutral and
indifferent, but disaffected and malignant, and others who were profane
and scandalous were intrusted. By which it came to pass that
judicatories, EVEN THEN, were the seats of injustice and iniquity. And
many in their armies, by miscarriages, became their plague unto the
great prejudice of the cause of God, the great scandal of the gospel,
and the great increase of looseness and profanity throughout all the
land." But, since the time of that acknowledgment there has still been
more and more degeneracy, so that judicatories have consisted of, and
been filled with perjured traitors to God and their country. And armies
made up of these plagues marshalled under a displayed banner against
Christ and his interest, not only to the scandal, but for the
suppression of the gospel, and forcing people to profanity throughout
the land; and now are, to the disgrace of the Protestant religion, made
up of the refuse of the lands, and employed in the support of an
Antichristian interest abroad. Yet have we not sighed and cried for
these abominations, nor have we