the Fire. _We are troubled on every side; yet not distressed;
we are perplexed, but not in despaire; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast
downe, but not destroyed._ We know assuredly there is more mercy in
emptying us from Vessell to Vessell, then in suffering us to settle on our
Lees, whereby our taste should remain in us, and our scent not be changed.

These things premised, we come to the true language of this heavy
judgement, and to the reall procuring causes thereof. _For the
transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of
Israel._ God is hereby shewing to great and smal in this Land their work
and their transgression, that they have exceeded. _He openeth also their
eare to discipline, and commandeth that they return from iniquity._ We
leave every Congregation in the Land, every Family in every Congregation,
& every Person in every Family to examine their own hearts and wayes, & to
mourn for Congregationall, Domesticall, and Personall sinnes: Cursed shall
they be who have added fuell to the fire, and now bring no water to
extinguish it, who had a great hand in the provocation, and bear no part
in the humiliation.

Let every one commune with his own conscience, and repent of his own
wickednesse, and say, _What have I done_? Wee shall here touch onely the
Nationall sinnes, or at least more publick ones, then those of a Family or
Congregation, which we also intend for chief causes of a publick Fast and
Humiliation. If among our Nobles, Gentrie and Barons, there have been some
studying their own private interests more then the publick, and _Seeking
their own things more then the things of Christ, or oppressing and
defrauding the poore sort and the needie, because it was in the power of
their hand_: and if among our Ministrie there have been divers
Time-servers, _Who have not renounced the hidden things of dishonesty,
whose hearts have not been right before God, nor stedfast in his
Covenant,_ who have been secretly haters of the _Power of Godlinesse_, and
of Mortification; shall not GOD search all this out? _who will bring to
light the hidden things of darknesse, and will make manifest the counsels
of the hearts._ In these also leaving all men to a judging and searching
of themselves, there are many other provocations which are apparent in all
or many of this Nation, from which, _though they wash with nitre, and take
much sope_, yet they cannot make themselves clean: Because of these _the
Land mournet