informed, the
Government being unwilling to exasperate the people, who were, as I may
say, all out of their wits already.

Neither can I acquit those ministers that in their sermons rather sank
than lifted up the hearts of their hearers. Many of them no doubt did it
for the strengthening the resolution of the people, and especially for
quickening them to repentance, but it certainly answered not their end,
at least not in proportion to the injury it did another way; and indeed,
as God Himself through the whole Scriptures rather draws to Him by
invitations and calls to turn to Him and live, than drives us by terror
and amazement, so I must confess I thought the ministers should have
done also, imitating our blessed Lord and Master in this, that His
whole Gospel is full of declarations from heaven of God's mercy, and His
readiness to receive penitents and forgive them, complaining, 'Ye will
not come unto Me that ye may have life', and that therefore His Gospel
is called the Gospel of Peace and the Gospel of Grace.

But we had some good men, and that of all persuasions and opinions,
whose discourses were full of terror, who spoke nothing but dismal
things; and as they brought the people together with a kind of
horror, sent them away in tears, prophesying nothing but evil tidings,
terrifying the people with the apprehensions of being utterly destroyed,
not guiding them, at least not enough, to cry to heaven for mercy.

It was, indeed, a time of very unhappy breaches among us in matters
of religion. Innumerable sects and divisions and separate opinions
prevailed among the people. The Church of England was restored, indeed,
with the restoration of the monarchy, about four years before; but the
ministers and preachers of the Presbyterians and Independents, and
of all the other sorts of professions, had begun to gather separate
societies and erect altar against altar, and all those had their
meetings for worship apart, as they have now, but not so many then, the
Dissenters being not thoroughly formed into a body as they are since;
and those congregations which were thus gathered together were yet
but few. And even those that were, the Government did not allow, but
endeavoured to suppress them and shut up their meetings.

But the visitation reconciled them again, at least for a time, and many
of the best and most valuable ministers and preachers of the Dissenters
were suffered to go into the churches where the incumbents wer