9. The late great increase of scandalous sins. Times of trouble are usually licentious, and when penal laws are suspended by force, wicked- ness groweth impudent ; and truly it is even so among us, to the con- fronting of authority ; whoring, and swearing, and drunkenness and Sabbath profanations abounding everywhere ; yea, more than formerly. We looked for purging the land, and it is more defiled. When the pot boileth, the scum is discovered. Baths bring forth corruption, if it be in the body, into the skin. God hath been reforming the land, and our wickedness appeareth the more : Hosea vii. 1, ' When I would have healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered, and the wickedness of Samaria.' God hath been correcting and amending us, and we have been the more vile and sinful. Oh ! then how may the kingdom sit down like the church in Micah, and mourn : Micah vii. 1, 2, ' I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grape gleanings of the vintage. The good man is perished out of the earth. There is none upright upon the earth. They all lie in wait for blood, and hunt every man his brother by a net' Zeal is decayed, the power of godliness gone, the word despised, and we are even grown as the people whom God hath cast out before us. Keligion hath received wounds in the house of her friends, and is made a pre-
^ Nazian. Orat. iu ^led.
432 England's spiritual languishing. [Rev. III. 2.
tence lo every base design. Few seek to propagate it, and it meets with much snarling and opposition everywhere, and iniquity is now grown impudent.
And thus I have done with my first work, wdiich was to show wherein rehgion is deca3'ed.
Secondly, My next business is to show you the occasions and causes, how we came thus to languish and decrease, that so the guilt may lie at the right door. And truly we need not contend about that, but may every one of us smite upon the thigh, and bear the shame of our own iniquity.
Briefly then —
1. For the occasions ; the knowledge of them may serve to shame us with our unthankfulness. They are two: —
[1.] One is the late prosperity which God of his mercy had given to his people. The church, which is the heir of the cross,^ is seldom able to manage and wield an outward happy condition. I remember, Nazi- anzen observeth,'^ that it hath ever with more honour endured misery than with safety impioved happiness and success ; that maketh us always degenerate or divide : sometimes degenerate. When Constan- tine favoured religion, poison was sown in the church ; Christians began to lose their ancient severity, and to look after ease and honours and pleasures in the world. When we have anything in the world, we neglect our high hopes ; and so by little and little holiness decayeth and degenerateth into a mere pretence, which is only retained the better to colour over some carnal pursuits and projects ; whereas those Christians that meet with nothing but hard things in the world and from the world are more heavenly and holy ; for the inward exercises of mortification are much advantaged by their outward condition, and the world being crucified to them, they aie the better crucified to the world, as Paul speaketh, Gal. vi. 14, i.e., it neither smileth upon them nor they upon it. And as success maketh us to degenerate, so to divide, putaOevreq hieKvaajiev,^ as he said, as soon as the church grew prosperous it grew factious ; like timber in the sunshine, we are apt to warp and divide from one another, or like elephants returning from the heat of the battle, we tread down our own troops.* Prosperity begets wanton- ness, and wantonness novelties, and so the people of God come to be scattered, and to go into distinct herds and divisions, an evil ever fatal to religion, and yet it seemeth connatural. The apostles themselves, though oracles infallible, could not wholly prevent it in their days; outward prosperity then was a great occasion.
[2.] Another may be openness of vision. Carnal hearts are soon cloyed. I cannot tell how it cometh to pass, but so it is ; the word hath less power when openly preached. A gospel-glutted stomach doth often force God to provide sharp remedies, either some great out- ward misery, accompanied with the want and famine of the word, and then any little thing is precious, as see two places : one is Zech.
1 ' Ecelesia hseres crucis.'
" ' Paov iari dvffirpaylap iyeyKeTv rj evirpayidv Siacruffaffdai. ' — Nazian. Oral. 3 de Pace.
^ Naz. ibidem.
* ' Quam reportassent tandem coronam si perstitissent in eadem militia, nee ut efiFerati elephantes ab hostibus conversi coutrivissent suos.' — Bnghtman. de Luthero et Melanc- thone.
Eev. III. 2.] England's spiritual languishing. 433
vii. 7, ' Ye should have hearkened to the former prophets, when Jeru- salem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, and men inhabited the south of the i)lain.' Mark, there is their full condition described ; the temple stood, the city flourished, the suburbs were great ; but then they hearkened not, but despised the former prophets, that is, the prophets that prophesied before the captivity. But now look upon them in their emptiness: the other place for that is Ezra ix. 8, ' And now that the Lord hath showed us such grace, to give us a nail in the holy place,' &c. Mark how wel- come every little thing is to them then ; a nail in the holy place is such a mercy ; that is, to see one pin or nail driven into tlie rafters of the temple ; whereas before they would not know their own mercies, while that stately edifice stood in all its glory and beauty. Times may come when these dews will be precious, and sermon showers sweet to thirsty souls ; or if this be not, God may send a dark Ezekiel, when a plain Jeremiah is despised. Ordinances may be carried in such an obscure, notional, airy way as to yield no efficacy and comfort. These are the occasions, but —