* Cf. note, Vol II. page 3.— G.
158 THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
of readers. Having found this to be your honour's honour, and let it still be, to content yourselves with humble knowledge, cordial respect, and vital expressions of received truths ; that you are not in number with those that change their judgments, and I fear their religion, as they do their friends and fashions, being constant in inconstancy ; and that with you it is not truths for persons, but persons for truth ;* I doubt not the admittance of these sermons unto your respect and paironage. My only request is, that as the author did honour you, so these labours of his, now made public, may be as so many divine beams, holy breathings, and celestial droppings, to raise up your spirits to hate the dominion of the beast, to help forward the ruin of mj^stical Jericho and all other unprosperous buildings and builders ; that you may become successful seekers, gaining faith triumphant, to acquaint 3'ou with the hidden life ; that at length you may obtain the redemption of your bodies, knowing that Balaam's wish is not enough, unless the faithful Covenanter take you into covenant with himself : this alone yielding to you the demand of a good conscience, which shall be your defence against the sword of reproach. t These I leave with you, and you with God, and rest
Your honour's at command,
John Sedgwick. J
* Non ex personis probamns fidem, sed ex fide personas. — Tertullian Apolog. t Cf. note, Vol. IV. page 492.— G.
X It will be noticed that Sedgwick ingeniously brings together here all the sub- jects of the several sermons in the volume. Cf. title-page, ante, 156. — G.
TO THE READER
So precious the remembrance should be of God's thoughts of mei'cy to US-ward, when he dehvered us fi'om that helHsh plot of the Gunpowder Treason, that if there were nothing else to commend this treatise to us, the first sermons here presented to us, which were preached upon that occasion, may justly procure it a ready and hearty welcome.
When God works such wonders for a church and people as that was, it is not enough to praise God for the present, and to rejoice greatly in the great salvation he hath wrought for them ; yea, the more a people are in such a case affected for the present, the more inexcusable they must needs be if afterward they slight and disregard it, and that because their former joy proves they were thoroughly convinced of the greatness of the mercy, and so discovers their following ingratitude to be the more abominable ; whence it was that when Jonathan put his father Saul in mind how David killed Goliah, and thereby had wrought a great deliver- ance for them (to the end he might no longer seek his ruin, that had been the means of so much good to God's people) ; withal he wished him to consider that he himself stood by, an eye-witness of that noble exploit of David's, and was then mightily afiected with joy when he saw that formidable giant fall under his hand : ' Thou sawest it,' saith he, ' and didst rejoice,' 1 Samuel xix. 5, intimating how inexcusable it would be if he should forget that deliverance, concerning which himself had been so wondrously affected when it was done.
As therefore we have great cause to bewail the general decay of men's thankfulness for this great deliverance ; at the first discovery of that cursed plot, ' Our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing,' Ps. cxxvi. 2, all the land over, and every man could say, ' The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad,' as Ps. cxxvi. 2, 3 ; and yet now scarce one amongst many is afiected with it, as in former times; so have we also great cause to bless God for the holy alarms of God's watch- men, whereby they have endeavoured to stir up those that are fallen from their first jo}' ; and so' amongst the rest for these of Reverend Dr Sibbes, the author of them, wherein he hath so feelingly set forth the misery of that antichristian bondage, from which we were delivered in that deliverance, that methinks he that reads them with due care must needs find his heart rousing up itself, as Deborah did : ' Awake, awake, Deborah ; awake, awake, utter a song,' Judges v. 12.
As for the other sermons, which, in this third tome, be styled Evangelical Sacrifices, which are published together with these, you shall find them no less profitable than these, though in divers other respects. The most of them tend to fit Christians for their latter end, a work of greatest import-
160 TO THE READER.
ance, and do so swoelly sot boforo our oyea that recompence of reward reserved for us in heaven, that I hope many of that brood of travellers, ' the generation of those that sock God's face ' and favour here on earth, shall Ihid them a great help to the ' finishing of their course with joy,' and others shall be wakened that are too ready to slumber and forget whither they are going, ' to strive to enter in at the strait gate,' Luke xiii. 24, and not to content themselves with a lazy Balaam's wish ; which, reader, let us seek from Him who only gives the blessing, to whose grace I com- mend thee, resting still ""