murderers, (while government is preferved, and law and justice regularly administered,) can be but few, comparatively with the deluded mercilefs herd of plunderers and deftroyers, which rebellion musters; for thus both the condemned and the sufpected unite together, and make the whole community the object of their prey.

Such are the alarming terrors that await rebellion ; that all will do well to pray against such grievous visitations, and employ their best endeavours to promote among their neighbors a spirit of due obedience and godly peace; for when once anarchy and confufion have taken place, all intereft in our property is at an end; and general depredation, violence, and cruelty, must enfùe. Neither innocence or chastity are fpared; wives, hufbands, parents, children, aged, and infants, all are equally expofed to the brutal violence, and unbridled barbarity of rebellious fury. In fhort, it being (as is war indeed in every shape) the foreft of all God's judgments, fo we read in 2 Sam. xxiv. 14. that David, (who was well experienced in the horrors of the event) when threatened with the punishment of only common war from God, intreated that he might fall into the band of the Lord, and not of men, prefering either peftilence or famine, to the misery and devaftation of the fword. And indeed, thefe other plagues do frequently attend or follow it; for the diforderly lives of the infurgents, who are under no control or difcipline, do generally produce the former, through various natural causes of filth, furfeiting, and want of due precaution to preferve health; and on the other hand, by the injudicious waste of ruinous multitudės'; and the check to commerce, and neglect of cultivating the ground; the latter calamity frequently takes place to the almost utter deftruction of the nation. So that fickness and want, in times like thefe, destroy as many as the ford. We have an infallible and alarming caution

given us by Chrift himself, of the ruinous nature of difobedience. Woe unto every kingdom (faith he) that is divided against itself, for it is thereby most furely brought to deftruction, and cannot ftand. The further woeful difference of all rebellious contests, from any other war is this, that in common wars, against a foreign enemy, though certain miferies take place, which every chriftian mind cannot fail fincerely to deplore, yet the evil is not committed by countrymen and fellow-citizens, against each other; whereas when those who should unite in mutual defence, make way for all the fecret wishes of the common enemy, when the difloyalty of the father either procures his own death, or that of his children, and effects befides the forfeiture of their inheritance; when men are mad enough to trample upon the value of the laws, to promote all manner of wickedness, to set the most abandoned characters at liberty, empowering them thereby to multiply their former crimes against the innocent and defencelefs; when they are regardless of wafting the treasure of their country, and impoverishing their native land; and by thus weakening its refources, expofing it to the invafions of foreign foes; by which the lives and property, and liberties of their friends and families, are all devoted these are among the many odious ftains that mark the cha racter of rebellion, and which render it more tremendous, and to be dreaded, than any other war. For in the contest with our foreign foes, the gaining of a victory brings joy and honor to the people. Nay though we should lose the day, the value and juftice of the caufe, affords fome fatisfaction to the furvivors; and as for those who fall in defending their prince and country's rights, they gain honorable teftimony to their good endeavors. They fo far die with a good confcience, and may obtain a heavenly reward for acting in their station, with due fidelity and courage. But rebels, however fuccefsful for

a time,

a time, in their bold and wicked defigns, yet infamy attends them here, for thus difhonoring their character as men. If they escape, they live in merited Shame and reproach of confcience. And if they fall in fighting against their king and country, and their own flesh and blood, we are not warranted by any precedent of divine authority, to pronounce their future exiftence happy: but ufually their conduct even here, is publicly marked by merited infamy and difgrace. They fuffer an ignominious death as due unto their crimes; their heads and bodies are expofed on poles, or hung in chains as food for birds of prey, being efteemed unworthy chriftian burial; and what is worse, fhould they die impenitent (as from the ftubborn and truly difobedient nature of their fin) is commonly the cafe, the tempter and author of their defperate delufion, feizes upon their devoted fpirits, loaded with the guilt and mifchief, which he himself inspired *. And it was in charitable warning of this moft fatal confequence, that St. Paul enforces the virtue of obedience, not only from fear of mortal death and punishment, but also for confcience fake towards God; admonishing thereby, that all who wilfully rebel against their lawful fovereign, and the eftablished laws by which the peace and welfare of the nation is protected, do fo effectually dishonor and displease their Maker, that they hazard the eternal condemnation of their immortal fouls. Let us then in all things ftrive to prove ourselves the children of obedience, in humble peaceful hope of thereby preparing ourselves for the fociety of the redeemed: and for fear the juft judgment of God fhould vifit

And in the animated language of an elegant modern poet, defcribing the reception of a wicked spirit by the father of all evil, the cruel triumph of the prince of darkness over the wretched pri foner, is thus ftrongly painted:

"Like a true devil, fatan fmil'd,

"Pleas'd with the torment of his child,"

as both now, and in a future ftate of being. For as HEAVEN only, muft furely be the proper place for the fpirits of quiet, godly, and obedient fubjects; and bell the only fuitable manfion for rebels against God, their king, and country. So in this life, that kingdom is most happy, where most subjection and good order doth appear, as being the fign or figure of heaven itself. And on the contrary, where the restlefs difcontented spirit of rebellion prevails, there is the exprefs fimilitude of hell, whofe inhabitants were from the beginning ftyled the children of dif obedience, and rebellion. Thus in the end it fhall be found, that as blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth; fo all who love peace fhall be called the children of God, and become inheritors of heaven with God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghoft. Of which bleffed number may we all prove through the merits and help of Jefus Chrift our bleffed Lord and Savior. Amen.

Now, &c.

Fourth Part of the Homily against Disobedience and wilful Rebellion.

Ο

SO odious to God, fo dangerous and deftructive

to the lives, and fouls of men, is this evil difpofition in human nature, that it is impoffible to render our exhortation against it, too frequent, full, or ferious. To the good end therefore, that you may hold all fuch iniquitous practices in just abborrence, it will help to ftrengthen your good refolutions of continuing obedient, and to alarm you from a different conduct, to be informed further

from

from fcripture example, how terribly at different times, God hath refented the very inclination to this fin, although the rebellious fpirit of the people was confined to inward murmuring and difaffection only, against their governors, and though the treafon had not proceeded to overt action. But as in truth, when once the evil fpirit is raised, the author of the mischief doth never reft 'till he hath brought his ruinous wiles into execution, fo the fuperior power of God was neceffary to interfere, to check the fatal mifchief of his finful projects.

We read in the xiith chapter of the Book of Numbers, 2d verfe, that for the fingle fin of murmuring against God's appointed governors over his people, and for harboring a defire of lowering his authority, and exalting their own, the Lord punished even Aaron, and Miriam, with the fore affliction of a leprous disorder. Again in the xvith chapter of the fame book, we have the celebrated record of that fearful judgment which fell upon feveral thoufand of the feditious part for rebelling against Mofes, God's appointed governor and chief magiftrate, over the people. The promoters of this feditious attempt, and thofe connected with them, went down alive into the pit; the remainder of the tranfgreffors were confumed by fire; and fourteen thousand and upwards were deftroyed by a peftilence. At another time, their rebellious difaffectron was punished by a terrible death occafioned by the fting of venemous ferpents. Now thefe woeful inftances of God's fevere difpleasure against this particular fin, are written for the future and perpetual warning of all fubjects, in all lands, where any faith in God prevails. For it is obfervable from Mofes's explanation in the xvith Exodus, and 7th verfe, that God did always confider the difobedience of mankind, as not merely trefpaffing against mortal creatures like themselves, but as a heinaus fin against Himself. For as Mofes in meek

nefs,