A word in season to this present generation, or, A sober and serious discourse…

All are now for Mordecai, there is not a Courtier that has one good word for Haman: Ah what a rare hand of God was there in all these things, for the good of his People, and the utter overthrow of their grand Enemy! To sum all up in a little room, the breaking of the Kings sleep, was the breaking of one of the most bloody designs that ever was laid against the People of God. Well, what though the King could not sleep, could he not lye still in his bed? No, he must have a book, and that book must be the book of Chronicles, and that book must be opened where accidentally (not by turning to that place purposely) yet surely by Gods Providence directing him that read, to that very story concerning Mordecai, where was registered his faithfulness, in discovering and disappointing of a murder intended against the King; whereupon God sets this act of faithfulness so close upon the Kings heart, that he could not rest till Mordecai was nobly rewarded for it, and this reward must be Haman's ruin; his advancement, Haman's abasement, and this was the rise of Haman's disappointment. In this famous instance you may run and read, the favourable, signal and eminent presence of the Lord, in the miraculous preservation of his Church from a total ruin and destruction, and in the disappointing the plots, designs, and counsels of their greatest Enemies, and in taking of them in the very snares, that they had-laid for others; suitable to that of the Psalmist: He made a pit and digged it, and ¹is fallen into the ditch which he made; his mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing upon his own pate. Henry the Third of France, was stabbed in the same Chamber, where he had helped to contrive the French Massacre: And his Brother Charles the Ninth, had blood given him to drink, for he was ⟨p. 52⟩worthy; there is no end of Stories of this nature, so Psalm 9. 15. The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid, is their own foot taken. The wicked are compared to Hunters for their cruelty, and to Fowlers for their craft; but see their success, they are sunk down in their own pit, caught in their own net; thus it befell Pharaoh, Jabin, and Sisera, ²Sennacherib, Antiocbus Epiphanes, Maxentius the Tyrant, who fell into the Tiber, from his own false bridge laid for Constantine; the Spanish Armada, and our Powder-plotters. Ver. 16.