Gods free mercy to England presented as a precious and powerful motive to humiliationGods free mercy to England presented as a pretious and powerfull motive to humiliation

3. If God should heal us, help us, and lengthen out our tranquillity, and make a reformation among us, yet it would be but a lame cure, if we be not confounded and ashamed for our evil ways. It will be but a skinning over of our disease, and a daubing of us up with untempered mortar, a smothering of the fire, which will break out the more afterwards. But a perfect cure can never be expected from God, till th•re be a National humiliation, and reformation.

3. If God should heale us, help us, and lengthen out our tranquillity, and make a reformation among us, yet it would be but a lame cure, if we be not confounded and ashamed for our evill wayes. It will be but a skinning over of our disease, and a daubing of us up with untempered morter, a smothering of the fire, which will breake out the more afterwards. But a perfect cure can never be expected from God, till th•re be a Nationall humiliation, and refo•mation.

4. Add lastly, if God should show us mercy, this mercy will be accursed unto us, if we be not humbled and reformed. A mercy abused is no mercy. Mercy turned to sin, takes away the comfort of the mercy, and turneth the mercy into a curse; As the rain, that falls upon the Sea, is made salt by the salt water. And that which falls upon moorish grounds, breeds Toads and Serpents: So all the goodness and mercies of God falling upon wicked, impenitent, and irreformed hearts, breed nothing but the ver• •f sin and iniquity. Mercy is like the water of jealousy, of which •e read Numbers the fifth: If the woman was innocent, it made her fruitful, but if guilty it made her rot. So the mercies of ¹God if we be good, make us more fruitful. It is Maximum & aptissimum motivum & medium obedientiae. But when they fall upon a wicked spirit, they make him the more rotten, and the more wicked. The Lord bless these considerations unto you.