A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons at their late solemn fast…A sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons at their late solemne fast…

The first application shall be to the malignant enemies of the Cause and People of God at this time, who deserve Jeremiahs ¹black mark to be put upon them. ^dWere they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush. When he would say the worst of them, this is it; ^eThou hadst a whores forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed. There are some sons of Belial risen up against us, who have ⟨p. 14⟩done some things, whereof, I dare say, many Heathens would have been ashamed: yet they are as far from being ashamed of their outrages, as Caligula was, who said of himself, that he loved nothing better in his own nature, then that he could not be ashamed; nay, ^ftheir glory is their shame, and if the Lord do not open their eyes to see their shame, their end will be destruction. Is it a light matter to swear and blaspheme, to coin and spread lies, to devise calumnies, to break Treaties, to contrive treacherous plots, to exercise so many barbarous cruelties, to shed so much blood, and (as if that were too little) to bury men quick? Is all this no matter of shame? And when they have so often professed to be for the true Protestant Religion, shall they not be ashamed to thirst so much after Protestant blood, and in that cause desire to associate themselves with all the Papists at home and abroad, whose assistance they can have, and particularly with those matchless monsters (they call them Subjects) of Ireland, who (if the computation fail not) have shed the blood of some hundred thousands in that Kingdom? for our part, it seems, they are resolved to give the worst name to the best thing, which we can do, and therefore they have not been ashamed to call a Religious and Loyal Covenant, a traitorous and damnable Covenant. I have no pleasure to take up these and other dunghills: the Text hath put this in my mouth which I have said. O that they could recover themselves out of ^gthe gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity. O that we could hear that they begin to be ashamed of their abominations.