A47095:5
Zion in distress, or, The sad and lamentable complaint of Zion and her children…
Zion in distress, or, The sad and lamentable complaint of Zion and her children wherein are demonstrated the causes of her miserable calamities, and her faith in God ... : also showing the dreadful controversy God hath with the beast of Rome ...Zion in distress, or, The sad and lamentable complaint of Zion and her children wherein are demonstrated the causes of her miserable calamities, and her faith in God ... : also shewing the dreadful controversie God hath with the beast of Rome ...
London : Printed in the fatal year, 1666
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
THE AUTHOR To the Reader.
Courteous Reader,
IF these ensuing illiterate and homespun-Poems come to thy hand, let me crave this of thee, viz. Diligently and impartially to peruse them; and do not censoriously judge, nor ⟨image 3⟩prejudicially condemn the plain and simple-hearted Author thereof: Neither do thou slight them because of the lowness and meanness of the stile that they run in: But esteem them rather for the honesty of the matter, then for their Elegance; more for their Virtue, than for the Variety of Scholastic Expressions. I never learned the Art of Rhetoric, nor courted the Universities. Neither have I studied to deliver my self in that stile that might tend either to the pleasing of the Mind, Fancies, Or vain Humours of any; nor to delight the Ear, but to affect ⟨image 3⟩the Heart; not to stir up the Mind to Mirth, but to move the Soul to Mourn. And if, Courteous Reader, thou art a Christian, one that art truly and really born from Above, of the free Woman, and brought up virtuously in the Heavenly Family; if so, I am persuaded that I need not enforce many Arguments to induce thee to a kind acceptance of what I present thee with, because it treateth of the state of Her whose Womb did bear thee, and whose Paps have spiritually given thee suck. Shall thy dear Mother be in a miserable languishing state and condition, and not her own dear ⟨image 4⟩