Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy

6. Look into the Body Ecclesiastical, and there you shall see Churches; some ready to exalt themselves above the Civil Magistrate, and disowning his Civil Power in matters appertaining to Godliness; others ready to renounce Consociation and Communion one with another, and many the like: and yet we still enquire; What's the reason? Why is God displeased? Why, is all this nothing? yes sure: why, who knows not that these are our distempers?

Obj. But there is some particular thing which must be known, and this is either in Magistrate, or Ministers, or both: when shall you finds in Scripture that God ever brought public Judgements on his people, but the sins of Princes, Priests and Prophets were the causes of it, and are so declared to have been? and therefore we must enquire yet further.

Obj. But there is some particular thing which must be known, and this is either in Magistrate, or Ministers, or both: when shall you finds in Scripture that God ever brought publick Judgements on his people, but the sins of Princes, Priests and Prophets were the causes of it, and are so declared to have been? and therefore we must enquire yet further.

Ans. 1. This Objection is strange and impertinent, it is as if a Physician should come to a person all over full of mortal wounds, and yet neglects them all, and strangely cries out, There is one singular wound which I must find out: is not this to suffer the person wilfully to perish, by letting him bleed out his life at the known wounds, while he goes upon the discovery of one unknown? Is not this New-Englands case, such as was once Judahs, Isa. 1 5. and shall we yet grope as in the dark after some singular thing: I therefore fear that this is but a fond and hypocritical excuse, to put off the edge of the conviction of present sins, and keep up our credit too, as if we would willingly know the mind of God. But