because if he should, as such they would escape for ever. And how would it weaken the government of the world, if when God sees a people confederate against him, blow the trumpets of rebellion, and gather into armies to urge war against him, he should sit still with his hands in his bosom, and take no notice of it! For though among men the multitude of offenders be many times the cause of their impunity, because of the weakness of human governments, which are glad to spare, where they are not strong enough to punish; yet in the government of God things are quite otherwise: no combination of sinners is too hard for him, and the greater and more numerous the offenders are, the more his justice is concerned to vindicate the affront. However, therefore, God may pass by single sinners in this world; yet when a nation combines against him, when hand joins in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished.

3. Wickedness tends to the ruin of kingdoms and nations, as it contributes to the corrupting and infatuating of their/counsels. For vice and wickedness doth very much depress the minds and weaken the understandings of men; it doth so warp their judgments, and cast such mists of prejudice around their reason, that they are not able to discern the issues and consequents of things. For when they are overpowered by their lusts, their affections will mislead their minds, and impose upon them for truth and realities their own unreasonable wishes and desires: and when we advise in the midst of a company of headstrong passions and appetites, we are like Rehoboam amongst his young and hairbrained counsellors, who represented things to him, not as they were in

themselves, but according to his own desires and inclinations. And when the counsels of a nation are steered by its own vicious affections, that will most commonly seem best which is most unreasonable; and so storms will many times be mistaken for calms, and rocks for safe and quiet harbours. No man is fit to counsel for a public good, but he that is led by simple and unbiassed reason; because he only will attend impartially to the reasons of things, and accommodate his advices to the public necessities and exigencies of affairs. But when the man himself is governed by an unreasonable appetite or affection, that will ever and anon intermingle with his judgment and bias his counsels towards its own unreasonable desires and inclinations. And when such blind affections as pride and ambition, covetousness and revenge, sit at the stern, and are the pilots and steermen of a kingdom, how can it be expected but that in the midst of so many rocks and quicksands that surround it, it shall be run a-ground, or be split in pieces?

3. Wickedness tends to the ruin of kingdoms and nations, as it contributes to melt and emasculate their courage. For though it cannot be denied but that the valour and courage of nations is very much owing to the temper of the climes in which they are situate; yet it is evident, that as people of the most effeminate climes have by virtue been improved into heroic and magnanimous, as the Romans and Persians for instance; so those of the most hardy and courageous climes have many times by their dissolute manners been broken and dispirited into the most wretched cowards and poltrons; as the English for instance; who, though they have been ever remarked

for a people of a daring and undaunted genius, yet have sometimes been so melted by their own softness and luxury, as that they became preys to every dog that hunted them. And indeed softness, luxury, and wantonness, are vices that will effeminate the spirits, and spoil the strain of the most valorous nation for as virtues are increased by exercise, so they shrink and decay by inactivity; and there is no state of life that doth so fetter our courage and restrain its vigour and activity, as that of idleness and luxury; in which, after it hath stewed and dissolved a while, it will convert into the greatest baseness and pusillanimity for an intemperate bowl, a bed of sloth, and a Delilah's lap, are charms sufficient to effeminate a hero, and bewitch a lion into a timorous hare. And as these particular vices do naturally discourage a nation, so vice in general hath the same effect; for it naturally impresses a sense of guilt upon the mind, which fills it with such fears and horrors, as cannot but weaken and dispirit the hardiest and most daring courage. For how can a man be courageous that is continually stung with the remorses and haunted with the restless furies of his own guilty mind; that carries a hell within his own bosom, and hath a thousand guilts, like so many grim and ghastly devils, continually staring him in the face? Certainly such an one must either lay by his reason or his courage, and become a coward, or cease to be a man. Hence it is said, The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth: but the righteous is bold as a lion, Prov. xxviii. 1. And when a nation is thus dispirited by their own lusts and guilts, then are they ripe for ruin, and fit to be made a prey for every Nimrod that will hunt and invade them.

5. Wickedness tends to the ruin of kingdoms and nations, as it breaks and dissolves their union. For as true religion knits men's hearts together by the indissoluble ligaments of mutual love and charity; as it heals their spirits, and corrects their passions, and inspires their natures with all those obliging graces upon which the peace and concord of society is founded; so, on the contrary, vice and wickedness rends and divides the hearts of men, sows seeds of discord in their natures, frets and inflames their spirits against one another, and impregnates them with such rude and barbarous passions, as do naturally render them unsociable to each other; such as pride and ambition, envy and malice, covetousness and revenge, which naturally tend to the dissolution of society, and the cutting in sunder all the cords of friendship and good neighbourhood. Hence is that of St. James, chap. iv. 1. From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Yea, doubtless, this is the cause of all those discords that spoil the harmony of this moral world, the Pandora's box, out of which have swarmed all those strifes and contentions, broils and confusions, that have destroyed and ruined many flourishing kingdoms. For though the most turbulent factions are usually faced with zeal for God, yet if you look beyond the outside, you will always find that most of the broils that have been conducted under the displayed banners of religion, have been raised and led on by the devilish passions of those who have been the most zealous sticklers and fomenters of them. Thus vice, you see, doth naturally divide the nation, and tears the members of it in sunder: and our

blessed Saviour assures us, that when a kingdom is divided against itself, it is soon brought to desolation, Matth. xii. 25. For those divisions do mightily impair the strength of a kingdom, which, like an impetuous stream, being parted in several currents, runs with far less force, and is much more easily forded. And when once a nation is torn and separated into factions, it is at best but like a confederate army, which, though it be united into one body, hath several contrary interests and designs, which divides their counsels, and makes them suspicious of one another, and so less able to withstand the force of an united enemy: and in these circumstances what can be expected, but that either they should fall out among themselves, and sheath their swords in one another's bowels, or be made an easy prey to the power and rapine of their common adversary?

6. Wickedness tends to the ruin of kingdoms and nations, as it disturbs them in their order and regular administration. For as religion lays the foundations of all good order in a kingdom; as it obliges the governors to all those regular virtues that make them public blessings, to justice and liberality, to truth and mercy, to constancy and magnanimity; as it blinds the subordinate instruments and ministers of state to fidelity and diligence; as it engages the subjects to honour and reverence, to obey and submit to their governors: so, on the contrary, vice and wickedness, when it hath insinuated itself into a nation, subverts the whole order of it, and miserably confounds the course of its administration. It introduces into the government opposition and tyranny, fraud and cruelty, cowardice and incon