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though great and manifold, may be pardoned; and that our souls though ruinous, and much endangered, by reason of our sins, may be recovered and healed, and eternally saved: O help us so to accuse, and judge, and condemn ourselves, that we may not be judged of the Lord, to be condemned with the world; and so to lay our sins to heart, that thou mayest never lay them to our charge, but upon the account of thy Son our Saviour; whom thou hast given to be the propitiation for our sins; and in whom thou art a God gracious and merciful to poor sinners; that deserve nothing at all from thee, but to be forsaken and abhorred by thee. For his sake, O good God! give us repentance and pardon for all that is past, wherein we have offended thee; whether they be our sins of omission or commission; sins of weakness or wilfulness: failings or presumptions; the sins of ignorance, or such as we have committed against light and knowledge; O gracious Lord, humble us duly under the sense of them, and absolve us thoroughly from the guilt of them. O set. our sins in order before us, and make us to know our transgressions, and the evil of our own hearts; and every one of us so to search and try our ways, that we may turn to the Lord, and bring forth fruits meet for repentance; and not only loathe ourselves in our own sight, for the evils whereof we have been guilty but also loathe, as much as ever we have loved, the things which displease thy holy will, and dishonour thy blessed name. O that we may forsake our sins, not only in the outward commission, but in the inward affection; not reserving to ourselves any sin or lust to be spared, nor any way of wickedness, wherein we would be allowed: but keeping at that distance which thy holy word teaches us to keep, from every evil and accursed thing, that is

abomination in thy sight, and destructive to our souls; and cleansing ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, endeavouring to perfect holiness in the fear of God.

We have been accessary to the accumulated heinous guilt that endangers us all, and calls for judg. ments on the land. Ō that we may be as forward to contribute our help, by the humiliation of our souls, and the reformation of our lives to save our nation; and to turn away the anger gone out against us, that we perish not. Save us, O Lord, from our sins, which are the enemies of our own house; more mischievous to us than any other evils or enemies abroad. (pour out a spirit of serious repentance and reformation upon the whole nation; to heal the distempers of our souls, to curb the disorders of our lives, and to recover the decayed power of godliness in the land: and so prepare and dispose us not only for thy temporal mercies, but for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life, Help us so to turn from the evil of our ways, that thou mayest turn from the fierceness of thy wrath, and cause thy anger towards us to cease. O that we may fear the rod, and who has appointed it! And so prepare to meet thee, our God, in the way of thy judgments, that the God of peace may think thoughts of peace to us, and not of evil; and to give us an expected end, and the desired issue, of all our fears and dangers.

Thou canst shew us great and mighty things, which we know not, and exceed all our expectations, as well as our deservings, by thy bountiful favours: and though thou mightest make us know the worth of slighted mercies, by their want; and deprive us of all the good, which we have so little improved, and so greatly abused: yet O how many promises

of thy word, and what frequent experience, which we have had of thy mercy, in time of our need, do encourage us still with hope to look unto thee, our God, and to wait for the salvation of the Lord! O how long, in all our provocations, hast thou spared us! And how often, in our distresses, sent wonderful redemption to us! And to thee, who hast helped and delivered, in time past, do we look still for help and deliverance. O our God, be thou pleased to take the motive now from thy own mercy, that has so far been pleased to interest thy glory in our safety; and go on to help and deliver us, for the glory of that mercy which first made us thy people, and still has owned us for thy peculiar care. O do not abhor us, nor forsake us for thy name's sake: but be jealous for thy land, and pity thy people. Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.

Either in mercy turn away the evils from us; or prepare us for them, and support us under them, and bring us happily out of them: that we may not sink and perish in them, but find spiritual good, by temporal evils; and find the light momentary afflictions to work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; and all things concurring to promote our grace, and our peace with God, through Jesus Christ. And though thou shouldst feed us with bread of adversity, and water of affliction, yet let not our teachers be removed into corners; nor bring us under a famine of the word of the Lord; nor give us over to the formality of a lifeless profession; under all the means of grace, to send leanness into our soul. Though thou permit the floods and storms to arise and increase; yet fortify us so by thy grace, that we may not be moved by any of these afflictions; so as to turn the blessed advantage of

suffering for thee into an occasion of falling from

thee.

Seeing the truth itself will not make us free if we are not true to it; and the purest religion cannot be our defence; when we continue still so bad, as to shroud the worst conversation, under the best profession, O help us, Lord, to rid our hands and our hearts of all the accursed things, that provoke thy wrath and indignation against us. And let

us wisely consider of thy doings, and know the time of our visitation, and hearken to the calls, and take the warnings, and improve the means and mercies vouchsafed to us, while we have them; and follow the conduct of thy good providence, and comply with all thy gracious methods used, to reclaim us from our sins, and to reform our lives, and save our souls that all may not be in vain to us, but at last effect the purposes of thy saving mercy upon. us: to deliver us from the evils to come, and to set us safe into the hands of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

Confession and Prayer for the Evening of a Public Fast-Day.

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LORD most high and holy, the God of all power and glory, against whom we have greatly sinned, and who by our sins hast been highly provoked; we are under a necessity still to come and appear before thee; and we dare not keep away from thee. But O with what confidence can we look up to the Majesty of heaven, whom we have so ill used, and so much offended!

Well may we be abashed and struck down, to bethink ourselves of all the evil that we have done, and all the sins of heart and life which still we are in:

when we remember, O Lord, and consider thy perfect understanding of every particular, thy holiness to hate, thy justice to requite, and thy power to punish every wicked thing:

We fall down, and humble ourselves here at thy' feet, blessed glorious God, confessing the grievous guilt of all our sins, and our due desert of thy heavy judgments. For we cannot but own ourselves to be some of those degenerate children whom thou hast nourished and brought up, that have rebelled against thee. Yea, have made the bolder to offend thee, the better thou hast dealt by us.

Holy Father! we are filled with confusion, to think what little proportion our lives do bear to our names; how unsuitable to our profession has been our conversation; and how inconsistent we have been with ourselves: when we are called the children of God, the members of his Christ, and the heirs of his glory; and call the gospel our rule, and profess to believe all the great eternal things which it contains; and yet carry, as if we did not know or mind the privileges that we have, nor the relation and obligations in which we stand.

Yea, this may not only fill our faces with shame, but our hearts with dread: lest our very profession of thy holy religion should rise up in the judgment against us, to aggravate our condemnation upon us; because we would so sin against our own belief and knowledge, to pull down the more heavy intolerable doom upon our own heads.

We have been vain and carnal, proud and unthankful in our health and prosperous state; and sullen and forward, murmuring and desponding in our low afflicted condition. The kindness and the mercy that should have allured us unto thee, and encouraged us the more faithfully and cheerfully to

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