Edward Reynolds's Explication: The Epistle Dedicatory

In obedience to your commands, I here humbly present to your view, what you were pleased with patience and readiness of affection lately to attend unto. I considered, that though the choiceness of the auditory might require the exactest preparation, yet, both the condition of the times, and the nature of the duty, called upon us to lay aside our ornaments. And therefore I spake with such plainness, as might commend the matter delivered rather to the conscience of a penitent, than to the fancy of a delicate hearer. The king of Nineveh was a king as well in his sackcloth as in his robes: and the truth of God is indeed fuller of majesty when it is naked, than when adorned with the di’ess of any human contribution, which many times takes from it, but never adds to it any value.

I looked upon you in your double relation, both common, as Christians, and special, as men intrusted with the managing of those arduous and most pressing difficulties under which this distempered kingdom is now groaning.

And for the quickening of those endeavours which belong to you in both these relations, I presented you both with the bottom of a nation’s unhappiness, which is sin; and with the top of their felicity, which is God’s free grace and favour: that by your serious cares to purge out the one and to procure the other, you migit, by God’s blessing on your consultations, dispel that black tempest which hangs over this kingdom, and reduce the face of things to calmness and serenity again.

When the children struggled together in the womb of Rebekah, she was thereupon inquisitive, “If it be so, why am I thus?” Gen. xxv. 22; and she addressed herself to God for a resolution. Surely this nation is become like the womb of Rebekah, the children thereof struggling together in their common mother; and when God has mercifully freed us from foreign enemies, brethren are become enemies to brethren, and by their enmities likely to tear and torment the bowels of their mother, and to ruin themselves.

And what have we now to do, but to inquire the cause of these sad commotions. Why are we thus? And surely the cause is chiefly where the disease is, within ourselves. “We have been like the womb of Rebekah, a barren nation, not bringing forth fruits for the so many mercies with which God has filled us. So that now it is no wonder if God cause us to be in pain within our own bowels, and to feel the throes and “sorrows of a travailing woman,” Hos. xiii. 13, ready to bring forth her own confusion, a Benoni or an Ichabod, a son of sorrow or a son of shame, to this hitherto so peaceable and flourishing kingdom.

All that we can comfort ourselves with in these pangs and qualms of distemper is, that there are some Jacobs amongst us, who, instead of supplanting their brethren, will wrestle and have power with God, Gen. xxxii. 24; Hos. xii. 3, 4. The people have often petitioned, sometimes his sacred Majesty, sometimes this Honourable House, which are his great council, many overtures and endeavours of accommodation have been tendered, and yet we cry out in our pangs, and have, as it were, brought forth wind, neither have we wrought any deliverance in the earth, Isa. xxvi. 17, 18.

I have here, therefore, presented a new petition, dictated and drawn up to our hands by God’s own Spirit, to which both king and parliament, peers, and prophets, and people, must all subscribe, and offer it with prostrate and penitent hearts to Him who “standeth in the congregation of the mighty,” and “judgeth among the gods,” that he would “take away all” our “iniquity,” and “receive us” into favour again, and accept of a covenant of new obedience, Psal. lxxxii. 1; Hos. xiv. 2.

And this petition God is pleased to anticipate with an answer of grace in the consequent parts of the chapter whence the text is taken, and that particularly to everj’ branch of the petition. He will take away iniquity. His anger shall not punish, his love shall heal our backslidings, the greatness of our sins shsill not hinder the freeness of his grace. He will do us good, and give us life, by the dew of his grace reviving us; and glorj-, clothing us, like the lily of the field, with the beautj’ of holiness; and stability, fixing us by his grace, as the cedars of Lebanon are fastened upon their roots; and growth, or enlargement, as the branches spread forth themselves; and continual vigoiu’ and plenty, as the olive tree, which is always green and fruitful; and glorious comforts by the sweet savour of the knowledge of God, which, like the spice trees of Lebanon, shall diffuse a spiritual perfume upon the names, and into the consciences, of penitent converts.

He will prevent us with the blessings of safety, as well as of sanctity and comfort; we shall, under his shadow, find shelter and protection from all our fears. Though, like corn, we be harrowed under the clods; though, like a lopped vine, we seem naked and reduced to lowness; though, like crushed grapes, we lie under heavy pressui-cs; yet he will receive, and enlarge, and comfort us again; and when we are in our own eyes as fatherless children, he will set his eyes upon us as a tutor and guai-dian; he will hear, and observe, and answer, and pity us, enabling us to make good our covenant by his grace, and causing the fruit of his loving-kindness to be found upon us. Thus God is pleased to borrow the various pei-fection of other things to adumbrate the united and accumulated mercies which he promises to a turning and petitioning people.

You have the petition sent you from God, and his answer preventing you in all the members of it with the blessings of goodness. I have nothing else to do, but to beg of you, and of all this great people whom you represent, the subscription of your hearts and lives to this petition; and to beg of God, that he would graciously incline the hearts of this whole kingdom, rather to wrestle with him for a blessing, than to struggle and conflict amongst themselves for a curse. With which prayer I humbly conclude, commending your persons and your weighty affairs to his grace j and rest.

Your most humble servant in Christ,

EDWARD REYNOLDS. rom my study in Braumton, August the 8^, 1612.