WAS it then reserved for a stranger to your persons, and your altars, to address you on this happy restoration of your public wor­ship? this solemn re-establishment of your religious assemblies? Was it to have been the good fortune of one, to whom you were unknown, but by your sufferings, to be among the first of the Mini­sters of God, to bring the comfort and consolation of his word to an afflicted and persecuted people? to tell them, that he has not forgotten his "loving kindnesses of old;" that however he seemed resolved to "chasten them in his displeasure; to cast off his altar and abhor his sanc­tuary; to cause the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be for­gotten," [Page 2] and, "in the indignation of his wrath, to eject the King and the Priest;" that however he suffers "their city to be left desolate and [...], and every house shut up, so that no man may come in: yet that he will "return again in his mercy, in his appointed time, to have compassion upon his afflicted, to comfort his oppressed," and to "bring them again every man to his heritage, and every man to his land; to say to the prisoners, Go forth, and to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves; to restore their Princes as at the first, and their counsellers as at the beginning, and again to give them priests according to his heart?" Let it be my first care to bless his holy name, for having permitted me to join with your retur­ning clergy in the discharge of this pleasing office. They also will add their praises to mine. You, my brethren, will not be wanting in gratitude and thankfulness to the God of your redemption, and the united voice of priests and people will be—"it is good that a man should both hope, and quietly wait, for the salvation of the Lord." His ways are inscrutable, but his goodness certain. and without bounds.

Who that was witness of the cruel and disastrous deed of the night before last, could promise himself, that you should be assembled this day in the house of God, to praise him for your wonderful deliverance? Who could have hoped that this temple would remain a monument of the returning favour of heaven, amidst the horror of the ruins through which you must have passed to approach it? Which of you could have said to himself, that he should see these doors opened once more for the reception of the faithful, "though as yet but as the shaking of an olive tree, and the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done?" Or hear these walls, so long silent and unfrequented, filled again with the praises of Him, to whose name you had raised them? Is not this the Lord's doing? Is not this our God for "whom we have waited? We have waited for him, he hath saved us, and we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation."

Suffer me, however, to check for a moment the fer­ment [Page 3] which these different sensations of joy and grief, so rapidily succeeding each other within these few days past, must naturally have raised in your breasts. When the heart, long oppressed, and closed in affliction, is suddenly opened to the impressions of joy, only to be overwhelmed as suddenly with an additional weight of sorrow and dis­may, the tumult within, must be too violent to leave much room for calm and useful reflections. It shall there­fore be my business to endeavour to suggest such thoughts as appear suitable to this extraordinary occasion, and to regulate your present affections, in a manner that best be­comes the disciples of Christ. This has never been, and I am confident never will be, the pulpit of contention or strife. No "prophets, prophesying lyes in the name of the Lord who sent them not," shall ever turn it into a stage for sedition. The words of truth and life will never be perverted here in promoting violence and bloodshead, un­der pretence of consulting the interests of the God of peace to cause the religion of the lowly, mild, and meek Jesus, to speak the language of ambition, slaughter and revenge or to consecrate and deliver out in his name the sword that is to be plunged by his followers into each others breast. Thanks be to the Lord "we have not so learned Christ." We will neither abuse his mercy and long forbearance our­selves, by thus daring to prostitute his awful name; nor shall we presume to deal out the bolts of his vengeance against others, whom his justice may arraign as guilty of such a profanation. I therefore repeat it again, our only business will be to suggest such reflections as should engage the minds of Christians on this occasion; to exhort you to turn your thoughts to yourselves; to consider the re­demption that has been wrought in your favour, and the disposition with which you should receive these instances of the divine mercies.

The first consideration that arises from the subject is the grateful sense you should entertain of the goodness of God.

The immediate impressions of gratitude for present be­nefits are strong, lively and affecting. We feel them with warmth; we express them with rapture. But it happens [Page 4] too frequently that we enjoy them with [...] difference, and by degrees totally forget the gracious [...] that conferred them. While we are in danger, and fear is upon us, we "call upon the name of the Lord:" Our sins and trans­gressions affect us in their consequences; and our future obedience, fidelity, and gratitude, are fervently pledged in the hopes of immediate protection and relief. But when the first sense of our delivery is past, when our ene­mies are suppressed, and danger removed, we are too apt to forget the resolutions we formed in the hour of distress; our former passions and evil habits too frequently return with our former security. The God of our salvation is forgotten, and repaid with ingratitude, neglect and diso­bedience.

The conduct of individuals is generally speaking, the conduct of the community. Ingratitude for favours, though a disgrace to our nature, is but too common in the private intercourses of life; nor are the instances less frequent of the ungrateful returns which nations have made for public benefits conferred upon them. The odious vice in either case receives its agravation in proportion to the mercies we have experienced, the favours we have been blessed with, and the character of our benefactor: but should it extend to that beneficent power in whom we move, and have our being, and rob him of the return he challenges from his creatures for his boundless mercy and love, it then assumes its most deformed shape: it then re­ceives its utmost weight and accumulation of guilt.

All that is sacred or dear upon earth—your religion, your civil rights and liberties, the enjoyment of your pro­perty, the freedom of your persons, the worship of your God, the comfort of the sacraments, the pre­sence and exhortation of your Ministers—all that you possessed, and gloried in as British subjects and as Christians, wrested from you by violence and oppres­sion, while "the shepherds were smitten and the sheep of the flock scattered abroad"—all these blessings, valua­ble surely, if there be any so on this side the grave, and the dearer to you now for having been so cruelly deprived [Page 5] of them, hath your God begun to restore to you in this your day; and with his streched-out arm, in a manner visible to every eye, brought you back to a prospect of happier days, and placed you again under the protecting care of the antient guardians of your religion and liberty. And can it be possible that you should ever suffer the re­membrance of the divine mercies, thus extended to you, to be blotted out from your minds? It were doing wrong to those who have suffered with the fortitude and perseverance, the loyalty and attachment to their so­vereign, which have distinguished the friends of Go­vernment in this colony, even to suppose it. And I should hope that they who have endured so long and pain­ful a trial, rather than renounce their loyalty, or the re­ligious principles on which that loyalty is chiefly founded, will never hereafter be guilty of any action, or pursue any conduct, that can disgrace them as good subjects, or as virtuous Christians.

But while I thus exhort you to preserve in your grate­ful acknowledgements, to the God of your redemption, let me not neglect a point of equal importance to you, equally acceptable to him. The use, which in his gracious providence he designs we should make of the misconduct of others, or of the punishments which our sins may have brought on our­selves, is frequently pointed out in the scriptures. His vi­sitations he sets up as marks to caution us against the rocks and shelves on which folly and vice have already caused so many to be wrecked! and wilfully to run upon them is to flight the divine mercy—is an aggravation of all our for­mer guilt, and justly exposes us to still more severe effects of the wrath of heaven. The Psalmist, enumerating the vari­ous calamities inflicted on the Israelites for their incredulity and disobedience, mentions, as a source of additional miseries to this stiff-necked people, that they neglected to profit by their own fatal experience, or the dreadful examples they daily saw before their eyes, of the Lord's indignation. They refused to humble themselves beneath the divine chastisement, but continued to provoke their deliverer by fresh proofs of ingratitude. "The wrath of God came [Page 6] upon them, and smote down the chosen man of Israel; for all this they sinned still—therefore their days did he con­sume in vanity, and their years in troubles." Entering into these views, my brethren, consider with me the steps that have led your country into its present calamities— you will be the better enabled to check them in future, at least to decline and avoid them yourselves. The ex­cesses of others will teach you a lesson of prudence and moderation to regulate your own conduct.

"My son, fear thou the Lord and the King, and med­dle not with them that are given to change"—was the excellent rule laid down by the wisest of men. Against those who transgress it, he denounces a sudden and ine­vitable destruction. Whatever they may promise them­selves, however they may seem to prosper for a time, ruin infallible ruin, awaits them when least they expect it; nor is it possible to foresee the miseries they may entail on themselves and their descendants—"their calamity shall rise suddenly; and who knoweth the ruin of them both?" The words are remarkable, but they are dictated by wisdom and supported by experience. It has hap­pened from your former prosperous state, and the present calamities of this province, from which you happily be­gin to respire, that no nation upon earth can form a better judgement upon this important question than yourselves; and I have before me, in this assembly, a living example to which alone I need refer.

Call then to mind the happy and prosperous days this colony enjoyed, when loyalty to your Sovereign, affection for the constitution of your parent state, and obedience to the laws you enjoyed under its protection, distinguished it above all the other provinces of America. Your con­dition was then an object of envy to nations corrupted by the refinements of luxury. Peace was in your dwel­lings, plenty in your streets—industry diffused her bles­sings through your field with an increasing profusion, gi­ving life to all the useful arts, and nurturing them daily into maturity and perfection. The produce of your coun­try flowed from your port in a constant, uninterrupted [Page 7] stream, and you received in return the conveniences and comforts of life, and all the elegances which a free and ex­tensive commerce can bestow on a prudent and contented people. A friendly, hospitable, and social intercourse united you together as the members of one family, to the admiration and delight of strangers who resided among you; you were blessed beyond the usual lot of men; hap­py, completely so, did you but know how to value your happiness, and to preserve it!

How different the scene to which I must call off your attention! what a change of prospect will the reverse ex­hibit! where shall we seek for that treasure of happiness which you could boast, when every man sat under his own vine, and eat his bread with chearfulness? Alas! is it not wasted all, and consumed in visionary schemes, empty and fanciful as the dreams of the morning? Is it not squander­ed away in lawless and ungrateful attempts, repugnant to every principle divine and human? in pursuits which plain sense and reason condemn, and at which even the impulses of nature must recoil? Peace, frightened from the seats where once she loved to dwell, long since took her flight from among you. Dissentions, party rage, public enmities, and private animosities, usurped her place, and brought with them a horrid train of mutual fears, distrusts, and endless jealousies. By these were the confidence and harmo­ny of all social intercourse destroyed; by these were the bands of love and friendship torn asunder; by these were even the ties of consanguinity and nature dissolved. Self-interest, self-preservation, the welfare of posterity, prin­ciples ingrafted in the human mind by the beneficient crea­tor, were all confounded and lost in this dark and dismal night of confusion, anarchy, and licentiousness. See in­dustry perverted from its useful purposes, and employed in improving the arts of destruction. Your plough-shares it turned into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears, the reverse of the blessing pronounced by Isaiah. See your fields, once cultivated, the gardens of America, laid waste, and turned into licentious encampments, and the desola­ting scenes of war; see your commerce, your envied com­merce, [Page 8] destroyed, your property seized and dissipated in support of the cause you abhorred—your liberties despised and troden under foot, and an armed multitude insulting over your miseries, turned loose upon your possessions, and rioting in your substance. In vain you looked up to jus­tice for support; her seats were overthrown, and trampled in the dust; her rulers dispersed, and the people abondon­ed to every wild impulse of humour and passion, without laws, without magistrates, without form of government. In short, too well might we apply to you the words of Je­remiah: "If you went forth into the fields, behold the slain with the sword; if you entered into the city, behold she that was full of inhabitants, and princess among the provinces; sitting solitary, and become as a disconsolate, childless widow. Both the prophet and the priest went about in a land they knew not! your friends dealt treach­erously with you, and become your enemies, while you were gone into captivity, because of affliction, and because of great servitude."

To what causes are we to attribute this deplore change? Whence is it that you can say to yourselves, such was the happiness we once could boast; such the melancholy re­verse we have experienced! I have heard some attribute it to the imperfection of human nature, incapable of en­joying a durable state of prosperity, and often times most discontended, when blessed with the greatest cause of con­tent. But I shall search for it among the sources of the decay and fall of all nations, which the scriptures of God point out to me. Warrented by these, I shall not hesitate to assert, that if this province had continued "to fear the Lord, and the King, and had not meddled with those who are given to change," the tempest would have spent its rage at a distance from you, and peace, industry, and happiness, would still have blessed your dwellings, as they did of old. You, indeed, my friends, seem to have been well convinced of this truth. The struggle you maintain­ed was vigorous, and for some time successful—but all were not animated with your spirit. The love of novelty or what ever other causes the powers of darkness best can [Page 9] tell—for it is impossible to account for such folly and mad­ness on any known principles—seduced too many from their allegiance to their sovereign, and their former happy at­tachment to the British constitution, and these antient bar­riers being once removed, all the disorders that have well nigh overthrown your country, broke in upon you, and the depression of your religion, for the time, followed of course. So true it is, that when restlessness and discontent once possess the mind, it is impossible to foresee to what extremes a rage for innovation, and a passion for change will transport their votaries. They are like the "un­clean spirit" mentioned in the Gospel, always on the wing, seeking a place of rest, but "never finding it." Excesses, at which men would have shuddered at their first setting out, "swept clean," and placed in a delusive point of view by faction and party, lose their deformity, and daily make way for other excesses still more criminal, still more enormous. These dissatisfied "spirits take to themselves other spirits more wicked than themselves, and the last state of these men becomes worse than the first." I need not make the application—It is but too manifest you have already done it for me.

I have said that when too many of this province suffered themselves to be seduced from their allegiance to their so­vereign, and their former happy attachment to the British constitution, the depression of your religion followed of course. Let me not be misunderstood—I mean not to engage in an invidious point of controversy, which has often been carried to such fatal lengths. Religious dis­putes obtrude themselves too frequently into subjects of more political concern, and serve no other end than to widen divisions, and encrease animosities, which the holy system, the interests of which they would seem to support, would wish to allay for ever. Warmed with zeal for their particular tenets, however unessentially differing from each other, the passions of the disputants work themselves into the controversy, and we are apt to ascribe their rash and intemperate dictates to that system, the defence of which [Page 10] they have embraced. There is also another prejudice which is apt to lead us astray in this important matter. As in the different forms of government, at present establish­ed throughout the Christian world, religion is fundamen­tally connected with their civil and political institutes; we generally consider them as going hand in hand, and charge the creed of each particular sect with the political errors and disorders of its professors. A church there is, indeed, whose principles have been proved by fatal experience to be so essentially inconsistent with every notion of vice and rational government, so infallibly introductive of a double slavery, forging chains both for the body and mind, that it has been deservedly branded with this foul imputation, and justly abhorred by nations jealous of their liberties. But that among Protestant churches, such a charge should be urged and retorted by each other with so much viru­lence and animosity, hath long been a cause of grief to every well-wisher of the reformed religion, and a great sub­ject of triumph to their common enemies, both at home and abroad. Let me not attempt to enlarge the breach or be guilty of an error, which I condemn in others. I shall only observe, that in every age, in every state, there are men of depraved hearts, who put on religion as a cloak to cover their sinister views; or use it as a political tool to work upon the minds of the weak and uninstructed, and all whose zeal without knowledge renders them an easy prey to the art of seducers. These, like the lame and impo­tent at the pool of Bethesda, watch the troubling of the waters, that they may be the first to take advantage of the public commotions, and on the ruins of the peace and happiness of their country, pave the way to their own ad­vancement: Men, who declaim against every power but that which they have themselves usurped; to whom the pre­tence of the public good, and the interests of their coun­try, is as easy as that of religion; and who assume both in common with every restless male content, who in every age, under every government, has destroyed the peace of the Christian world.

From what cause your sufferings may have originated, [Page 11] [...] [Page 10] [...] [Page 11] this is not the time, nor the place, to consider. Too cer­tain it is, that they have now risen to such a height of ag­gravation, as needs no words to represent to you—you feel it beyond the energy of words. The smart of recent wrongs and former injuries, speak a language which those who sympathize with you in your sufferings, can never adopt. Whatever the principles of your persecutors may be, their unrelenting malice is but too notorious; and they have added to all their former excesses, a deed of atrociousness which must open the eyes of the most infatuated, must totally alienate even the small numbers, who may have hitherto been deluded into some favourable opinion of their cause. To what a scene were you witness the night before last! when just escaped from the storm, and imagining your­selves arrived at a port of rest; labouring to collect toge­ther the small remains of your fortune that had escaped the general wreck; meeting once more and embracing, after so long and painful a separation, the objects of your tenderest affection, or solacing yourselves with the hopes of being speedily re-united to those who were yet detained in bondage from you; congratulating your friends on your mutual deliverance, and the prospect that was opening to you of returning peace, quiet, and security.—In this dawn of your hopes and expectations, to awake at the midnight hour, and find your city in flames; to see your all, perishing before your eyes, and to know that your destroyers were secretly among you, spreading the ruin, and exulting in the success of their infernal scheme!

This was not the sudden act of a vanquished and flying enemy, perpetrated in the peevish moment of disappoint­ment and defeat, or contrived to favour their escape. No, —several days had elapsed since their flight, and quiet seemed to have revisited you under the banner of your de­liverers. Even the base incendiaries returned among you, wearing the mask of peace. We hoped that they had re­pented of their excesses—had been convinced of their folly and madness, and meant to embrace the proffered clemen­cy of their Sovereign, who was willing to forget the un­grateful revolt against his authority, their contempt of his [Page 12] crown and government, and the insults offered to his per­son. But they cried, "Peace, peace, when their was no peace." The blow they were meditating was the more dan­gerous, from its being thus concealed—they gloried in stri­king it home, and nothing, under Heaven, but the activity of your English friends, could have prevented the whole city's falling a victim to their determined malice. Yes my friends, ye were witnesses of it.—Ye saw the treacherous adherents of these pretended guardians of your rights and possessions, who came to rescue you from tyrany and op­pression, armed with firebrands, and under cover of the darkness, wrapping your city in flames. Ye saw the brave and generous servants of your King,—that King, whom you have so often heard represented as a tyrant, who sends forth his fleets and armies to enslave, ravage, destroy, fly­ing to the assistance of their fellow-subjects, in the midst of the flames, at the hazard of their lives, exerting every nerve to preserve your dwellings, and possessions, and tear­ing from the hands of the dark incendiaries the instruments they had prepared for your destruction. Had it pleased Heaven, that the success could have answered their zeal, so many families, once blessed with comfort and affluence would not have been turned out on the world naked, help­less, and stripped of their all.—The seminary of indigent, merit, where poverty found a resource against ignorance, and where charity reclaimed thousands from idleness and dissipation to virtue and industry, would yet have stood.^* The mansion of your worthy and reverend Minister, whose absence you still regret, and the possessions appropriated for the support of your clergy, would not have perished, and added to the distresses they have already suffered on your account and their own.—But "ye smitten and afflicted," who beheld your "destruction coming" on you "like a [Page 13] whirlwind," your own industry, and the labour of your ancestors, swept off in the space of a moment, whither could you have fled from the rage of your enemies? Not even the Temples of the Lord were sacred from their fury —his altars could afford you no sanctuary. The mother of your churches, the ornament of your worship, the first edifice which the piety of your ancestors had raised to the God of their fathers, in gratitude for his mercies in a strange land, was marked out for certain destruction. Some child of perdition claimed to himself the merit of this daring sacrilege, and involved the ancient and venerable pile in the same ruin with which they designed to extirpate all the indearments of your Religion, every vestige of your ancient splendor and glory.

In this scene of universal danger and distress, to what can the ministers of God exhort you? If, should we know "what manner of spirit we were of," if we suffered any expressions that may have fallen from us to be interpreted into a breach of charity, the crown of Christian virtues; or into a design of sharpening the virulence of party, or increasing animosities that have already too fatally destroyed the peace of your Jerusalem. To minister some consola­tion in your sufferings, as becometh the teachers of the Gospel, who must be unworthy indeed of the character thy bear, not to feel for the afflictions of their brethren, who look to them for comfort and instruction; to set before you "the loving kindnesses of the Lord," and the redemption he hath wrought in your favour, and to exhort you to make every becoming return for his mercies and love; to point out to you, and warn you against the abuses that have brought ruin upon your country, this has been our only aim. If we have succeeded, all our wishes are satisfied and we shall have the consolation to think that you will sanctify this day, as becometh Christians, by prayer and thanksgiving; by repentance for past sins, and resolutions of an amendment of life; by practising the duties of that religion, for the interests of which you have manifested such zeal and attachment; by laying aside all malice, ha­tred, and desire of revenge; by committing your cause to [Page 14] together as friends and brethren. Let a reciprocation of further accomplishment of his gracious designs. He who can "still the raging of the seas," knows best how to res­tore peace and tranquility to your distracted country. May he correct the hearts, and reform the understandings of your infatuated brethren, who still refuse to contribute their endeavours towards healing these unhappy disputes. And while their example proves a warning to you—while in their conduct, you consider the excesses to which those may be transported, who once pass the ancient bounds of lawful and settled government, may God give you grace to attach yourselves the more firmly to our happy consti­tution both in church and state.

Humbly, and with all due prostration of heart, I shall venture to affirm that your cause is his own. It is the cause of peace, loyalty, and sound reason, exposed to the attempts of misguided men, whom he seems to have given over to a blindness of heart that hurries them into all the violence and artifice of sedition, frenzy, and rebellion. Fear not then, my friends, but in his own time "his wis­dom will order all things sweetly." In the mean time, learn to resign yourselves to what ever means he may be pleased to employ for that end, and humble yourselves be­neath his chastising, but fatherly hand. Would to God I could say that the danger were past! But treachery, per­haps, still lurketh amongst you. Let every man, there­fore, be careful and vigilant. Nature requires, and reli­gion approves, that we should make use of the means, which providence hath put into our power for our protection and safety. But let this be your chief dependence, that he "who is with you, is greater than they who are against you." He, from whom alone your safety can come "neither slumbers nor sleeps." Though your enemies may hope "that the darkness shall cover them, the dark­ness is no darkness with him." He will not let them "have their desire," nor their "mischievous imagination pros­per." Let the sense of the common danger to which you are exposed, and the fellowship of your past sufferings, strengthen the ties of charity between you, and bind you [Page 15] the justice of God, and waiting with resignation for the kindness and humanity distinguishing you in this season of distress; to soften the rigour of each others sufferings, and lighten the universal burthen of affliction. Be of one heart, and one mind, cleave together—commend yourselves to the protection of God, and doubt not but he will complete the work he hath already so graciously begun. And when he "shall have plucked out" all strife and enmity from among you, fear not but he will "re­turn, and have compassion upon you, and bring you again every man to his heritage, and every man to his land."

I must not finish as if I meant to disappoint your expec­tations, and not adopt a conclusion which I am convin­ced you have already anticipated. The allegiance they had sworn to their lawful Sovereign, and an affectionate attachment to his virtuous character, compelled your clergy to shut these doors, rather than admit the dutiful addresses, which the church enjoins them daily to offer to Heaven for his safety. Let us therefore conclude the ser­vice of this day, when the freedom of your worship is res­tored to you, by uniting together with one heart, and one voice, to implore the divine favour and protection for our Sovereign Lord, King George; that God would be pleased to give him length of days, and encrease of hap­piness—to prosper all his undertakings for the good of his people, and to bless him with what his actions prove, and his words assert to be, the "^† Favourite wish of his heart; the restoration of harmony; and re-establishment of order and happiness in every part of his dominions."