are lost, for any benefit the most part get of them! Generally, he that
author's vexation and disquiet thereby occasioned, may be learned from the following extracts of sermons preached this year, 1710.
On the 25th of June he had begun an ordinary preparatory to the sacrament, viz. Jer. 1:4, 5. On the fast day, July 13, he preached from that clause, "Going and weeping." The doctrine observed from which was, "that the frame and exercise suitable to a covenanting time is "going and weeping." Having shewed that such a time should be a going time; he proceeded also to shew, that it should be a weepingtime. Here he exhorted the people to drop a tear for the case of the land, branching it out into several particulars of great importance, which want of room obliges us to omit. He then added as follows:—
"Go, weeping over the case of the congregation. Weep over,
1. Our barrenness under the means of grace. Ah! how many sermons are lost, for any benefit the most part get of them! Generally, he that was filthy is filthy still. It is an observation of some on Luke 13:7, that if a minister do any good in a place, it is ordinarily in the first three years of his ministry. God forbid it hold true in our case! If the gospel meet with no better entertainment after, than for these three years past, it would be telling many of you, that ye had never seen my face, nor I yours. I had some experience that way elsewhere, and it was not so in my case.
2. The slight and contempt of gospel ordinances among us. Our parish is not great, but our congregation is less by reason of the principles, passions, and prejudices, of not a few. But yet smallest of all is the company of ordinary hearers; when those are taken off that come once in twenty days, a month or six weeks; who are taken up with their beasts all the summer in the fields, and sleep at home with them all the winter; yet some whose faces I seldom or never discern, but when I surprise them at their houses, though I tell publicly in the congregation that I am to be that way. Weep over the slighting of the preaching of the word among us. Some that have not far to come, will loiter away Lord's days at home; though if they would come little