swearing, that devil-like sin, by which there is neither profit nor
further than half-way from their own houses, they might possibly sometimes hear the sound of my voice. When I come into the church, and the worship is begun, I will see some of you sitting or standing in the church-yard in pairs, as close at your discourse, that sometimes I think we would not have seen your faces that day, if you had not had business with some body ye would see at the church; in which I am the more confirmed, when I will see they have staid all the time between sermons, and when the congregation is assembling again, they will go away home. Some will spend a good part of sermons about the dykes; ay and go out of the church in the very time thereof, and lie about the dykes and crack, I cannot get you pleased with short enough preaching; though some of you make it short enough, what with your sleeping, what with your leaving it, even when there is no milking; and some will sit at the door all the afternoon, that they may get away when they think they have got enough of it.
3. Weep over the slighting of sacraments. That of baptism is dolefully slighted. If the child he like to die, then, without any regard to the congregation, or the strugglings of this church against private baptism, the minister must come and give the child a name, without any more. But if not, Sabbath shall go over after Sabbath, one opportunity after another: and they never trouble themselves about the baptising of their children, even when neither weakness nor the weather hinders. As to the sacrament of the supper, go weeping, Sirs, that there are so few in this congregation to go with you. They need Christ as well as you; the blood they slight, is the blood they must be saved by, if ever; the covenant they prepare not to seal, is that they must enter into, if they would enter into heaven. It is long since Christ made such a visit to Etterick. O weep that they are so few to receive him, so few fit to be admitted, and so few going out to meet the bridegroom. This slighting of ordinances, as it is something more than ordinary, is a very sad sign.
4. Weep over the loose lives of many of us; the abounding sin of swearing, that devil-like sin, by which there is neither profit nor pleasure; lying and backbiting, supplanting of one another, the lack