pass of my own knowledge, both in town and country, who know God for themselves, who have felt his power, and found access to him, and who are sound in spirit, practice, and principle.

Moreover, God, in times of public calamity, often condescends to go, even with an ignorant people, as far as the light of nature can guide them to go after him. This may be seen in the matter of Nineveh. Jonah proclaims its overthrow in the public' streets; and, having sounded the awful alarm, the whole city was roused; and, though no Mediator was set before them, nor spirit of supplication pro mised to them; and though they had nothing but a peradventure, Ah, who can tell? to rest on; yet they put away the evil of their hands, fast, sit in sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; and God repents of the evil, according to his own declaration. "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them: and at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I 'said I would benefit them." Jer. xviii. 7, 8, 9, 10.

Of all the human race, we are the greatest debtors both to providence and grace; for, while God's judgments have been so conspicuously abroad in the

earth, we have sat unmolested under our own vine, and under our own fig tree. And who can take notice of the destruction of that great family whose an, cestors have brought so many of Christ's sheep to the slaughter, and not see the hand of God in all this? I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." Perhaps all the annals of time will not produce a period when so many have been numbered to the sword, as in this war; and who can look, and not see that the slaughter hath been chiefly among the children of that great whore, who has been so long drunk with the blood of the saints? God's promise to her is, "I will cast her into a bed and they that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent; I will kill her children with death."

And, as the Lord God of recompenses will surely requite, and avenge the blood of his servants, I take this to be the principal reason for his not suffering any power to ward off the blow on the continent; though his good hand hath been visibly seen with our fleets in the protecting of our own country. Britain appears to be one of the isles that should wait for his law, and hath been long favoured with it; and hitherto truth hath been our shield and buckler.

What astonishes me above measure is to find so

many in England who have their affections so alienated from their own country as to have their hearts and souls in the interest of our common enemy. He that hates the place of his nativity is unworthy of a

residence in it, and he that betrays it is a first cousin to Judas. Ephraim acted this strange part; he cast off the royal family of David, and then gathers his affections both from Judah and Benjamin; and in the end Asher is found to be confederate with him. "And he helped the children of Lot." The Almighty is so exasperated at this, that he will not allow him the common age of man; "Within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people." Isaiah vii. 8. Another prophet lives to see his glass almost run out, and his long captivity coming on. "Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people: Ephraim is a cake not turned; strangers have devoured his strength, yet he knoweth it not; yea, grey hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth it not." Hosea vii. 8, 9.

His Assyrian confederate soon leads him into captivity; and to the promised land he is not returned yet, though it is above two thousand years since' left it.

The present time is one of the times of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be delivered out of it. It is a time of universal, and, I was going to say, of unparalleled oppression. The staff of life seems to be locked up in the hands of three classes of creatures, the monopolist, the rich overgrown farmer, and the mealman. You may call the first the hopper, and the other two the upper and nether millstone; and with his treble engine of mischief the devil at this day grinds the faces of the poor of this nation. I am acquainted with many farmers in various parts of the

nation, men of truth and religion; and I am fully persuaded, by what I have seen and heard, that there is just as great a scarcity in England as there was in Egypt during the seven years plenty.

T

The conscientious farmer that will sell, and the little one, and the poor farmer that must sell, are attended in every market by the monopolist. The rich overgrown farmer, and those that neither fear God, nor regard man, will not sell; they withhold the corn, that the people may curse them. The mealman, when he gets it, if report be true (and the bread we eat daily proves it), gives you a mixture either of beans, oats, barley, peas, or rye. This is whispered abroad by some that work in the mill, and has been told in London by those that drive the cart; and thus you pay eighteen or twenty shillings per bushel for hog-corn. "But will not God visit for these things, and shall not his soul be avenged on such oppressors as these?" He will visit these men sooner or later, for he has cursed them in the books, and damned them in the parchments.

Last summer, just before harvest, a gentleman of the county of Sussex, foresceing, by all appearance, a terrible famine coming on, turned his thoughts to various things, in order to prevent this evil arrow. He set to work to make bread of rye and wheat; he ate it himself, and brought it to a large town where I have much acquaintance, and there recommended it even to gentlemen. Some approved, some not; however most viewed it a good make-shift, and concluded that every one would

eat it rather than swoon in the streets. When harvest came in, and the new corn began to come to market, this same gentleman was found to have five loads of old wheat by him, which at that time, I believe, would have fetched forty pounds per load; but this price was naught, it was naught with the seller. Thus he lent his friendly aid to help forward the calamity of an artificial famine; and, having assisted in procuring the disease, he set his mind to work to find out the remedy; and by his last deed this lord of the gentiles was called a benefactor.

Yesterday a poor God-fearing man called on me, pamed Coston, from Wooking in Surry. He is own brother to one of the six students who some years ago went to America. He has worked at husbandry, at various places about the country, for years, and hath a wife and five children. I asked him if there was the least appearance of a scarcity in any one part of the land he had been in? He said, No, not in any one thing, I asked him what flour was at per bushel with him? He said the worst sort of all was eighteen shillings; but he informed me that he had left off eating any thing made of wheat for this eight months, and bought nothing but barley. I asked him what they might charge him for that? He replied, Last week I gave nine shillings per bushel, and it was wretched stuff; but Mr. Hodd told me it would be ten shillings next week.

These are the grateful returns which are made to the Father of all mercies, and God of all comfort, for one of the most plentiful crops of barley that