and know the time of our visitation; and hearken to the calls, and take the warnings, and improve the means and mercies vouchsafed to us, while me, have them: and follow the conduct of thy good providence, and comply with all thy gracious methods used, to reclaim us from our sins, and reform our lives, and save our souls; that all may not be in vain to us, but at last effect the purposes of thy saving mercy upon us: to deliver us from the evils to come, and to set us safe in the hands of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

Confession and Prayer for the Evening of a public Fast-Day.

O

LORD most high and holy, the God of all power and glory, against whom we have greatly sinned, and who by our sins hast been greatly provoked; we are under a necessity still to come and appear before thee; and we dare not keep away from thee. But O with what confidence can we look up to the Majesty of heaven, whom we have ill used, and so much offended!

Well may we be abashed and struck dumb, to bethink ourselves of all the evils that we have done, and all the sins of heart and life which we still are in: when we remember, O Lord, and consider thy perfect understanding of every particular, thy holiness to hate, thy justice to requite, and thy power to punish every wicked thing.

We fall down, and humble ourselves here at thy feet, blessed glorious God, confessing the

grievous guilt of our sins, and our due desert of thy heavy judgments. For we cannot but own ourselves to be some of those degenerate children whom thou hast nourished and brought up, that have rebelled against thee: yea, have made us the bolder to offend thee, the better thou hast dealt by us.

Holy Father! we are filled with confusion to think what little proportion our lives do bear to our names: how unsuitable to our profession, has been our conversation; and how inconsistant we have been with ourselves: when we are called the children of God, the members of his Christ, and the heirs of his glory; and call the gospel our rule, and profess to believe all the great eternal things which it contains; and yet carry, as if we did not know or mind. the priveleges that we have, nor the relations, and obligations in which we stand.

Yea, this may not only fill our faces with shame, but our hearts with dread: lest our very profession of thy holy religion should rise up in the judgment against us; because we would so sin against our own belief and knowledge, to pull down the more heavy intolerable doom upon our own heads.

We have been vain and carnal, proud and unthankful in our health and prosperous state; and sullen and froward, murmuring and desponding in our low and afflicted condition.-The kindness and the mercy that should have allured us to thee, and encouraged us the more faithfully and cheerfully to serve thee, and has made us but forgetful of thee, and to wax warm

against thee. And the correction and trouble that should have driven us out of our sins, and hastened us to flee for the life of our souls, has but put us out of patience, and filled us with prejudice against thy righteous hand, and with hard and unworthy thoughts of our God. And so we have made shift to keep the hold of our sins, notwithstanding all thy various methods. to break us off them.

Yea, to thee, Lord, who searchest the hearts and triest the reins, we must acknowledge and bewail the sins of our hearts and minds: our vain thoughts, and proud imaginations, our lustful and covetous desires, our envious and malicious projects: for these corrupt the fountain, and defile the habitation of thy blessed Spirit. These are the seeds and roots of all the other evils of our lives; and render us even as criminal in thy sight, as if we had outwardly acted what we have so inwardly devised. Such vile inclinations and profaneness to evil, approv ing of it and delighting in it, and consenting to it, carries so much guilt and malignity along with it, that even for this, thou mightest justly abhor us, and condemn us in that day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.

Thus we must criminate and arraign ourselves; confessing that iniquities prevail against us, temptations are still pressing upon us; and our sins, how often do they get the ascendance over us! still we are offending our holy Lord; and still we carry in us the corrupt nature, the carnal mind, the opposition to thy righteous

law, which are enmity against God, and threaten us with thy wrath and ruin.

We read of such as cannot cease from sin : and such, O Lord, thou knowest us in a great measure to be; that have brought ourselves under the sad necessity of sinning against thee; and so entangled our guilty souls in the tempter's snare, as to be taken captive.by him, even at his will.

We call to mind with shame and remorse, how we have provoked the eyes of thy jealousy, and affronted thy glorious Majesty; how frequently we have so sinned, and how heinously offended.

But after all this, so much amiss we have done, and when we can but thus acknowledge what great and provoking sinners we have been, yet O what sorry work have we made of our repentance for our sins! O how little have we done at it, but trifle with it! even when we talk of humiliation, and pretend to it, and argue for it, O Lord, thou knowest how seldom we have engaged in it, and how superficially we have gone over it, in the proper seasons of it: how hard and unrelenting have been our hearts and how loth and backward to the most needful work.

O good God! wilt thou humble us, that we have been no more humbled; and lay not to our charge the sins of those services we have so ill performed. And seeing unrepented sins are the cause of thy dreadful judgments, O that the dread of thy judgments may drive us out of all such sins and when the wrath of God is reveal

ed against them, Olet us not dare to continue in them. When the axe is laid to the root of the tree, and thy hand is lifted up, as ready to do execution upon us, O that we may be so warned and reclaimed, and bring forth such fruits meet for repentance, that we may not be hewn down aud cast into the fire, nor die and perish in our sins! but may find a way to escape, and mercy from the Lord, and grace to help in time of need.

And the Lord in mercy pity our frailties and infirmities, and forgive us all our sinful neglect and iniquities. And for what is still wanting in us, O be thou graciously pleased to accept the full and perfect merits and righteousness of thy dear Son, our most holy Saviour: and let his precious blood be heard speaking for us where we have nothing to say for ourselves, and where we are so unworthy to be heard on

our own account.

Be merciful, O God, to this sinful nation, that has so long enjoyed, and so much abused thy rich and sundry blessings, and still goes on to provoke thee daily. O forgive the many crying sins, for which thou mightest justly abhor us and reject us, and lay us desolate, and so forsake us utterly, as to be favourable to us no more. Yet grant us thy grace, we beseech thee, so to repent and amend, that we may be spared, and saved from all the judgments which we have so much deserved.

O that all thy warnings and threatenings, and chastenings, may not leave us still an unrelenting incorrigible people, nor pass over us,