George Paxton Address to British Churches
James Dodson
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ADDRESS
TO THE
BRITISH CHURCHES.
INHABITANTS of the British Isles, you once, like Judah, rejoiced in the oath of God. The excellence of your public Confessions and Covenants shows what you once were. It was your honour soon to outstrip the churches of the Reformation in the career of holiness. In the heavens of the visible church, you shone as a star of the first magnitude. You seemed to be chosen as the peculiar treasure of the Lord Jesus; you were the joy of the whole reformed world; and you were the terror of the man of sin. But, how are you fallen! Your goodness has vanished as the morning cloud, and as the early dew. You have made yourselves as vile, as ever God made you glorious; have cast yourselves as low, as he raised you high; have been as profane, as ever you were holy. From the days of your fathers, you have been in a great trespass. The glorious work of reformation was no sooner completed, than a perjured band of cruel persecutors pulled it down again. They pretended to annul those covenants which our ancestors had so often sworn to the Most High GOD, as if they had a right to dispose of the prerogative of Heaven according to their pleasure. The most venerable Assemblies the Church of Scotland could ever boast, and their faithful contendings for the Truth, were condemned, with an impiety and insolence, perhaps unequalled in the history of human wickedness; the federal engagements of these nations, were committed, in the most ignominious manner, to the flames. Renouncing their allegiance to the Lord Jesus, your fathers made choice of a mortal, a cruel, and profligate persecutor, to be the Lord of their conscience. The sword of the murderer was drawn. Hundreds of martyrs perished under colour of law, and unnumbered multitudes were cruelly massacred, without the mockery of form, in the open fields, or, driven from their families and possessions, were compelled to seek their safety in exile, for no other reason, but because they would not renounce those sacred engagements which both they and their persecutors had ratified by their solemn
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oaths. From fear, or choice, your fathers deserted the cause of God, and apostatized to Prelacy which they had abjured. They suffered their faithful ministers to be ejected; and they supported and countenanced the unfaithful majority, in their conformity with the times. Having rejected the oath of God, they submitted to a flood of sinful oaths, bonds, and declarations, by which they renounced and abjured their covenanted reformation, and recognized the usurped supremacy of a mortal over the church of Christ. As if they had studied to insult the God of truth and their former obligations, so often and awfully repeated, they exalted James the Seventh, an avowed and bigoted Papist, to the throne; and received, with expressions of gratitude and joy, from his absolute power, by which he suspended the laws of the land at his pleasure, a Positive, Boundless Toleration, which was plainly intended for the introduction of Popery and Slavery. When the arm of the Lord delivered us from civil bondage and Romish superstition, at the memorable Revolution 1688, our more immediate ancestors suffered every part of the Reformation, in the covenanting period, to be neglected, without one single effort to recover it; and all that Charles had done against it to remain untouched. These nations again renounced their federal engagements to the God of heaven, by the treaty of union in the year 1707, in which the preservation of the hierarchy and ceremonies, with other corruptions of the English Church, is made one of the fundamental articles. An endless repetition of oaths, a number of unlawful oaths, the sacramental Test, and a superstitious mode of swearing, by laying the hand upon, and kissing the gospels, quickly followed in the train of these evils, till, in the year 1712, a Positive Toleration of almost every mode of worship put the copestone upon the gloomy fabric of national iniquity. If the persecutions of the scribes and Pharisees, brought upon them “all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias,” your supine indifference to these national iniquities, or your positive approbation of them, in like manner, exposes you to the punishment which these crimes deserve. For such heinous provocations, your judgment now, of a long time, lingers not. Because sentence against these evil works has not been executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men, is fully set in them to do evil. “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness.” Forbearance is not forgiveness. The Arm of God has long been lifted up; and the longer the stroke is delayed, it will descend with heavier
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vengeance at last. Are not these judgments already begun, and advancing with alarming and accelerated rapidity? The incensed Avenger of broken covenants, soon visited these guilty nations in anger. He sent the devouring fire and the sweeping pestilence into those very places where our sacred Engagements were burnt, with such visible tokens of his wrath, as the most indifferent spectator could not but observe. The judgments of God upon the ring-leaders of this great rebellion, are too striking to be passed over in silence. The House of Stuart, drunk with the blood of innocents, and panting with insatiable thirst for more, became at last intolerable to the Nation, and were hurled from the throne of Britain into everlasting exile; an awful warning to the Persecutor of the Church, and the Oppressor of Men. Soon after the Revolution, the Lord rebuked our fathers with a grievous famine, of seven years duration; and threatened them and their posterity with the loss of Religion and Liberty, by two rebellions in favour of a Popish Pretender. The sword of civil and foreign war, has raged for almost a hundred years, with little intermission; and, in the bloody contests in which the Wrath of God has involved us, countless numbers of our fellow-subjects have fallen, and immense riches have been swallowed up. But what ought to alarm you more than all this is, the dreadful progress of spiritual judgments. A flood of gross and and damnable errors has burst in upon us, which threatens the whole system of pure morality and genuine religion. Profanity and wickedness of every kind, run down our streets like a mighty stream; security and carelessness rapidly increase; a sense of God, and of duty, is wearing off the public mind. These things are not the querulous allegations of a gloomy individual; but are seen and lamented by the sober and reflecting of every class. You have forsaken the God of your fathers, and have renounced his oath; and you are losing, by degrees, even the advantages arising to civil society from religious obligation in general. Oaths, particularly those to the State, are accounted mere forms; and, in some cases, the breach of them has been apologized for, as consistent with virtue and honour. These are indubitable signs of the Divine displeasure; but they are not all you have to fear; if the mercy of God do not bring you to repentance, they are but the forerunners of heavier judgments.
“And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places, yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. And also, I have with-holden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained
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upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not, withered. So, two or three cities wandered unto one city to drink water, but they were not satisfied; yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. I have smitten you with blasting and mildew; yet have ye not returned to me, saith the Lord. I have sent among you the pestilence, after the manner of Egypt; your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils; yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning; yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. Therefore, thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.”