Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 3.pdf/128

It hath been very well hinted to you this day that you come hither to settle the interests above mentioned: for your work here, in the issue and consequences of it, will extend so far, even to all Christian people. In the way and manner of my speaking to you, I shall study plainness, and to speak to you what is truth, and what is upon my heart, and what will in some measure reach to these great concernments.

After so many changes and turnings which this nation hath labored under, to have such a day of hope as this is, and such a door of hope opened by God to us, truly I believe, some months since, would have been beyond all our thoughts! I confess it would have been worthy of such a meeting as this is, to have remembered that which was the rise of, and gave the first beginning to, all these troubles which have been upon this nation: and to have given you a series of the transactions,—not of men, but of the providence of God, all along unto our late changes: as also the ground of our first undertaking to oppose that usurpation and tyranny which was upon us, both in civils and spirituals; and the several grounds particularly applicable to the several changes that have been. But I have two or three reasons which divert me from such a way of proceeding at this time.

If I should have gone in that way, then that which lies upon my heart as to these things—which is so written there that if I would blot it out I could not—would itself have spent this