Claim,
if you will, annual parliaments, as a means of enforcing the responsibility
of rulers to the Christian community, of which they are to be, not the
lords, but the ministers--the servants of all. But claim these, and all
else for which you long, not from man, but from God, the King of men. And
therefore, before you attempt to obtain them, make yourselves worthy of
them--perhaps by that process you will find some of them have become less
needful. At all events, do not ask, do not hope, that He will give them to
you before you are able to profit by them. Believe that he has kept them
from you hitherto, because they would have been curses, and not blessings.
Oh! look back, look back, at the history of English Radicalism for the last
half century, and judge by your own deeds, your own words; were you fit for
those privileges which you so frantically demanded? Do not answer me, that
those who had them were equally unfit; but thank God, if the case be indeed
so, that your incapacity was not added to theirs, to make confusion worse
confounded! Learn a new lesson. Believe at last that you are in Christ, and
become new creatures.
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