To the extent possible under law, the Text Creation Partnership has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above, according to the terms of the CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). This waiver does not extend to any page images or other supplementary files associated with this work, which may be protected by copyright or other license restrictions. Please go to http://www.textcreationpartnership.org/ for more information.
MADAM,
OF my ability to doe your Ladiship service, any thing may be an em∣bleme good enough; for as a word vani∣sheth, so doth any power in me to serve you; things that are written are fitter testi∣monies, because they remain and are per∣manent:
in writing this Sermon which your Ladiship was pleased to hear before, I confesse I satisfie an ambition of mine own, but it is the ambition of obeying your commandment, not onely an ambition of leaving my name in the memory, or in the Cabinet: and yet, since I am going out of the Kingdom, and perchance out of the world, (when God shall have given my soul a place in heaven) it shall the lesse di∣minish your Ladiship, if my poor name be found about you. I know what dead car∣kasses things written are, in respect of things spoken. But in things of this kinde, that soul that inanimates them, receives debts from them: The Spirit of God that di∣ctates them in the speaker or writer, and is present in his tongue or hand, meets him∣self again (as we meet our selves in a glass) in the eies and hearts of the hearers and readers: and that Spirit, which is ever the same to an equall devotion, makes a wri∣ting and a speaking equall means to edifi∣cation. In one circumstance, my preaching
and my writing this Sermon is too equall: that that your Ladiship heard in a hoarse voyce then, you read in a course hand now: but in thankfulnesse I shall lift up my hands as clean as my infirmities can keep them, and a voyce as clear as his spirit shall be pleased to tune in my prayers in all places of the world, which shall either sustain or bury
Your Ladiships humble servant in Christ Iesus J. D.