[ 1084] Great sins attended by great judgments.
WHen Calice was taken from England by the French,* 1.1 in the time of Charles the fifth, one asked the English by way of scorn and derision, When they would win Calice again? A wise Captain hearing it, made this answer, Cum ve∣stra peccata erunt nostris majora, When your sins shall be greater than ours, then there will be large hopes of gaining Calice again. And what then can we expect in this sinfull Land of ours?* 1.2 Were but our fore-fathers alive, they would bl••sh to see such a degenerate posterity; their sins were ignorance, ours presumption; theirs omission, ours commission; they were righteous in respect of us, their hospitality is now converted into riot and luxury, their frugality into pride and prodigality, their sim∣plicity into subtlety, their sincerity into hypocrisie, their charity into cruelty, their cha∣stity into chambering,* 1.3 their modesty into wantonnesse, their sobriety into drunkennesse, their Church-building into Church-robbing, their plain-dealing into dissembling, their works of compassion into works of oppression. It is almost (if not altogether) out of fashion, to be an honest man. Such and so great, so transcendent, so superlative, so ripe are the sins of this Nation, that it is high time for the Angel to put in his sickle, and reap; for God to pour down the heaviest of his judgments up••n us.