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number, cannot do it in a moment, if that number be complicated: and the tardy comprehension of him to whom a complicated problem is demonstrated, requires a still greater length of time. He must comprehend by a succession of ideas what cannot be proved by a single glance of the eye. A man, posted on an elevated tower, may see at once the whole of a considerable army in motion; but he at the base of this tower, can see them only as they present themselves in succession. God is exalted above all creatures; he sees the whole by a single regard. He has but, if I may so speak, to apply his mind, and all are seen at once. But we, poor abject creatures, we are placed in the humblest point of the universe. How then can we, during the period of fifty, or if you please, a hundred years of life, destined to active duties, how can we presume to make a combination of all the Creator's perfections and designs, though he himself should deign in so great a work to be our guide. Great men have said, that all possible plans were presented to the mind of God when he made the universe, and that, comparing them one with another, he chose the best. Let us make the supposition without adopting it; let us suppose that God, wishful to justify to our mind the plan he has adopted, should present to us all his plans; and comparison alone could ensure approbation; but does it imply a contradiction, that fifty, or a hundred years of life, engrossed by active duties, should suffice for so vast a design? Had God encumbered religion with the illustration of all abstruse doctrines, concerning which it observes a profound silence; and with the explication of all the mysteries it imperfectly reveals; had he explained to us the depths of his nature and essence; had he discovered to us the immense combination of his attributes; had he qualified us to trace the unsearchable ways of his Spirit in our heart; had he shown us the origin, the end, and arrangement of his counsels; had he wished to gratify the infinite inquiries of our curiosity, and to acquaint us with the object of his views during the absorbing revolutions prior to the birth of time, and with those which must follow it; had he thus multiplied to infinity speculative ideas, what time should we have had for practical duties? Dissipated by the cares of life, occupied with its wants, and sentenced to the toils it imposes, what time would have remained to succour the wretched, to visit the sick, and to comfort the distressed? Yea, and what is still more, to study and vanquish our own heart?-O how admirably is the way of God, in the restriction of our knowledge, worthy of his wisdom! He has taught us nothing but what has the most intimate connexion with our duties, that we might ever be attentive to them, and that there is nothing in religion which can possibly attract us from those duties.

5. The miseries inseparable from life, are the ultimate reason of the obscurity of our knowledge both in religion and in nature. To ask why God has involved religion in so much darkness, is asking why he has not given us a nature like those spirits which are not clothed with mortal flesh. We must class the obscurity of our knowledge with the other infirmities of

life, with our exile, our imprisonment, our sickness, our perfidy, our infidelity, with the loss of our relatives, of separation from our dearest friends. We must answer the objection drawn from the darkness which envelopes most of the objects of sense, as we do to those drawn from the complication of our calamities. It is, that this world is not the abode of our felicity. It is, that the awful wounds of sin are not yet wholly healed. It is, that our soul is still clothed with matter. We must lament the miseries of a life in which reason is enslaved, in which the sphere of our knowledge is so confined, and in which we feel ourselves obstructed at every step of our meditation and research. We have a soul greedy of wisdom and knowledge; a soul susceptible of an infinity of perceptions and ideas; a soul to which knowledge and intelligence are the nourishment and food: and this soul is localized in a world: but in what world? In a world, where we do but imperfectly know ourselves; in a world, where our sublimest knowledge, and profoundest researches resemble little children who divert themselves at play. The idea is not mine; it is suggested by St. Paul, in the words subsequent to our text. "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child." The contrast is not unjust. Literally, all this knowledge, all these sermons, all this divinity, and all those commentaries, are but as the simple comparisons employed to make children understand exalted truths. They are but as the types, which God employed in the ancient law to instruct the Jews, while in a state of infancy. How imperfect were those types! What relation had a sheep to the Victim of the new covenant? What proportion had a priest to the Sovereign Pontiff of the church! Such is the state of man while here placed on the earth.

But a happier period must follow this of humiliation. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Charming thought, my brethren, of the change that death shall produce in us; it shall supersede the puerilities of infancy; it shall draw the curtain which conceals the objects of expectation. How ravished must the soul be when this curtain is uplifted! Instead of worshipping in these assemblies, it finds itself instantly elevated to the choirs of angels," the ten thousand times ten thousand before the Lord." Instead of hearing the hymns we sing to his glory, it instantly hears the hallelujahs of celestial spirits, and the dread shouts of "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of thy glory." Instead of listening to this frail preacher, who endeavours to develop the imperfect notions he has imbibed in a confined understanding, it instantly hears the great head of the church, "who is the author, and finisher of our faith." Instead of perceiving some traces of God's perfections in the beauties of nature, it finds itself in the midst of his sublimest works; in the midst of" the heavenly Jerusalem, whose gates are of pearl, whose foundations are of precious stones, and whose walls are of jasper."--Do we then still fear death! And have we still need of comforters when we approach that

happy period? And have we still need to re- | when we were enabled to bid adieu, perhaps sume all our constancy, and all our fortitude an eternal adieu, to our country: what promptto support the idea of dying! And is it stilled us to exile was not the hope of finding more necessary to pluck us from the earth, and to engaging company, a happier climate and more tear us by force to the celestial abode, which perinanent establishments. Motives altogether shall consummate our felicity? Ah! how the of another kind animated our hearts. We had prophet Elisha, who saw his master ascend in seen the edifices reduced to the dust, which the chariot of fire, ploughing the air on his bril- we had been accustomed to make resound with liant throne, and crossing the vast expanse the praises of God: we had heard "the children which separates heaven from earth; how Elisha of Edom," with hatchets in their hand, shout regretted the absence of so worthy a master, against those sacred mansions, "down with whom he now saw no more, and whom he them; down with them, even to the ground."must never see in life; how he cried in that May you, ye natives of these provinces, among moment, "My father, my father, the chariot whom it has pleased the Lord to lead us, ever of Israel, and the horsemen thereof." These be ignorant of the like calamities. May you emotions are strikingly congenial to the senti- indeed never know them, but by the experience ments of self-love, so dear to us. But Elijah of those to whom you have so amply afforded himself-Elijah, did he fear to soar in so sub- the means of subsistence. We could not surlime a course! Elijah already ascended to the vive the liberty of our conscience, we have middle regions of the air, in whose eyes the wandered to seek it, though it should be in earth appeared but as an atom retiring out of dens and deserts. Zeal gave animation to the sight; Elijah, whose head already reached to aged, whose limbs were benumbed with years. heaven; did Elijah regret the transition he was Fathers and mothers took their children in their about to complete! Did he regret the world, arms, who were too young to know the danger and its inhabitants!-O soul of man;-regene- from which they were plucked: each was conrate soul-daily called to break the fetters tent "with his soul for a prey," and required which unite thee to a mortal body, take thy nothing but the precious liberty he had lost. flight towards heaven. Ascend this fiery We have found it among you, our generous chariot, which God has sent to transport thee benefactors; you have received us as your breabove the earth where thou dwellest. See thren, as your children; and have admitted us the heavens which open for thy reception; ad- into your churches. We have communicated mire the beauties, and estimate the charms al- with you at the same table; and now you have ready realized by thy hope. Taste those in- permitted us, a handful of exiles, to build a effable delights. Anticipate the perfect felicity, church to that God whom we mutually adore. with which death is about to invest thee. Thou You wish also to partake with us in our gratineedest no more than this last moment of my tude, and to join your homages with those we ministry. Death himself is about to do all the have just rendered to him in this new edifice. rest, to dissipate all thy darkness, to justify religion, and to crown thy hopes.

SERMON XCIV.

CONSECRATION OF THE CHURCH

AT VOORBURGH, 1726.

EZEK. ix. 16.

Although I have cast them far off among the heathen, and among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come.

THE cause of our assembling to-day, my brethren, is one of the most evident marks of God's powerful protection, extended to a multitude of exiles whom these provinces have encircled with a protecting arm. It is a fact, that since we abandoned our native land, we have been loaded with divine favours. Some of us have lived in affluence; others in the enjoyments of mediocrity, often preferable to affluence; and all have seen this confidence crowned, which has enabled them to say, while living even without resource, "In the mountain of the Lord, it shall be seen; in the mountain of the Lord, he will there provide."

But alas! those of our fellow-countrymen, whose minds are still impressed with the recollection of those former churches, whose destruction occasioned them much grief, cannot taste a joy wholly pure. The ceremonies of this day will associate themselves, with those celebrated on laying the foundation-stone of the second temple. The priests officiated, indeed, in their pontifical robes; the Levites, sons of Asaph, caused their cymbals to resound afar; one choir admirably concerted its response to another; all the people raised a shout of joy, because the foundation of the Lord's house was laid. But the chiefs of the fathers, and the aged men, who had seen the superior glory of the former temple, wept aloud, and in such sort that one could not distinguish the voice of joy from the voice of weeping.

Come, notwithstanding, my dear brethren, and let us mutually praise the God, who, "in the midst of wrath remembers mercy," Hab. iii. 2. Let us gratefully meditate on this fresh accomplishment of the prophecy I have just read in your presence; "Though I have cast them far off among the heathen, and among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come." These are God's words to Ezekiel: to understand them, and with that view I attempt But how consoling soever the idea may be the discussion, we must trace the events to in our dispersion of that gracious Providence, their source, and go back to the twenty-ninth which has never ceased to watch for our wel-year of king Josiah, to form correct ideas of fare, it is not the principal subject of our gratitude. God has corresponded more directly with the object with which we were animated

the end of our prophet's ministry. It was in this year, that Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, and Astyages, king of Media, being allied by

the marriage of Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabopolassar, with Amytis, daughter of Astyages, united their forces against the Assyrians, then the most ancient and formidable power, took Nineveh, their capital, and thus, by a peculiar dispensation of Providence, they accomplished, and without thinking so to do, the prophecies of Jonah, Nahum, and Zephaniah, against that celebrated empire.

From that period the empire of Nineveh and of Babylon formed [again] but one, the terror of all their neighbours, who had just grounds of apprehension soon to experience a lot like that of Nineveh.

This induced Pharaoh Nechoh, king of Egypt, who, of all the potentates of the east, was the best qualified to resist those conquerors, to march at the head of a great army, and make war with a prince, who for the future, to use the expression of a prophet, was regarded as "the hammer of all the earth," Jer. 1. 32. Pharaoh took his route through Judea, and sent ambassadors to king Josiah, to solicit a passage through his kingdom. Josiah's reply to this embassy, even to this day, astonishes every interpreter; he took the field, he opposed the designs of Nechoh, which seemed to have no object but to emancipate the nations Nebuchadnezzar had subjugated, and to confirm those that desponded through fear of being loaded with the same chain. Josiah, unable to frustrate the objects of Nechoh, was slain in the battle, and with him seemed to expire whatever remained of piety and prosperity in the kingdom of Judah.

Pharaoh Nechoh defeated the Babylonians near the Euphrates, took Carchemish, the capital of Mesopotamia, and, augmenting the pleasure of victory by that of revenge, he led his victorious army through Judea, deposed Jehoahaz, son of Josiah, and placed Eliakim, his brother, on the throne, whom he surnamed Jehoiakim, 2 Kings xxiii.

From that period Jehoiakim regarded the king of Egypt as his benefactor, to whom he was indebted for his throne and his crown. He believed that Pharaoh Nechoh, whose sole authority had conferred the crown, was the only prince that could preserve it. The Jews at once followed the example of their king; they espoused the hatred which subsisted in Egypt against the king of Babylon, and renewed with Nechoh an alliance the most firm which had ever subsisted between the two powers.

Were it requisite to support here what the sacred history says on this subject, I would illustrate at large a passage of Herodotus, who, when speaking of the triumph of Pharaoh Nechoh, affirms, that after this prince had obtained a glorious victory in the fields of Megiddo, he took a great city of Palestine, surrounded with hills, which is called Cadytis: there is not the smallest doubt but this city was Jerusalem, which in the Scriptures is of ten called holy by way of excellence; and it was anciently designated by this glorious title. Now, the word holy, in Hebrew, is Keduscha, and in Syriac Kedutha. To this name Herodotus affixed a Greek termination, and called Kadytis the city that the Syrians or the Arabs call Kedutha, which, correspondent to my assertion, was the appellation given to Jerusalem.

Resuming the thread of the history; this alliance which the Jews had contracted with Egypt, augmented their confidence at a time when every consideration should have abated it; it elevated them with the presumptuous notion of being adequate to frustrate the designs of Nebuchadnezzar, or rather those of God himself, who had declared that he would subjugate all the east to this potentate. He presently retook from Pharaoh Nechoh, Carchemish, and the other cities conquered by that prince. He did more; he transferred the war into Egypt, after having associated Nebuchadnezzar, his son, in the empire; and after various advantages in that kingdom, he entered on the expedition against Judea, recorded in the 37th chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles; he accomplished what Isaiah had foretold to Hezekiah, that the Chaldeans "should take his sons, and make them eunuchs in Babylon," Isa. xxxix. 7. He plundered Jerusalem; he put Jehoiakim in chains, and placed his brother Jehoiachin on the throne, who is sometimes called Jeconiah, and sometimes Coniah; and who availed himself of the grace he had received, to rebel against his benefactor. This prince quickly revenged the perfidy; he besieged Jerusalem, which he had always kept blockaded since the death of Jehoiakim, and he led away a very great number of captives into Babylon, among whom was the prophet Ezekiel.

Ezekiel was raised up of God to prophesy to the captive Jews, who constantly indulged the reverie of returning to Jerusalem, while Jeremiah prophesied to those who were yet in their country, on whom awaited the same destiny. They laboured unanimously to persuade their countrymen to place no confidence in their connexion with Egypt; to make no more unavailing efforts to throw off the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar; and to obey the commands of that prince, or rather the commands of God, who was wishful, by his ministry, to punish the crimes of all the east.

Our prophet was transported into Jerusalem; he there saw those Jews, who, at the very time while they continued to flatter them with averting the total ruin of Judea, hastened the event, not only by continuing, but by redoubling their cruelties, and their idolatrous worship. At the very crisis while he beheld the infamous conduct of his countrymen in Jerusalem, he heard God himself announce the punishments with which they were about to be overwhelmed; and saying to his ministers of vengeance, “Go through the city; strike, let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children; and women.-Defile my house, and fill the courts with the slain," ix. 5-7. But while God delivered a commission so terrible with regard to the abominable Jews, he cast a consoling regard on others; he said to a mysterious person,

Go through the midst of the city, and set a mark on the foreheads of the men that sigh, and that cry for the abominations committed in the midst thereof." I am grieved for the honour of our critics, who have followed the Vulgate version in a reading which disfigures the text; " set the letter thau on the foreheads of those that sigh." To how many puerilities

has this reading given birth? What mysteries have they not sought in the letter thau? But the Vulgate is the only version which has thus read the passage. The word thau, in Hebrew, implies a sign; to write this letter on the forehead of any one, is to make a mark; and to imprint a mark on the forehead of a man, is, in the style of prophecy, to distinguish him by some special favour. So the Seventy, the Arabic, and Syriac, have rendered this expression. You will find the same figures employed by St. John, in the Revelation.

The words of my text have the same import as the above passage; they may be restricted to the Jews already in captivity; I extend them, however, to the Jews who groaned for the enormities committed by their countrymen in Jerusalem. The past, the present, and the future time, are sometimes undistinguished in the holy tongue; especially by the prophets, to whom the certainty of the future predicted events, occasioned them to be contemplated, as present, or as already past. Consonant to this style, "I have cast them far off among the heathen," may imply, I will cast them far off; I will disperse them among the nations, &c.

To both those bodies of Jews, of whom I have spoken, I would say, those already captivated in Babylon when Ezekiel received this vision, and those who were led away after the total ruin of Jerusalem, that however afflictive their situation might appear, God would meliorate it by constant marks of the protection | he would afford. Though I may or have cast them far off among the heathen; and among the countries; though I may disperse them among strange nations; yet I will be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they are come."

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This is the general scope of the words we have read. Wishful to apply them to the design of this day, we shall proceed to draw a parallel between the state of the Jews in Babylon, and that in which it has pleased God to place the churches whose ruin we have now deplored for forty years. The dispersion of the Jews had three distinguished characters.

I. A character of horror;
II. A character of justice;
III. A character of mercy.

A character of horror; this people were dispersed among the nations; they were compelled to abandon Jerusalem, and to wander in divers countries. A character of justice; God himself, the God who makes "judgment and justice the habitation of his throne," Ps. lxxxix. 15, was the author of those calamities; "I have cast them far off among the heathen; and dispersed them among the countries." In fine, a character of mercy: "though I have cast them far off among the heathen, I have been," as we may read, "I will be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they are come." These are the three similarities between the dispersed Jews, and the reformed, to whom these provinces have extended a compassionate arm.

I. The dispersion of the Jews, connected with all the calamities which preceded and followed, had a character of horror: let us judge of it by the lamentations of Jeremiah, who attested, as well as predicted the awful scenes.

1. He deplores the carnage which stained Judea with blood: "The priests and the prophets have been slain in the sanctuary of the Lord. The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets; my virgins and the young men are fallen by the sword: thou hast slain; thou hast killed, and hast not pitied them in the day of thine anger. Thou hast convened my terrors, as to a solemn day," chap. ii. 20-22.

2. He deplores the horrors of the famine which induced the living to envy the lot of those that had fallen in war: "The children and the sucklings swoon in the streets; they say to their mothers, when expiring in their bosom, where is the corn and the wine? They that be slain with the sword are happier than they that be slain with hunger. Have not the women eaten the children that they suckled? Naturally pitiful, have they not baked their children to supply them with food?" chap. ii. 11, 12. 20; iv. 9, 10.

3. He deplores the insults of their enemies: "All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and shake their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?" chap. ii. 15.

4. He deplores the insensibility of God himself, who formerly was moved with their calamities, and ever accessible to their prayers: "Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud that our prayers should not pass through: and when I cry and shout, he rejecteth my supplication," chap. iii. 44. 8.

5. He deplores the favours God had conferred, the recollection of which served but to render their grief the more poignant, and their fall the more insupportable: Jerusalem in the days of her affliction remembered all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old. How doth the city sit in solitude that was full of people? How is she that was great among the nations become a widow, and she that was princess among the provinces become tributary?" chap. i. 7. 1.

6. Above all, he deplores the strokes levelled against religion: "The ways of Zion do mourn because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh; her virgins are afflicted. The heathen have entered into her sanctuary; the heathen concerning whom thou didst say, that they should not enter into thy sanctuary," chap. i. 4. 10.

These are the tints with which Jeremiah paints the calamities of the Jews, and making those awful objects an inexhaustible source of tears; he exclaims in the eloquence of grief; "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. For this cause I weep, mine eye, mine eye runneth down with tears, because the Comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me. Zion spreadeth her hands, and there is none to comfort her. Mine eyes fail with tears: whom shall I take to witness for thee; to whom shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem; to whom shall I equal thee to console thee, O daughter of Zion, for thy breach is great?-O wall of the daughter of

Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest, let not the apple of thine eye cease. Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the Lord," chap. i. 12. 16, 17; ii. 11. 13. 18, 19.

But is all this a mere portrait of past ages, or did the Spirit of God designate it as a figure of ages that were to come! Are those the calamities of the Jews that Jeremiah has endeavoured to describe, or are they those which for so many years have ravaged our churches! Our eyes, accustomed to contemplate so many awful objects, have become incapable of impression. Our hearts, habituated to anguish, are become insensible. Do not expect me to open the wounds that time has already closed; but in recalling the recollection of those terrific scenes which have stained our churches with blood, I would inquire whether the desolations of Jerusalem properly so called, or those of the mystic Jerusalem be most entitled to our tears? May the sight of the calamities into which we have been plunged excite in the bosom of a compassionate God, emotions of mercy! May he in crowning the martyrs, extend mercy to those that occasioned their death.

I am impelled to the objects which the solemnities of this day recall to your minds, though I should even endeavour to dissipate the ideas; I would say, to the destruction of our churches, and to the strokes which have been levelled against our religion. The colours Jeremiah employed to trace the calamities of Jews, cannot be too vivid to paint those which have fallen on us. One scourge has followed another for a long series of years, "One deep has called unto another deep at the noise of his water-spouts," Ps. xlii. 7. A thousand and a thousand strokes were aimed at our unhappy churches prior to that which rased them to the ground! and if we may so speak, one would have said, that those armed against us were not content with being spectators of our ruin; they were emulous to effectuate it.

confirming those in the truth who we had instructed from our infancy. Sometimes they prohibited the pastors from exercising the ministerial functions for more than three years in the same place. Sometimes they forbade us to print our books;† and sometimes seized those already published. Sometimes they obstructed our preaching in a church: sometimes from doing it on the foundations of one that had been demolished; and sometimes from worshipping God in public. At one time they exiled us from the kingdom; and at another, forbade our leaving it on pain of death.§ Here you might have seen trophies prepared for those who had basely denied their religion, there you might have seen dragged to the prisons, to the scaffold, or to the galleys, those who had confessed it with an heroic faith: yea, the bodies of the dead dragged on hurdles for having expired confessing the truth. In another place you might have seen a dying man at compromise with a minister of hell, on persisting in his apostacy, and the fear of leaving his children destitute of bread; and if he made not the best use of those last moments that the treasures of Providence, and the long-suffering of God, yet afforded him to recover from his fall. In other places, fathers and mothers tearing themselves away from children, concerning whom the fear of being separated from them in eternity made them shed tears more bitter than those that flowed on being separated in this life. Elsewhere you might have seen whole families arriving in Protestant countries with hearts transported with joy, once more to see churches, and to find in Christian communion, adequate sources to assuage the anguish of the sacrifices they had made for its enjoyment. Let us draw the curtain over those affecting scenes. Our calamities, like those of the Jews, have had a character of horror; this is a fact; this is but too easy to prove. They have had also a character of justice, which we proceed to prove in our second head.

II. That public miseries originate in the Sometimes they published edicts against crimes of a chastened people, is a proposition those who foreseeing the impending calamities that scarcely any one will presume to deny of the church, and unable to avert them, sought when proposed in a vague and general way; the sad consolation of not attesting the scenes.* but perhaps it is one of those whose evidence Sometimes against those who having had the is less perceived when applied to certain pribaseness to deny their religion, and unable to vate cases, and when we would draw the conbear the remorse of their conscience, had re- sequences resulting from it in a necessary and covered from their fall. Sometimes they pro- immediate manner: propose it in a pulpit, and hibited pastors from exercising their discipline each will acquiesce. But propose it in the cabion those of their flock who had abjured the net; say, that the equipment of fleets, the levy truth. Sometimes they permitted children at of armies, and contraction of alliances, are the age of seven years to embrace a doctrine, feeble barriers of the state, unless we endeain the discussion of which they affirm, that vour to eradicate the crimes which have eneven adults were inadequate to the task. At kindled the wrath of Heaven, and you would one time they suppressed a college, at another be put in the abject class of those good and they interdicted a church. Sometimes they weak sort of folks that are in the world. I do envied us the glory of converting infidels and not come to renew the controversy, and to inidolaters; and required that those unhappy vestigate what is the influence of crimes on people should not renounce one kind of idola- the destiny of nations, and the rank it holds try but to embrace another, far less excusable, in the plans of Providence. Neither do I apas it dared to show its front amid the light of pear at the bar of philosophy the most scruputhe gospel. They envied us the glory also of lous and severe, and at the bench of policy the most refined and profound, to prove that it is

*The edict of August, 1689.
Declaration against the relapsed, May 1679.
June 1680. June 1681. January 1683.

* August 1684.
Sept. 6th, 1685.

July 9th, 1685.
July 30th, 1680.

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