so much abounding amongst us[35]:  all which we are under many obligations to confess and mourn over from the word; and, of our true and unfeigned purpose and desire, to endeavour for ourselves and all others under our power and charge[36] both in public and in private, in all dutie[37] we owe to God and man, to amend our lives[38] and each one to go before another[39] in the example of a real reformation, that the Lord might turn away his wrath and heavy indignation,[40] and establish these kingdoms in truth and peace.[41] Yet we have refused to be reformed and have walked proudly and obstinately before the Lord, not valuing his gospel, nor submitting ourselves unto the obedience thereof; not seeking after Christ, nor studying to honour him in the excellency of his person, nor to employ him in the virtue of his offices; not making conscience of the public ordinances, nor studying to edify one another in love.  The ignorance of God and his Son Jesus Christ prevails exceedingly in the land.”  Even our fathers in their purest times confessed, in their acknowledgement of sins, “That the greatest part of masters of families among noblemen, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, and commons, neglected to seek God in their families, and to endeavour the reformation thereof.  And albeit it had been much pressed, yet few of the nobles and great ones could be persuaded to perform family duties themselves in their own persons, which made so necessary a duty to be disregarded by persons of inferior rank.”

We may add, in our degenerate times, not only the great ones generally profess the neglect and contempt of so necessary a duty, both in their own persons and in the use of chaplains; but the great part of the commons are altogether strangers to it; many performing no part of the family worship at all, others only singing a psalm and reading a chapter without praying, and others making a fashion of all, but very perfunctoriously, formally, and indifferently, and scarcely once in a day.  And ministers also making little conscience of visiting families to see how this duty is performed, not pressing it upon the negligent, nor stirring up the formal to a more spiritual way of performing it, nay, some giving bad examples to their flocks, by neglecting it themselves in their own families. The nobility, gentry, and barons, who should be examples of sober walking unto others, are very generally ringleaders of excess and rioting.  We have been far from amending our lives and promoting a personal reformation, and going before one another in the example of a real reformation, when we have been examples of deformation in our personal practices and public transactions, and being too-familiar and too far united with the patrons and patterns of the land’s deformations.  “Our fathers also acknowledged, albeit they were the Lord’s people engaged unto him in a solemn way; yet they had not made it their study that judicatories and armies should consist of, and places of power