First:  It may be an instruction to princes themselves, to be careful in the choice of those who are their advisers in matters of law.  All the judges of England, except one or two, advised the King, that he might legally raise money upon the subjects for building of ships without consent of Parliament; which, as it was the greatest oversight of his reign, so it proved the principal foundation of all his misfortunes.  Princes may likewise learn from hence, not to sacrifice a faithful servant to the rage of a faction, nor to trust any body of men with a greater share of power than the laws of the land have appointed them, much less to deposit it in their hands until they shall please to restore it.

Secondly:  By bringing to mind the tragedy of this day, and the consequences that have arisen from it, we shall be convinced how necessary it is for those in power to curb, in season, all such unruly spirits as desire to introduce new doctrines and discipline in the Church, or new forms of government in the state.  Those wicked Puritans began, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, to quarrel only with surplices and other habits, with the ring in matrimony, the cross in baptism, and the like; thence they went on to further matters of higher importance, and, at last, they must needs have the whole government of the Church dissolved.  This great work they compassed, first, by depriving the bishops of their seats in Parliament, then they abolished the whole order; and, at last, which was their original design, they seized on all the Church-lands, and divided the spoil among themselves; and, like Jeroboam, made priests of the very dregs of the people.  This was their way of reforming the Church.  As to the civil government, you have already heard how they modelled it upon the murder of their King, and discarding the nobility.  Yet, clearly to shew what a Babel they had built, after twelve years’ trial and twenty several sorts of government; the nation grown weary of their tyranny, was forced to call in the son of him whom those reformers had sacrificed.  And thus were Simeon and Levi divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel.

Thirdly:  Although the successors of these Puritans, I mean our present Dissenters, do not think fit to observe this day of humiliation; yet, since it would be very proper in them, upon some occasions, to renounce in a public manner those principles upon which their predecessors acted; and it will be more prudent in them to do so, because those very Puritans, of whom ours are followers, found by experience, that after they had overturned the Church and state, murdered their King, and were projecting what they called a kingdom of the saints, they were cheated of the power and possessions they only panted after, by an upstart sect of religion that grew out of their own bowels, who subjected them to one tyrant, while they were endeavouring to set up a thousand.