MY Beloved, being here met together, like Jews at a Passover, with our Loyns girt, for a short bit and away, for fear of those Philistines and Moabites, the Beadles and Constables, being met, I say, in this Most Christian (to borrow the Title of our Great Lord and Master) Assembly, I have made choice of a Text properly suitable to our present occasion: Woe unto us, for the Wind stood against us.

Before I launch into so large a Field as lies before me, in the subject of my following Discourse, I think fit first to prepare you for a due Attention and Re­ception of the great Truths delivered in my Text, by giving you a short, but glorious Character of the great St. Lodowick, the Divine Oracle that speaks it.

Our St. Lodowick, that great Boanerges of Mankind, the miraculous first born of his Mother, after twenty two years Conception, and sent into the World for the Conversion of Nations, by the Infallibility of [...]ombs and Cannons. That great Colledge of Maho­met, the only Apostle Militant both of the Crescent and Cross, speaks to his booted Disciples, the Galli­cans, in the words of my Text: Woe unto us, for the Wind stood against us. And why all this denuntiati­on of Woe? Yea verily, my Beloved, never a more [Page 3]sad occasion for wailing and lamentation. A Design so great and glorious as a Descent from France, an Invasion of England, so politickly laid, and so hope­fully carried on, and yet to be so dismally blasted, blown up, as I may say, by a Wind! To be ready and prepared so early in the Spring with 30000 Swiss, Irish, Scotch, and French roaring Boys, to make a whip over, before the Heretick Williamites were a­wake, to oppose 'em, invited over too by Us the Loyal and Dutiful Jacobite Vassals, and Slaves to his most Anti-christian Sultanship, all sworn upon the Al­coran, so fat a squob as little dear England, so delici­ous a bit, just ready for his Pounce and Talons, and all lost by a Wind: For woe unto us, the Wind was a­gainst us.

And now my, Beloved, have we the faithful Non-Jurants; his true and trusty Musslemen, so long Preacht in Cellars and Garrets, the indispensable Du­ty of Fidelity and Allegiance to our great Gallican Lord and Soveraign; even to a Curse ye Meroz in his Cause. Oh the blessed Day, when the Gallican Miss, and Gallican Patriots at the Helm, the Advancement and Exaltation of the Gallican Greatness and Glory was the whole work and study of so many hopeful years, when the humble English Effeminacy was so industriously planting and watering his dear Flour-de-Luces: Even our very Lyons of Judah all turned to his dutiful assisting Isachars. Did we not see all this, and by the Duty of our Passive Obedience, use all our Pastoral Eloquence and Authority to Preach and In­culcate so divine a Cause. But not to call that happy Remembrance back again, so sweet to our Ears and so dear to our Souls, alas! the present business of the [Page 4]day is a more lamentable Subject; for, Woe unto us, the Wind was against us.

But how, my Beloved, was the Wind against us? Oh, verily most perniciously, directly opposite to all our Hopes and Designs, that is to say, it stood in a Pro­testant Corner, yea, in a Protestant Corner; a Woe in­deed, too bitter a draught of Gall even to be swallow­ed, or digested.

Oh the comfortable sweets and the heavenly Man­na we had tasted, that Soveraign Cordial to our droo­ping Souls, had we once feasted our Senses with so rio­tous a pleasure, as to have seen the consecrated Dag­gers of our dear Irish Brethren in the throats of our Heretick Enemies, to have battend in Massacre, and fatten'd with blood: But, alas, that Divine delight is utterly dasht and defeated: For woe unto us, the Wind was against us.

Now my Beloved we have a great many very sad Reasons to lament that the Wind should be in the Pro­testant Corner. For first, what is Wind but Air? and the Prince of the Air being of our Party, 'tis very hard that the Wind should be against us.

Secondly, The Wind has yet stronger Obligations to be of our Party. For, Beloved, it is written, that the Wind bloweth where it listeth; that is to say, Ruleth and Coverneth ala mode de France, at its own Arbitrary Will and Pleasure. And under that denomination of Absolute and Arbitrary, the divine Attributes of our Great Patron Lodowick, one would think the Wind should be a Jacobite. But this wicked Rebellious and unnatural Wind is a Protestant one, lay full in the Teeth of our Invincible Monarch, and overthrew all our Hopes and Foundation.

Now, Beloved, as the Wind ruleth and governeth, as I said before, what, or what manner of Rule and Government is it, that that Rebel the Wind holdeth or usurpeth: A very large one, my Beloved, a wide and and ample Dominion, my Brethren, for it blow­eth from the four Corners of the Earth; from the four did I say? Yea, and from the twice fourteen By-Cor­ners also. And this malicious and spightful Protestant Air, lay in the North and By East, one of the BY-Cor­ners, my Beloved: And having named that short word or Particle [BY] which Heaven knows is but a little one, yet, Beloved, 'tis a very Emphatick one: For in­stance in several weighty particulars relating to our whole Designs.

As first, our great Jacobite Plot, which we were just hatching in the World, proves an Abortive, or to use the Pagan Language of our Enemies, a Sooterkin, nay, and what's worse, a BY-Blow. The great Cham­pions and Heroes of our Cause having given us the Go-BY, are thrown into the Tower, New-gate, Gate-house, and other BY-places; and to summ all, too ma­ny of 'em, to our great Sorrow and Lamentation, are like to be hang'd too by the BY. And their very names and memories, my Beloved, no more than a BY-word amonst our reviling and sneering Enemies. And therefore, as I said before, this Particle [BY] is a very Emphatick one. Nay 'to continue the Empha­tickness of this woful [BY,] By St. Patrick and St. Loyala, our two great Jacobite Saints, never was De­sign better laid and projected. A great Navy, and several hundreds of Transport Ships, all ready by the beginning of April to stip BY, before the English Fleet could get out, and land an Army of dear Teagues [Page 6]and Rapparees, our Trusty and Beloved Sworn Bro­thers. But this Great and Invincible Armado, instead of getting BY, to be forc'd to lye BY, to have a long five Weeks Wind lye in this damn'd North-East, BY-Corner, and not only so, but a malicious Protestant Storm too to fall foul upon our Thoulon Fleet, and give our Expedition so great a Put-BY, till the whole Wil­liamite Fleet is not only Equipped and Manned, but also Sail'd BY, and what is yet worst of all, resolved to Stand BY their great Heretick Lord and Master. And all this through that calamitous Disappointment of Woe unto us, the Wind was against us.

After this deplorable Catastrophie, let us hang up our Harps, our Irish Harps, upon the Willows, and sigh and sob in the bitterness of Spirit, and anguish of Heart, and mix our Cup of Affliction, even with the Lees of Vinegar, let it be the true White-wine Vine­gar, my Beloved, the Growth and Product of our own still dear, tho' bitter Grapes; and no [...]ophisticate A­dulteration of Barly or Crab, that Heretick Verjuice, our Loathing and Abomination. For let us not start from our Cause, or our Principles, though Woe be unto us, the Wind is against us.

Now Beloved, to give you some farther Light into my Text, it will not be unseasonable to make some more large inquiry into the nature of Wind. And here occurrs a very natural Observation, relating to the Extent or Power of Wind. Wind therefore is two-fold, not only that blustering Termagant Roarer and Rover, the wicked Enemy of our Cause, that An­ti-Jacobite Element, that blows from the North and the East, or from any other Corner of the greater World; there is a Wind likewise proper and peculiar only to [Page 7]the lesser World, blowing and breathing from the [...]orners and Crannies of that Microcosme of Man. And this last Wind is of two kinds, both Learnedly display'd and decipher'd by a very Eminent Author.

You see, Beloved, here are two Winds, purely [...]igning and governing in our humane Microcosme. The one, as I may say, a kind of a Subterranean Wind ram­bling and rumbling in the Internes and Cavernes of our Humane Terrestrial, and issuing forth, as the Poet observes, down-wards in that formidable, tho' short-lived obstreperous Fulmination, if I may so say, Lear­nedly called a Blast. The second Wind, here dignified by the Title of New Light and Prophecy; of which I'll speak in their Order.

To begin therefore with the first, the first in Order, though not the first in Quality, a Blast: A Blast did I say, something an unsavory Conception, my Beloved; but truly, Brethren, very proper to our Cause: For even under that mean Class of Winds, that feeble homely puff, call'd a Blast, may many Heroick Ex­ploits be, not unjustly, rank'd and number'd, as being the Determinating point of too many Illustrious De­signes and Atchievements.

For instance, what did our Maudlin-Colledge Re­formation, our Spiritual High-Commission, our Castle­main Nuntio-ship, and Tyrconnel Vice-Royalty, and all the rest of our Popish Mines and Batteries, all the [Page 8]Grand Projections of our late Eminent St are [...] kers, and Court-Locusts, end in, bu [...] a Blast [...] what came all our Formidable Silisbuty Expedition, [...] a Blast: Our Running Fight on the blind side [...] Boyne, and indeed, all the rest of our Irish Chival [...] but Blast, Blast all Blast. And truly my Beloved, w [...] aking heart and we [...]ping eyes be it spoken, we ha [...] but too much Reason to fear and dread, that o [...] whole Descent and Invasion will terminate in ju [...] such another unsavoury Wh [...]ff, a Blast; what sh [...] I call it, a Puff, a Vapour, a little diminitive Back [...]id Crack, that's All, my Beloved. For, Woe unto us, t [...] Wind was against us.

Now to come to our second Wind, our New Lig' [...] and Prophecy, under this Class are to be reckon'd [...] our Divine Gadbury's Predictions, and the rest of our Great Prophecies, the Crutch and Prop of all our finking Hopes, such as our ‘In ternis Annis Rex Religioque redibunt.’

And now I come to speak of Prophecies: Even those Superiour Ebullitions of Wind may not imp [...] ­perly be ranked under the notion or name of Bla [...] For as the forementioned Blast is only a violent Erup­tion of some Corporeal Collection of Vapo [...]rs, sa­vour'd and hogoed in its Evaporation, according to the Odour of the Internal Minerals through which it passes; The like may be said of all our Great Jacob [...]te Propheticks and [...]rognosticks, as being only a Spiri­tual sort of Whiff, the Erruption-likewise of some Mercurials Volatiles, through the Misfortune and Calamity of all our Deseated Expectations, Mundun­gofyed into a Blast: For, Woe be unto us, the Wind sits against us.