war, the judge and the prophet, the prudent and the aged,
the captain and the honourable, the counsellor and the cunning artificer;
and I will appoint, saith the Lord, children to be their princes, and
babes shall rule over them. Children are extortioners of my people, and
women have rule over them." Isa. iii.

If these calamities, I say, apprehend us, so that we see nothing but the
oppression of good men, and of all godliness, and that wicked men without
God reign above us; let us accuse and condemn ourselves, as the only cause
of our own miseries. For if we had heard the voice of the Lord our God,
and given upright obedience unto the same, God would have multiplied our
peace, and would have rewarded our obedience before the eyes of the world.
But now let us hear what the prophet saith further: "The dead shall not
live," saith he, "neither shall the tyrants, nor the dead arise, because
thou hast visited and scattered them, and destroyed all their memory,"
verse 14.

From this 14th verse, unto the end of the 19th, it appears, that the
prophet observes no order; yea, that he speaks things directly
repugning(6) one to another; for, _first_, he saith, "The dead shall not
live:" afterwards, he affirms, "Thy dead men shall live." _Secondly_, he
saith, "Thou hast visited and scattered them, and destroyed all their
memory." Immediately after, he saith, "Thou hast increased thy nation, O
Lord, thou hast increased thy nation. They have visited thee, and have
poured forth a prayer before thee."

Who, I say, would not think, that these are things not only spoken without
good order and purpose, but also manifestly repugning one to another? For
to live, and not to live, to be so destroyed that no memorial remains, and
to be so increased that the coasts of the earth shall be replenished,
seems to import plain contradiction. For removing of this doubt, and for
better understanding the prophet's mind, we must observe, that the prophet
had to do with divers sorts of men; he had to do with the conjured(7) and
manifest enemies of God's people, the Chaldeans or Babylonians; even so,
such as profess Christ Jesus have to do with the Turks and Saracens. He
had to do with the seed of Abraham, whereof there were three sorts. The
ten tribes were all degenerated from the true worshipping of God, and
corrupted with idolatry, as this day are our pestilent papists in all
realms and nations; there rested only the tribe of Judah at Jerusalem,
where