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which you should prefer before your own particular interest, and wherein you may expect to share a part.

You must therefore affect your heart with these thoughts, and mourn for your own first, and then for the abominations of your family, town, country, and kingdom, Ezek. ix. 4; for the sins of princes and nobles, Neh. ix. 34; for the sins of ministers and people. And not only for present sins of the land, but for the sins long since committed, whereof it has not yet repented, Dan. ix. 5, 6; rivers of waters should run down from your eyes, Psa. cxix. 136; at least sighs and groans should rise from your heart, Ezek. ix. 4, Jer. ix. 1, because others as well as yourself have forgotten God's law, and have exposed themselves to his destroying judgments. Do all this so, that you may pour out your heart like water to the Lord in their behalf, Lam. ii. 18, 19.

This is to stand in the breach, Exod. xxxii. 11 - 15, Psa. cvi. 23; the prayer of a righteous man avails much, if it be fervent, James v. 16, 17, though he have infirmities. If it should not take good effect for others, yet your tears and sighs shall do good to yourself, Ezek. xiv. 14; it causes you to have God's seal in your forehead, Ezek. ix. 4; you are marked for mercy. God will take you from the evil to come, Isa. lvii. 1, or will make a way for you to escape, Jer. xxxix. 16, or will turn the hearts of your enemies to you, Jer. xxxix. 12; or, if you smart under the common judgment, it shall be sanctified to you: and if you perish bodily, yet, when others that cannot live, and are afraid to die, are at their wits' end, you shall be able, in the consciousness of your godly sorrow for your own and others' sins, to welcome death as a messenger of good tidings, and as a gate to everlasting happiness.

If it be a public fast, all these things before mentioned are to be done alone, both before and after the public exercises, at which time you must join in public hearing the word read and preached, and in prayer with more than ordinary attention and fervency.

If you fast with your family, or with some few, let