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This text has been proofread but is not guaranteed to be free from errors. Corrections to the original text have been left in place.
Title: Reader, the heavy hour at hand, an electronic edition
Author: Douglas, Eleanor, Lady, d. 1652
Publisher: 
Place published: 
Date: 1648
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Eleanor, LadyReader, the heavy hour at hand . . . London 1648.READER,THe heavy  hour at hand, that it should not  as a Thief surprize us in the night, Babylons scattering whirlwind our final or utter blow; or lest should say,  There had not a Prophet been amongst them, could not refrain giving thee warning, though  like rolling the restles stone, prove but  labor in vain. Where  Line upon Line, no vain repetition, stiles them  A house of Rebellion, and  Most Rebellious, Cap. Ver. &c.  Nay (as it were) had been sent to the house of  Austria their Churches, replyed,  Had long ere this in sackcloth and ashes; or to a People of  a deep lip, of another language, &c.  The first-fruits of which Ambassage, shewing Israel being cut off, as by  Ezekiel tasted of,  watchman over the rebellious house of Israel, made  to eat the roll or writ, Lamentation, Mourning and Woe,
 Woe, superscribed within and without; so by all signs and tokens without doubt served on our three sinful Kingdoms, home charged with open Rebellion, neither hearkning to the Prophet bidden,  stamp with the foot, smite with the fist, with the breaking of thy loyns sigh,  their musick but made and song, The Lord of Hosts when uttering his thundring voyce, roaring as a Lyon, the tokens of his coming, an end come on the four corners of the earth, ready to fall asleep,  or sitting in the seat of scorners, All their elbows grown to the pillows, they and their fathers.And so farther informing whether silent or otherwise, as it came to pass in the fifth year of such a Kings captivity accomplished  (Ezekiel Cap.I.) the hand of the Lord when upon him, his word coming expresly to him, saw the great Vision of God, he amongst the captives;  Also from this place, the Kings Bench Prison amongst this Society, give to understand; to accompany this warning piece of the  Turkish Armado's preparation, added a sign, as  Isaiah sometime gave one of the  Suns going back so many degrees retiring, before their captivity athand hand foreshewed then; Another given of the  Moon, from his giving the  Three half Moons, whose Army harbors at  Argier, attending  Sions being delivered up into his possession:  These  Islands three to be under his lash of Iurisdiction, drawn from which premises these, for his Crest or Coat of Arms who gives the Half Moon, not far off his house called Sion, committed to whom three prisoner Princes, one of no inferior estate, under  Babylons Bashaws, typyfying even our estate, those  Mahometans our guardians, the third Earldom of this Realm, assigned thereby to  Algernon Earl of   Northumberland by Name, sometime Admiral of the Seas, paralleld with that Northern scourge,  The Assyrian Army, how given up into his protection the houses of the Lord. And so much  (Reader) for this flight of ours, and this new sign of the   New Moon going before it, where cannot pass over  Ezekiels portraying our Cities siege, shewed by those battering rams or brazen Engines, so to the life their swift doing execution; and dreadful wheels motions and thndring voyce, in those living creatures (as shashadowed under the  Seraphin work of the Tabernacles Curtains, the Lord of Hosts Pavillion, each loop of which not without a Mystery, as observable  Fifty in one curtain, and fifty in the other, (Exod. 26) containing the mystery of winged time, the midst of the Century, even directed to, joyned like those Cherubin wings of theirs. And of this your day drawing near, whose silver and gold the stumbling block, Author of unhappiness all, as he unto all the people of  Judah, saying from such a year of the King of  Judah, even unto this day; that is, the Three and twenty year  (Jer. Cap. 25.)  Also the word of the Lord have I spoken unto you, rising early, but, &c.  1648.  23. of the present Reign._________ _____________ __________ ________ ______________ ____________F I N I S .