ingratitude, to think them possible to be numbered. Consider the narrowness of the land, (scarce equal to three of our shires) and their iunumerable armies; consider the barenness of many parts of that country, and their innumerable sacrifices of cattle; consider their little trade, in respect, and their innumerable treasures; but consider especially, what God had done for their souls, in promising and ratifying so often a Messiah unto them, and giving them law and prophets, in the mean time, and there you see their true height; and then consider the abominations, and idolatries, in which they had plunged, and buried themselves, and there you see their lowness, how far they were fallen.

This then was their descent; and as St. Paul says (when he describes this descent of the Jews into all manner of abominations) one step of this stair, of this descent, is, unnatural affection, they were unnatural to themselves; that is, not sensible of their own misery, but were proud of their fall, and thought themselves at ease in their ruin; and another stair in this fall is, that God had delivered them up to a reprobate mind', to suffer them to think so still. And then for their further vexation, God would take from them, even that false, that imaginary comfort of theirs. Surgite, says God; since you have made that perverse shift, to take comfort in your fall, arise from that, from that security, from that stupidity, for you shall not choose but see your misery; when all the people were descended to that baseness, (as nothing is more base, than to court the world, and the devil, for poor and wretched delights, when we may have plentiful and rich abundance in our confidence in God) when the people were all of one mind, and one voice, omnes unius labii, their hearts, and tongues spoke all one language, and, (populus tanto deterior, quanto in deterioribus concors, men are the worse, the more they are, and the more unanimous, and constant they are in ill purposes) when they were all come to that renite comburamus, come, and let us burn brick, and trust in our own work, and renite, ædificemus, come, and let us build a tower, and provide a safety for ourselves; since they would descend from their dignity, (which dignity consists in the service of God, whose service is

♦ Rom, i. 28,

Gen. xi. 1.

в

• Augustine,

perfect freedom) God would descend with them, Venite descendamus, says God; but what to do? Descendamus, ut confundamus, Let us go down to confound their language, and to scatter them upon the earth. Ascensio mendax, descensio crudelis, says holy Bernard, A false ascending, is a cruel descending: when we lie weltering in our blood, secure in our sins, and can flatter ourselves, that we are well, and where we would be, this deceitful ascension, is a cruel descent into hell; we lie still, we feel no pain, but it is because we have broken our necks; we do not groan, we do not sigh, but it is because our breath is gone; the spirit of God is departed from us. They were descended to a flatness of taste, Egyptian onions had a better savour, than the manna of heaven; they were descended to a new-fangledness in civil government, they liked the form of government amongst their neighbours, better than that of judges, which God had established for them then; they were descended to a new-fangledness in matter of religion, to the embracing of a foreign, and a frivolous, and an idolatrous worship of God: but then being in their descent, when they delighted in it, as sea-sick men, who had rather be trodden upon than rise up, than God frustrate that false joy and false ease of theirs, he rouses them from all that, which they had proposed to themselves, surgite, arise, arise from this security, because you are fallen, you should rise, but because you love your misery, you shall rise, you shall come to a sense, and knowledge of it, you shall not enjoy the ease of an ignorance.

But he raised them not to re-establish them, to restore them to their former dignity; there was no comfort in that surgite, which was accompanied with an ite, arise and depart: and depart into captivity. If we compare the captivity, which they were going into, (that of Babylon) with the other bondage, which they had been delivered from, (that of Egypt) it is true, there were many, and real, and important differences. That of Egypt was ergastulum, a prison'; and it was fornax ferrea, an iron furnace; but in Babylon, they were not slaves, as they were in Egypt, but they were such a kind of prisoners, as only had not liberty to return to their own country. But yet, if we consider their state in Egypt in their root, in Jacob, and in his sons, they

came for food thither in a time of necessity; and consider them in that branch that overshadowed, and refreshed them, in Joseph, he came thither as a bondman, in a servile condition. So that they were but few persons, and not so great, as that their pressures could aggravate, or taste much more the bitterly, by comparing it with any greatness which they had before; though they were fallen into great misery, they were not fallen from any remarkable greatness. But between the two captivities of Egypt, and Babylon, they were come to that greatness, and reputation, as that they had the testimony of all the world, Only this people is wise, and of understanding, and a great nation'. Now wherein? In that which follows; what nation is so great, as to have the Lord come so near unto them; so great, as to have laws, and ordinances, so righteous, as they had? Now this preculiar greatness, they lost in this captivity; whether they lost absolutely the books of the law, or not, and that they were reinspired and redictated again by the Holy Ghost to Esdras, or whether Esdras did but recollect them, and recompile them, St. Hierome will not determine: he will not say whether Moses, or Esdras, be author of the first five books of the Bible; but it is clear enough, that they were out of that ordinary use wherein they had been before: and though they kept their circumcision, and their sabbaths in Babylon, yet being cast thither for their sins, they had lost all ordinary expiations of their sins, for they had no sacrifices there; (as the Jews which are now in dispersion, are everywhere without their sacrifices) they were to rise, but not to stay, arise and depart; and they were to depart, both from their imaginary comforts, which they had framed, and proposed to themselves (when they were fallen from God, they should be deceived in their trust in themselves) and they were to depart even with the law, and ordinances, in which their pre-eminence, and prerogative above all nations consisted: when man comes to be content with this world, God will take this world from him: when man frames to himself imaginary pleasures, God will inflict real punishments; when he would lie still, he shall not sleep; but God will take him and raise him, but to a farther vexation.

And this vexation hath another heavy weight upon it, in this

Deut. iv. 6.

10

little word, for; for this draws a curtain between the face of God, and them: this locks a door between the court of mercy, and them, when God presents his judgments with such an assuredness, such a resolution, as leaves no hope in their heart, that God will alter it, no power in themselves to solicit God to a pardon, or a reprieve; but as he was led as a fool to the stocks, when he hearkened to pleasant sins before, so he is led as an ox to the slaughters, when he hears of God's judgments now; his own conscience prevents God, and tells him, there is a for, a reason, a necessity, an irrecoverableness in his condemnation. God had iterated, and multipled this quia, this for, oftentimes in their ears this prophet was no upstart, no sudden, no transitory man, to pass through the streets with a Væ, vo, Woe, woe unto this city1o, and no more; but he prophesied constantly, during the reign of three kings, of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah: he was no suspicious man out of his singularity; but he prophesied jointly with Isaiah, without separation, and he held the communion of his fellow-prophets; he was no particular man, (as many interpreters have taken it) so, as that he addressed his prophecies upon Judah only; but he extended it to all, to all the tribes. is not a prophecy limited to idolatry, and the sins against the first table, but to robbery, and murder, and fornication, and oppression, and the sins between man and man: it is not a timorous prophecy, directed only to persons whom a low fortune, and a miserable estate, or a sense of sin, and a wounded conscience, had depressed, and dejected, but principally bent upon rulers and magistrates, and great persons. So that no man hath a quia against this quia, a for against this for, to say, we need not heed him, for he is an upstart, a singular person, and all these his threatenings are rather satirical, than prophetical, or theological; but this thunderbolt, this quia, this reason why these judgments must necessarily fall upon them, fell upon them with so much violence, as that it stupified with the weight, and precluded all ways of escape. These be the heaviest texts that a man can light upon in the Scriptures of God, and these be the heaviest commentaries that a man can make upon these texts, that when God wakens him and raises him from his dream, and

10 Micah ii. 1.

It

bed of sin, and pleasure, and raises him with the voice of his judgments, he suffers him to read to the quia, but not to come to the tamen; he comes to see reason why that judgment must fall, but not to see any remedy. His inordinate melancholy, and half-desperate sadness, carries his eye and mind upon a hundred places of commination, of threatening in the prophets, and in them all he finds quickly that quia, this curse must fall upon me, for I am fallen into it; but he comes not to the tamen, to that relief, yet turn to the Lord, and he will turn to thee. This was a particular step in their misery, that when they were awaked and risen, that is, taken away from all taste and comfort in their own imaginations and pleasures, when God was ready to give fire to all that artillery, which he had charged against them, in the service of all the prophets, they could see no refuge, no sanctuary, nothing but a quia, an irresistibleness, an irremediableness, a necessity of perishing; a great while there was no such thing as judgment, (God cannot see us) now, there is no such thing as mercy, (God will not see us.)

What then is this heavy judgment, that is threatened? It is the deprivation of rest. Though there be no war, no pestilence, no new positive calamity, yet privative calamities are heavy judgments; to lose that Gospel, that religion, which they had, is a heavy loss; deprivations are heavy calamities; and here they are deprived of rest; here is not your rest: now, besides that betwixt us and heaven, there is nothing that rests, (all the elements, all the planets, all the spheres are in perpetual motion, and vicissitude) and so the joys of heaven are expressed unto us, in that name of rest; certainly this blessing of rest was more precious, more acceptable to the Jews, than to any other nation; and so they more sensible of the loss of it, than any other. For as God's first promise, and the often ratification of it, had ever accustomed them to a longing for that promised rest, as their long, and laborious peregrinations, had made them ambitious, and hungry of that rest, so had they (which no other nation had but they) a particular feast of a Sabbath, appointed for them, both for a real cessation and rest from bodily labours, and for a figurative expressing of the eternal rest; their imagination, their understanding, their faith, was filled with this apprehension of