he that stands afar off must cry aloud; so did these lepers: yet not so much distance as passion strained their throats. That which can give voice to the dumb, can much more give loudness to the vocal.

All cried together: these ten voices were united in one sound, that their conjoined forces might expugn that gracious ear. Had every man spoken singly for himself, this had made no noise, neither yet any show of a fervent importunity: now, as they were all affected with one common disease, so they all set out their throats together, and (though Jews and Samaritans) agree in one joint supplication. Even where there are ten tongues, the word is but one, that the condescent may be universal. When we would obtain common favours, we may not content ourselves with private and solitary devotions, but must join our spiritual forces together, and set upon God by troops. Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. No faithful prayer goes away unrecompensed: but, where many good hearts meet, the retribution must needs be answerable to the number of the petitioners. O holy and happy violence that is thus offered to heaven! how can we want blessings, when so many cords draw them down upon our heads?

It was not the sound, but the matter, that carried it with Christ: if the sound were shrill, the matter was faithful: "Jesu, Master, have mercy upon us!" No word can better become the mouth of the miserable. I see not where we can meet with fitter patterns. Surely they were not verier lepers than we why do we not imitate them in their actions, who are too like them in our condition? Whither should we seek but to our Jesus? How should we stand aloof in regard of our own wretchedness! How should we lift up our voice in the fervour of our supplications! What should we rather sue for than.mercy! "Jesu, Master, have mercy upon us!"

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O gracious prevention of mercy, both had and given ere it can be asked! Jesus, when he saw them, said, Go, show yourselves to the priests." Their disease is cured ere it can be complained of: their showing to the priest pre-supposes them whole; whole in his grant, though not in their own apprehension. That single leper that came to Christ before (Matt. viii. Luke v.) was first cured in his own sense, and then was bid to go to the priest for approbation of the cure. It was not so with these, who are sent to the judges of leprosy, with an intention they shall in the way find themselves healed. There was a different pur

pose in both these: in the one, that the perfection of the cure might be convinced, and seconded with a due sacrifice; in the other, that the faith of the patients might be tried in the way; which, if it had not held as strong in the prosecution of their suit as in the beginning, had, I doubt, failed of the effect. How easily might these lepers think, Alas! to what purpose is this? Show ourselves to the priests! what can their eyes do? they can judge whether it be cured, which we see yet it is not; they cannot cure it. This is not now to do: we have been seen enough and loathed. What can their eyes see more than our own? We had well hoped that Jesus would have vouchsafed to call us to him, and to lay his hands upon us, and to have healed us. These thoughts had kept them lepers still. Now shall their faith and obedience be proved by their submission both to this sudden command, and that divine ordination.

That former leper was charged to show himself to the chief priest, these to the priests. Either would serve the original command runs, either to Aaron or to one of his sons. But why to them? leprosy was a bodily sickness: what is this to spiritual persons? wherefore serve physicians, if the priests must meddle with diseases? We never shall find those sacred persons to pass their judgment upon fevers, dropsies, palsies, or any other bodily distemper : neither should they on this, were it not that this affection of the body is joined with a legal uncleanness: not as a sickness, but as an impurity, must it come under their cognizance; neither this, without a farther implication. Who but the successors of the legal priesthood are proper to judge of the uncleanness of the soul? whether an act be sinful, or in what degree it is such; what grounds are sufficient for the comfortable assurance of repentance, of forgiveness; what courses are fittest to avoid the danger of relapses; who is so like to know, so meet to judge, as our teachers? Would we, in these cases, consult oftener with our spiritual guides, and depend upon their faithful advices and well-grounded absolutions, it were safer, it were happier for us. O the dangerous extremity of our wisdom! Our hoodwinked progenitors would have no eyes but in the heads of their ghostly fathers: we think ourselves so quick-sighted, that we pity the blindness of our able teachers; none but ourselves are fit to judge of our own leprosy.

Neither was it only the peculiar judg ment of the priest that was here intended, but the thankfulness of the patient: that,

by the sacrifice which he should bring with him, he might give God the glory of his sanation. O God, whomsoever thou curest of this spiritual leprosy, it is reason he should present thee with the true evangelical sacrifices, not of his praises only, but of himself, which are reasonable and living. We are still leprous, if we do not first see ourselves foul, and then find ourselves thankfully serviceable.

The lepers did not, would not go of themselves, but are sent by Christ: "Go, and show yourselves." And why sent by him? Was it in obedience to the law? was it out of respect to the priesthood? was it for prevention of cavils? was it for conviction of gainsayers? or was it for confirmation of the miracle? Christ, that was above the law, would not transgress it: he knew this was his charge by Moses. How justly might he have dispensed with his own? but ne will not: though the law doth not bind the Maker, he will voluntarily bind himself. He was within the ken of his consummatum est; yet would not anticipate that approaching end, but holds the law on foot till his last pace. This was but a branch of the ceremonial; yet would he not slight it, but in his own person gives example of a studious observation.

How carefully should we submit ourselves to the royal laws of our Creator, to the wholesome laws of our superiors, while the Son of God would not but be so punctual in a ceremony!

While I look to the persons of those priests, I see nothing but corruption, nothing but professed hostility to the true Messiah. All this cannot make thee, O Saviour, to remit any point of the observance due to their places. Their function was sacred, whatever their persons were: though they have not the grace to give thee thy due, thou wilt not fail to give them theirs. How justly dost thou expect all due regard to thine evangelical priesthood, who gavest so curious respect to the legal! It were shame the synagogue should be above the church; or that priesthood, which thou didst mean speedily to abrogate, should have more honour than that which thou meantest to establish and perpetuate. Had this duty been neglected, what clamours had been raised by his emulous adversaries? what scandals? though the fault had been the patient's, not the physician's. But they that watched Christ so narrowly, and were apt to take so poor exceptions at his Sabbath cures, at the unwashen hands of his disciples, how much more would they have calumniated him, if by his neglect the

law of leprosy had been palpably transgressed! Not only evil must be avoided, but offence; and that not on our parts, but on others'. That offence is ours, which we might have remedied.

What a noble and irrefragable testimony was this to the power, to the truth of the Messiah! How can these Jews but either believe, or be made inexcusable in not believing? When they shall see so many lepers come at once to the temple, all cured by a secret will, without word or touch, how can they choose but say, This work is supernatural; no limited power could do this: How is he not God, if his power be infinite? Their own eyes shall be witnesses and judges of their own conviction.

The cure is done by Christ more exquisitely than by art or nature; yet it is not publicly assured and acknowledged, till, according to the Mosaical law, certain subsequent rites be performed. There is no admittance into the congregation, but by sprinkling of blood. O Saviour, we can never be ascertained of our cleansing from that spiritual leprosy wherewith our souls are tainted, but by the sprinkling of thy most precious blood: wash us with that, and we shall be whiter than snow. This act of showing to the priest, was not more required by the law, than prerequired of these lepers by our Saviour, for the trial of their obedience. Had they now stood upon terms with Christ, and said, “We will first see what cause there will be to show ourselves to the priests; they need not see our leprosy, we shall be glad they should see our cure; do thou work that which we shall show, and bid us show what thou hast wrought; till then excuse us: it is our grief and shame to be seen too much;" they had been still lepers.

It hath been ever God's wont, by small precepts to prove men's dispositions. Obedience is as well tried in a trifle as in the most important charge; yea, so much more, as the thing required is less: for ofttimes those, who would be careful in main affairs, think they may neglect the smallest. What command soever we receive from God, or our superiors, we must not scan the weight of the thing, but the authority of the commander. Either difficulty or slightness is a vain pretence for disobedience.

These lepers are wiser; they obeyed, and went. What was the issue? As they went, they were healed." Lo! had they stood still, they had been lepers; now they went, they are whole. What haste the blessing makes to overtake their obedience! This walk was required by the very law, if they

Yet, besides this recompense of obedience, O Saviour, thou wouldst herein have respect to thine own just glory. Had not these lepers been cured in the way, but in the end of their walk, upon their showing to the priests, the miracle would have lost much light perhaps the priests would have challenged it to themselves, and have attributed it to their prayers: perhaps, the lepers might have thought it was thy purpose to honour the priests as the instruments of that marvellous cure. Now there can be no colour of any other's participation, since the leprosy vanishes in the way. As thy power, so thy praise, admits of no partners.

And now, methinks, I see what an amazed joy there was amongst these lepers, when they saw themselves thus suddenly cured: each tells other what a change he feels in himself; each comforts other with the assurance of his outward cleanness; each congratulates other's happiness, and thinks, and says, How joyful this news will be to their friends and families. Their society now serves them well to applaud and heighten their new felicity.

The miracle, indifferently wrought upon all, is differently taken. All went forward according to the appointment, towards the priests; all were obedient; one only was thankful: all were cured; all saw themselves cured; their sense was alike, their hearts were not alike. What could make the difference but grace? and who could make the difference of grace, but he that gave it? He that wrought the cure in all, wrought the grace not in all, but in one. The same act, the same motives, are not equally powerful to all; where the ox finds grass, the viper poison. We all pray, all hear; one goes away bettered, another cavils. Will makes the difference; but who makes the difference of wills, but he that made them? He that creates the new heart, leaves a stone in one bosom, puts flesh into another. "It is not in him that willeth, nor in him that runneth, but in God that hath mercy:" O God, if we look not up to thee,

This one man breaks away from his fel. lows to seek Christ. While he was a leper, he consorted with lepers: now that he is healed, he will be free. He saith not, I came with these men, with them I will go; if they will return, I will accompany them; if not, what should I go alone? As I am not wiser than they, so I have no more reason to be more thankful. There are cases wherein singularity is not lawful only, but laudable: "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. I and my house will serve the Lord." It is a base and unworthy thing for a man so to subject himself to others' examples, as not sometimes to resolve to be an example to others. When either evil is to be done, or good neglected, how much better is it to go the right way alone, than to err with company!

O noble pattern of thankfulness! What speed of retribution is here! No sooner doth he see his cure, than he hastes to acknow. ledge it; the benefit shall not die nor sleep in his hand. Late professions of our obligations savour of dulness and ingratitude. What a laborious and diligent officiousness is here! he stands not still, but puts himself to the pains of a return. What a hearty recognition of a blessing! his voice was not more loud in his suit than in his thanks. What an humble reverence of his benefactor! he falls down at his feet; as acknowledging at once beneficence and unworthiness. It were happy for all Israel, if they could but learn of this Samaritan.

This man is sent with the rest to the priests. He well knew this duty a branch of the law of ceremonies, which he meant not to neglect: but his heart told him there was a moral duty of professing thankfulness to his benefactor, which called for his first attendance. First therefore he turns back, ere he will stir forward. Reason taught this Samaritan, and us in him, that ceremony must yield to substance, and that main points of obedience must take place of all ritual compliments.

It is not for nothing that note is made of the country of this thankful leper: "He was a Samaritan;" the place is known and branded with the infamy of a paganish misreligion. Outward disadvantage of place of parentage cannot block up the way of God's grace and free election; as contrarily, the privileges of birth and nature avail us nothing in spiritual occasions.

How sensible wert thou, O Saviour, of thine own beneficence!" Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?"

The trooping of these lepers together did not hinder thy reckoning. It is both justice and wisdom in thee to keep a strict account of thy favours. There is a wholesome and useful art of forgetfulness in us men, both of benefits done and of wrongs offered. It is not so with God: our injuries indeed he soon puts over, making it no small part of his style, that he "forgives iniquities:" but for his mercies, there is no reason he should forget them; they are worthy of more than our memory. His favours are universal, over all his works; there is. no creature that tastes not of his bounty; his sun and rain are for others besides his friends, but none of his good turns escape either his knowledge or record. Why should not we, O God, keep a book of our receipts from thee, which, agreeing with thine, may declare thee bounteous, and us thankful?

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Our Saviour doth not ask this by way of doubt, but of exprobration. Full well did he count the steps of those absent lepers he knew where they were; he upbraids their ingratitude, that they were not where they should have been. It was thy just quarrel, O Saviour, that while one Samaritan returned, nine Israelites were healed and returned not. Had they been all Samaritans, this had been faulty; but now they were Israelites, their ingratitude was more foul than their leprosy. The more we are bound to God, the more shameful is our unthank fulness. There is scarce one in ten that is careful to give God his own: this neglect is not more general than displeasing. Christ had never missed their presence, if their absence had not been hateful and injurious.

CONTEMPLATION XI. THE POOL OF BETHESDA.

To the Reader.

THE reader may be pleased to understand, that my manner hath still been, first to pass through all these Divine Histories by way of Sermons; and then after, to gather the quintessence of those larger discourses into these forms of Meditations, which he sees: only, I have thought good, upon these two following heads, for some good reasons, to publish the Sermons in their own shape, as they were delivered, without alteration. It seemed not amiss, that some of those metals should be shown in the ore, whereof so great a quantity was presented in the wedge.

A Sermon preached at the Court, before King James.

OTHERWHERE ye may look long, and see no miracle; but here behold two miracles in one view: the former, of the angel curing diseases; the latter, of the God of angels, Christ Jesus, preventing the angel in his cure. Even the first, Christ wrought by the angel, the second immediately by himself. The first is incomparable; for, as Montanus truly observes, there is no one miraculum perpetuum but this one, in the whole book of God. Be content to spend this hour with me in the porches of Bethesda, and consider with me the topography, the aitiology, the chronography of this miracle: these three limit our speech and your patient attention. The chronography, which is first in place and time, offers us two heads: 1. A feast of the Jews; 2. Christ going up to the feast.

The

The Jews were full of holidays, both of God's institution and the church's. Of God's, both weekly, monthly, anniversary. Weekly, that one of seven, which I would to God we had learned of them to keep better. In this regard it was that Seneca said, the Jews did septimam ætatis partem perdere; lose the seventh part of their life." Monthly, the new moons; Numb. xxviii. Anniversary, Easter, Pentecost, and the September feasts. church's, both the Purim by Mordocheus, and the Encenia by Judas Maccabeus, which yet Christ honoured by his solemnization; John x. Surely God did this for the cheerfulness of his people in his service; hence the church hath laudably imitated this example. To have no feasts, is sullen; to have too many, is Paganish and superstitious. Neither would God have cast the Christian Easter upon the just time of the Jewish Pasch, and their Whitsuntide upon the Jewish Pentecost, if he would not have had these feasts continued. And why should the Christian church have less power than the Jewish synagogue? Here was not a mere feriation, but a feasting; they must appear before God cum muneribus, “with gifts." The tenth part of their increase must be spent upon the three solemn feasts, besides their former tithes to Levi; Deut. xiv. 23. There was no holiday wherein they feasted above six hours; and in some of tities of drink; and David, when he would them, tradition urged them to their quankeep holiday to the ark, allows every Israelite a cake of bread, a piece of flesh, a bottle of wine; not a dry dinner, prandium caninum; not a mere drinking of wine with

out meat, but to make up a perfect feast, bread, flesh, wine; 2 Sam. vi. 19. The true purims of this island, are those two feasts of August and November. He is no true Israelite that keeps them not, as the days which the Lord hath made. When are joy and triumphs seasonable, if not at feasts? but not excess. Pardon me; I know not how feasts are kept at the court, but, as Job, when he thought of the banquets of his sons, says, "It may be they have sinned:" so let me speak at peradventures. If sensual immoderation should have set her foot into these Christian feasts, let me at least say with indulgent Eli, non est bona fama, filii, "It is no good report, my sons.' Do ye think that St. Paul's rule, non in commessationibus et ebrietate, "not in surfeiting and drunkenness," was for work-days only? The Jews had a conceit, that on their Sabbath and feast days, the devils fled from their cities, ad montes umbrosos, "to the shady mountains." Let it not be said, that on our Christian feasts they should e montibus aulam petere; and that he seeks, and finds not, loca arida, but madida. God forbid that Christians should sacrifice to Bacchus, instead of the everliving God! and that on the day when you should have been blown up by treacherous fire from earth to heaven, you should fetch down the fire of God's anger from heaven upon you by swilling and surfeits! God forbid! God's service is unum necessarium, "the one thing necessary," saith Christ. Homo ebrius superflua creatura, "a drunken man is a superfluous creature," saith Ambrose. How ill do those two agree together! This I have been bold to say out of caution, not of reproof.

Thus much, that there was a feast of the Jews. Now, what feast it was is questionable whether the Pasch, as Ireneus, and Beza with him, thinks, upon the warrant of John iv. 35, where our Saviour had said, "Yet four months, and then cometh the harvest;" or whether Pentecost, which was fifty days from the shaking of the sheaf, that was Easter Sunday, as Cyril, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius, and some later; or whether one of the September feasts, as some others. The excellency of the feast makes for Easter; the feast xx, the number of interpreters for Pentecost, the number of feasts for September. For as God delighted in the number of seven, the seventh day was holy, the seventh year, the seventh seven year; so he showed it in the seventh month, which reserves his number still, September; the first day whereof was the sabbath of trum

pets, the tenth dies expiationum, and on the fifteenth began the feast of tabernacles for seven days. It is an idleness to seek that which we are never the better when we have found. What if Easter? what if Tabernacles? what if Pentecost? what loss, what gain is this? Magna nos molestia Johannes liberasset si unum adjecisset verbum, "John had eased us of much trouble, if be had added but one word," saith Maldonat. But for us, God give them sorrow that love it: this is one of St. Paul's divagari, "vain disputations," that he forbids his Timothy: yea (which is the subject thereof) one of them which he calls papàs zal årar diútous Enthouis, “foolish and unlearned questions;" 2 Tim. ii. 23. Quantum mali facit nimia subtilitas, "how much mischief is done by too much subtility!" saith Seneca. These are some idle cloisterers that have nothing to do but to pick straws in divinity; like to Appian the grammarian, that with long discourse would pick out of Homer's first verse of his Iliad, and the first word uv, the number of the books of Iliad and Odyssey; or like Didymus xaλnir-sges, that spent some of his four thousand books, about which was Homer's country, who wa Æneas's true mother, what the age of Hecuba, how long it was betwixt Homer and Orpheus; or those wise critics of whom Seneca speaks, that spent whole volumes whether Homer or Hesiod were the elder: Non profuturam scientiam tradunt," they vent an unprofitable skill," as he said. Let us be content with the learned ignorance of what God hath concealed, and know, that what he hath concealed will not avail us to know.

Rather let us inquire why Christ would go up to the feast. I find two silken cords that drew him up thither: 1. His obedience; 2. His desire of manifesting his glory.

First, it was a general law, all males must appear thrice a-year before the Lord. Behold, he was the God whom they went up to worship at the feast, yet he goes up to worship. He began his life in obedience, when he came in his mother's belly to Bethlehem at the taxation of Augustus, and so he continues it. He knew his due: "Of whom do the kings of the earth receive tribute? of their own or of strangers? then their sons are free." Yet he that would pay tribute to Cæsar, will also pay this tribute of obedience to his Father. He that was above the law, yields to the law: Legi satisfacere voluit, etsi non sub lege, "He would satisfy the law, though he were not under the law." The Spirit of God says, "He learned obedience, in that he suffered "