can you think that the reading of this book concerns you not, when you may hear it address such particular directions to you? Wisdom goes not only to the gates of palaces, but to the common gates of the cities, and to the public high-ways, and calls to the simplest that she may make them wise. Besides that you dishonor God, you prejudice yourselves; for does not that neglect of God and his word justly procure the disorder and disobedience of your servants towards you, as a fit punishment from his righteous hand, although they are unrighteous, and are procuring further judgment to themselves in so doing: And not only thus is your neglect of the word a cause of your trouble by the justice of God, but in regard of the nature of the word, that if you would respect it, and make use of it in your houses, it would teach your servants to respect and obey you, as here you see it speaks for you; and therefore you wrong both it and yourselves, when you silence it in your families.

Obs. 2. The Apostle having spoken of subjection to public authority, adds this of subjection to private domestic authority. It is a thing of much concernment, the right ordering of families; for all other societies, civil and religious, are made up of these. Villages, and cities, and churches, and common-wealths, and kingdoms, are but a collection of families; and therefore such as these are, for the most part, such must the whole societies predominantly be. One particular house is but a very small part of a kingdom, yet the wickedness and lewdness of that house, be it but of the meanest in it, as of servants one or more; and though it seem but a small thing, yet goes in to make that heap of sin that provokes the wrath of God, and draws on public calamity.

And this particularly, when it declines into disorder, proves a public evil: when servants grow generally corrupt and disobedient, and unfaithful, though

Z2

they be the lowest part, yet the whole body of a common-wealth cannot but feel very sensibly the evil of it; as a man does when his legs and feet grow diseased, and begin to fail him.

We have here, 1. Their duty. 2. The due extent of it. 3. The right principle of it.

1st, Their duty, Be subject. Keep your order and station under your masters, and that with fear, and inward reverence of mind and respect to them; for that is the very life of all obedience. Then their obedience hath in it, diligent doing, and patient suffering; both these are in that word, be subject. Do faithfully to your utmost that which is entrusted to you, and obey all their just commands, for action indeed goes no further; but suffer patiently even their unjust rigors and severities. And this being the harder part of the two, and yet a part that the servants of those times bore, many of them being more hardly and slavishly used than any with us, (especially those that were christian servants under unchristian masters) therefore the Apostle insists most on this, and this is the extent of the obedience here required, that it be paid to all kind of masters, not to the good only, but also to the evil; not only to obey, but to suffer, and suffer patiently, and not only deserved, but even wrongful and unjust punishment.

Now because this particular concerns servants, let them reflect upon their own carriage, and examine it by this rule; and truly the greatest part of them will be found very unconformable to it, being either closely fraudulent and deceitful, or grosly stubborn and dissobedient, abusing the lenity and mildness of masters, or murmuring at their just severity: so far are they from the patient endurance of the least. undue word of reproof, much less of sharper punishment, either truly, or in their opinion undeserved. And truly if any that profess religion dispense with themselves in this, they mistake the matter very much; for it ties them more, whether chil

dren or servants, to be most submissive and obedient even to the worst kind of parents and masters, always in the Lord, not obeying any unjust command; though they may and ought to suffer patiently (as it is here) their unjust reproofs or punishments.

But on the other side, this does not justify, nor at all excuse the unmerciful austerities, and unbridled passions of masters; it is still a perverseness and crookedness in them, as the word is here, onoλioïs, and must have its own name, and shall have its proper reward from the sovereign Master and Lord of all the world. But this is the second branch.

2. There is also the due extent of this duty, namely, to the froward. It is a more deformed thing to have a distorted crooked mind, or a froward spirit, than any crookedness of the body. How can he that hath servants under him expect their obedience, when he cannot command his own passion, but is a slave to it? And unless much conscience of duty possess servants (more than is commonly to be found with them) it cannot but work a master into much disaffection and disesteem with them, when he is of a turbulent spirit, a troubler of his own house, embittering his affairs and commands with rigidness and passions, and ready to take things by that side that may offend and trouble him, thinking his servant slights his call, when he may as well think he hears him not, and upon every slight occasion, real or imagined, flying out into reproachful speeches, or proud threats, contrary to the apostle St. Paul's rule; which he sets over against the duty of servants, Forbearing threatening, knowing that your Master also is in Heaven, and that there is no respect of persons with him: think therefore, when you shall appear before the judgmentseat of God, that your carriage shall be examined, and judged as theirs; and think, that though we regard those differences much of masters and servants, they are nothing with God, they vanish away in his presence.

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* Eph. vi. 9.

Consider who made thee to differ: might he not have made your stations just contrary with a turn of his hand, and made thee the servant, and thy servant the master? But we willingly forget those things that should compose our mind to humility and meekness, and blow them up with such fancies as please and feed our natural vanity, and make us somebody in our own account.

However, that christian servant that falls into the hands of a froward master will not be beaten out of his station and duty of obedience by all the hard and wrongful usage he meets with, but will take that as an opportunity of exercising the more obedience and patience, and will be the more cheerfully patient, because of his innocence, as the apostle here exhorts.

Men do indeed look sometimes upon this as a just plea for impatience, that they suffer unjustly, which yet is very ill logic; for, as the philosopher said, Would any man, that frets because he suffers unjustly, wish to deserve it, that he might be patient?" Now to hear them, they seem to speak so, when they exclaim, that the thing that vexeth them most, is, they have not deserved any such thing as is inflicted on them: truly desert of punishment may make a man more silent upon it, but innocence right considered makes him more patient. Guiltiness stops a man's mouth indeed in suffering: but sure it doth not quiet his mind, on the contrary, it is that which mainly disturbs and grieves him, it is the sting of suffering, as sin is said to be of death. And therefore, when there is no guilt, the pain of sufferings cannot but be much abated; yea, the Apostle here declares, that to suffer undeservedly, and withal patiently, is glorious to a man, and acceptable to God. It is commendable indeed to be truly patient even in deserved sufferings; but the deserving them tarnishes the lustre of that patience, and makes it look more like constraint, which is the Apostle's

meaning, preferring spotless suffering much before
it and that is indeed the true glory of it, that it
pleaseth God; so that it is rendered in the close of
the 20th verse for the other word of glory in the be-
ginning of it; it is a pleasing thing in God's eyes,
and therefore he will thank a man for it, as the word
is, xápis πapa Osy. Though we owe all our patience
under all kind of afflictions as a duty to him, and
though that
grace is his own gift; yet he hath ob
liged himself by his royal word, not only to accept
of it, but to praise it, and reward it in his children.
Though they lose their thanks at the world's hands,
and be rather scoffed and taunted in all their doings
and sufferings, it is no matter; they can expect no
other there, but their reward is on high, in the
sure and faithful hand of their Lord.

How often do men work earnestly, and do and suffer much for the uncertain wages of glory and thanks amongst men? and how many of them fall short of their reckoning? either dying before they come to that state where they think to find it, or not finding it where they looked for it, so do but live to feel the pain of their disappointment. Or if they do attain their end, such glory and thanks as men have to give them, what amounts it to? Is it any other but a handful of nothing, the breath of their mouths, and themselves much like it, a vapour dying out in the air? The most real thanks they give, their solidest rewards, are but such as a man cannot take home with him; if they go so far with him, yet at furthest he must leave them at the door, when he is to enter his everlasting home. All the riches and palaces and monuments of honor that he had, and that are erected to him after death, as if he had then some interest in them, reach him not at all Enjoy them who will, he does not, he hath no portion of all that is done under the sun; his own end is to him the end of the world.

But he that would have abiding glory and thanks, must turn his eye another way for them. All men