ders is no less good than rewards of goodness. have excited and directed him. Could Abel have stayed God's fire from descending? or should he (if he could) reject God's acceptation, and displease his Maker to content a brother? Was Cain ever the farther from a blessing, because his brother obtained mercy? How proud and foolish is malice! which grows thus mad for no other cause but because God or Abel is not less good. It hath been an old and happy danger to be holy; indifferent actions must be careful to avoid offence; but I care not what devil or what Cain be angry that I do good, or receive good. There was never any nature without envy: every man is born a Cain, hating that goodness in another which he neglected in himself. There was never envy that was not bloody; for if it eat not another's heart, it will eat our own; but unless it be restrained, it will surely feed itself with the blood of others, ofttimes in act, always in affection. And that God, which (in good) accepts the will for the deed, condemns the will for the deed in evil. If there be an evil heart, there will be an evil eye; and if both these, there will be an evil hand. How early did martyrdom come into the world! The first man that died, died for religion: who dare measure God's love by outward events, when he sees wicked Cain standing over bleeding Abel, whose sacrifice was first accepted, and now himself is sacrificed! Death was denounced to man as a curse; yet, behold! it first lights upon a saint: how soon was it altered by the mercy of that just hand which inflicted it! If death had been evil and life good, Cain had been slain, and Abel had survived. Now that it begins with him that God loves, "O death, where is thy sting!" Abel says nothing-his blood cries. Every drop of innocent blood hath a tongue, and is not only vocal, but importunate. What a noise, then, did the blood of my Saviour make in heaven, who was himself the shepherd and the sacrifice, the man that was offered, and the God to whom it was offered! The Spirit that heard both, says, "It spake better things than the blood of Abel." Abel's blood called for revenge -his for mercy: Abel's pleaded his own innocency-his the satisfaction for all the believing world: Abel's procured Cain's punishment-his freed all repentant souls from punishment; better things indeed than the blood of Abel; better, and therefore that which Abel's blood said was good. It is good that God should be avenged of sinners. Execution of justice upon offen No sooner doth Abel's blood speak unto God, than God speaks to Cain. There is no wicked man to whom God speaks not, if not to his ear, yet to his heart. What speech was this? Not an accusation, but an inquiry; yet such an inquiry as would infer an accusation. God loves to have a sinner accuse himself; and therefore hath he set his deputy in the breast of man. neither doth God love this more than nature abhors it. Cain answers stubborn.y: the very name of Abel wounds him no less than his hand had wounded Abel: consciences that are without remorse, are not without horror: wickedness makes men desperate. The murderer is angry with God, as of late, for accepting his brother's obla tion; so now, for listening to his blood. And now he dares answer God with a question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" where he should have said, Am not I my brother's murderer? Behold, he scorneth to keep whom he feared not to kill. Good duties are base and troublesome to wicked minds, while even violences of evil are pleasant. Yet this miscreant, which neither had grace to avoid his sin nor to con fess it, now that he is convinced of sin, and cursed for it, how he howleth, how he exclaimeth! He that cares not for the act of his sin, shall care for the smart of his punishment. The damned are weary of their torments, but in vain. How great a madness is it to complain too late! He that would not keep his brother, is cast out from the protection of God; he that feared not to kill his brother, fears now that whosoever meets him will kill him. The troubled conscience projecteth fearful things, and sin makes even cruel men cowardly. God saw it was too much favour for him to die; he therefore wills that which Cain wills. Cain would live; it is yielded him, but for a curse. How often doth God hear sinners in anger! He shall live, banished from God, carrying his hell in his bosom, and the brand of God's vengeance in his forehead. God rejects him, the earth repines at him, men abhor him; himself now wishes that death which he feared, and no man dare pleasure him with a murder. How bitter is the end of sin, yea, without end! Still Cain finds that he killed himself more than his brother. We should never sin if our foresight were but as good as our sense; the issue of sin would appear a thousand times more horrible than the act is pleasant. 10 OF THE DELUGE. CONTEMPLATION V.-OF THE DELUGE. THE world was grown so foul with sin, that God saw it was time to wash it with a flood: and so close did wickedness cleave to the authors of it, that when they were washed to nothing, yet it would not off; yea, so deep did it stick in the very grain of the earth, that God saw it meet to let So, under it soak long under the waters. the law, the very vessels that had touched unclean water, must either be rinsed or broken. Mankind began but with one; and yet he that saw the first man, lived to see the earth peopled with a world of men; yet man grew not so fast as wickedness. One man could soon and easily multiply a thousand sins-never man had so many children: so that when there were men enough to store the earth, there were as many sins as would reach up to heaven; whereupon the waters came down from heaven, and swelled up to heaven again. If there had not been so deep a deluge of sin, there had been none of the waters; from whence, then, was this superfluity of iniquity? Whence but from the unequal yoke with infidels? These marriages did not peget men so much as wickedness; from hence religious husbands both lost their piety, and gained a rebellious and godless generation. That which was the first occasion of sin, was the occasion of the increase of sin: A woman seduced Adam-women betrayed the sons of God: the beauty of the apple betrayed the woman—the beauty of these women betrayed this holy seed: Eve saw, and lusted-so did they; this also was a forbidden fruit- they lusted, tasted, sinned, died. The most sins begin at the eyes; by them commonly Satan creeps into the heart that soul can never be in safety that hath not covenanted with his eyes. : God needed not have given these men any warning of his judgment; they gave him no warning of their sins, no respite; yet that God might approve his mercies to the very wicked, he gives them an hundred and twenty years' respite of repenting. How loath is God to strike, that threats so long! He that delights in revenge surprises his adversary; whereas he that gives long warnings desires to be prevented. If we were not wilful, we should never smart. Ne'ther doth he give them time only, It is a happy but a faithful teacher, thing when he that teacheth others is righeous. Noah's hand taught them as much His business in building .l.is tongue ܒܙ the ark was a real sermon to the world, Methinks I see those monstrous sons of This difference is strange: I see the savagest of all creatures, lions, tigers, bears, by an instinct from God, come to seek the ark (as we see swine, foreseeing a storm, run home crying for shelter),—men I see God hath use even of these not: reason once debauched is worse than brutishness. fierce and cruel beasts, and glory by them; even they, being created for man, must live by him, though to his punishment. How gently do they offer and submit themselves to their preserver! renewing that obeisance to this repairer of the world, which they, before sin, yielded to him that first stored the world. He that shut them into the ark when they were entered, shut their mouths also when they did enter. The lions fawn upon Noah and Daniel. What heart cannot the Maker of them mollify! The unclean beasts God would have to live, the clean to multiply; and therefore He knew the one would he sends to Noah seven of the clean, of the unclean two. annoy man with their multitude, the other would enrich him. Those things are worthy of most respect, which are of most use. But why seven? Surely that God, that created seven days in the week, and made one for himself, did here preserve, of seven clean beasts, one for himself for sacrifice. He gives us six for one in earthly things, that in spiritual we should be all for him. Now the day is come, all the guests are entered, the ark is shut, and the windows of heaven opened. I doubt not but many of those scoffers, when they saw the violence of the waves descending and ascending, according to Noah's prediction, came wading middle-deep unto the ark, and importunately craved that admittance which they once denied; but now, as they formerly rejected God, so are they justly rejected of God. Ere vengeance begin, repentance is seasonable; but if judgment be once gone out, we cry too late. While the gospel solicits us, the doors of the ark are open; if we neglect the time of grace, in vain shall we seek it with tears. God holds it no mercy to pity the obstinate. Others, more bold than they, hope to overrun the judgment; and, climbing up to the high mountains, look down upon the waters with more hope than fear. And now when they see their hills become islands, they climb up into the tallest trees; there with paleness and horror at once look for death, and study to avoid it, whom the waves overtake at last, half dead with famine and half with fear. Lo! now from the tops of the mountains they descry the ark floating upon the waters, and behold with envy that which before they beheld with scorn. In vain doth he fly whom God pursues. There is no way to fly from his judgments, but to fly to his mercy by repentance. The faith of the righteous cannot be so much derided, as their success is magnified. How securely doth Noah ride out this uproar of heaven, earth, and waters! He hears the pouring down of the rain above his head; the shrieking of men, and roaring and bellowing of beasts on both sides of him; the raging and threats of the waves under him; he saw the miserable shifts of the distressed unbelievers; and, in the meantime, sits quietly in his dry cabin, neither feeling nor fearing evil. He knew that he which owned the waters would steer him ; that he who shut him in would preserve him. How happy a thing is faith! what a quiet safety, what an heavenly peace doth it work in the soul, in the midst of all the inundation of evil! Now, when God hath fetched again all the life which he had given to his unworthy creatures, and reduced the world unto its first form, wherein waters were over the face of the earth, it was time for a renovation of all things to succeed this destruc tion. To have continued this deluge long, had been to punish Noah that was righteous. After forty days, therefore, the heavens clear up; after an hundred and fifty, the waters sink down. How soon is God weary of punishing, which is never weary of blessing! But may not the ark rest suddenly? If we did not stay some while under God's hand, we should not know how sweet his mercy is, and how great our thankfulness should be. The ark, though it was Noah's fort against the waters, yet it was his prison; he was safe in it, but pent up: he that gave him life by it, now thinks time to give him liberty out of it. God doth not reveal all things to his best servants. Behold, he that told Noah, an hundred and twenty years before, what day he should go into the ark, yet foretells him not now in the ark what day the ark should rest upon the hills, and he should go forth. Noah therefore sends out his intelligencers, the raven and the dove, whose wings in that vaporous air might easily descry further than his sight. The raven, of quick scent, of gross feed, of tough constitution; no fowl was so fit for discovery: the likeliest things always succeed not. He neither will venture far into that solitary world for fear of want, nor yet come into the ark for love of liberty, but hovers about in uncertainties. How many carnal minds fly out of the ark of God's church, and embrace the present world; rather choosing to feed upon the unsavoury carcases of sinful pleasures, than to be restrained within the strait lists of Christian obedience! The dove is sent forth, a fowl both swift and simple. She, like a true citizen of the ark, returns, and brings faithful notice of the continuance of the waters, by her restless and empty return; by her olive-leaf, of the abatement. How worthy are those messengers to be welcome, which with innocence in their lives, bring glad tidings of peace and salvation in their mouths! Noah rejoices and believes; yet still he waits seven days more. It is not good to devour the favours of God too greedily; but so take them in, that we may digest them. O strong faith of Noah, that was not weary with this delay! Some man would have so longed for the open air, after so long closeness, that, upon the first notice of safety, he would have uncovered and voided the ark. Noah stays seven days ere he will open, and well-near two months ere he will forsake the ark; and not then unless God that commanded to enter, had bidden him depart. There is no action good without faith; no faith without a word, Happy is that man which in all things (neglecting the counsels of flesh and blood) depends upon the commission of his Maker! BOOK II. CONTEMPLATION I.-OF NOAH. No sooner is Noah come out of the ark, but he builds an altar: not an house for himself, but an altar to the Lord. Our faith will ever teach us to prefer God to ourselves: delayed thankfulness is not worthy of acceptation. Of those few creatures that are left, God must have some; they are all his yet his goodness will have man know that it was he, for whose sake they were preserved. It was a privilege to those very brute creatures, that they were saved from the waters, to be offered up in fire unto God. What a favour is it to men, to be reserved from common destructions, to be sacrificed to their Maker and Redeemer. Lo, this little fire of Noah, through the virtue of his faith, purged the world, and ascended up into those heavens from which the waters fell, and caused a glorious rainbow to appear therein for his security: all the sins of the former world were not so unsavoury unto God, as this smoke was pleasant. No perfume can be so sweet as the holy obedience of the faithful. Now God that was before annoyed with the ill savour of sin, smells a sweet savour of rest. Behold here a new and second rest! First, God rested from making the world, now he rests from destroying it; even while we cease not to offend, he ceases from a public revenge. His word was enough; yet withal he gives a sign, which may speak the truth of his promise to the very eyes of men. Thus he doth still in his blessed sacraments, which are as real words to the soul. The rainbow is the pledge of our safety, which even naturally signifies the end of a shower: all the signs of God's institution are proper and significant. But who would look, after all this, to have found righteous Noah, the father of the new world, lying drunken in his tent! Who could think that wine should overthrow him that was preserved from the waters! that he, who could not be tainted with the sinful examples of the former world, should begin the example of a new sin of his own! What are we men if we be but ourselves! While God upholds us, no temptation can move us: when he leaves us, no temptation is too weak to overthrow us. What living man had ever so noble proofs of the mercy, of the justice of God: Mercy upon himself, justice upon others! What man had so gracious approbation from his Maker? Behold, he of whom in an unclean world, God said, Thee only have I found righteous, proves now unclean when the world was purged. The preacher of righteousness unto the former age, the king, priest, and prophet of the world renewed, is the first that renews the sins of that world which he had reproved, and which he saw condemned for sin. God's best children have no fence for sins of infirmity. Which of the saints have not once done that, whereof they are ashamed? God, that lets us fall, knows how to make as good use of the sins of his holy ones, as of their obedience. If we had not such patterns, who could choose but despair at the sight of his sins? Yet we find Noah drunken but once. One act can no more make a good heart unrighteous, than a trade of sin can stand with regeneration. But when I look to the effect of this sin, I cannot but blush and wonder. Lo! this sin is worse than sin : other sins move shame, but hide it; this displays it to the world. Adam had no sooner sinned, but he saw and abhorred his own nakedness, seeking to hide it even with bushes. Noah had no sooner sinned, but he discovers his nakedness, and hath not so much rule of himself as to be ashamed. One hour's drunkenness betrays that which more than six hundred years' sobriety had modestly concealed. He that gives himself to wine, is not his own: what shall we think of this vice, which robs a man of himself, and lays a beast in his room? Noah's nakedness is seen in wine. It is no unusual quality, in this excess, to disclose secrets. Drunkenness doth both make imperfections, and show those we have to others' eyes so would God have it, that we might be doubly ashamed both of those weaknesses which we discover, and of that weakness which moved us to discover. Noah is uncovered but in the midst of his own tent: it had been sinful, though no man had seen it. Unknown sins have their guilt and shame, and are justly attended with known punishments. Ungracious Cham saw it and laughed: his father's shame should have been his; the deformity of those parts from which he had his being, should have begotten in him a secret horror and dejection. How many graceless men make sport at the causes of their humiliation! Twice had Noah given him life; yet neither the name of a father and preserver, nor age nor virtue, could shield him from the contempt of his own. I see that even God's ark may nourish monsters. Some filthy toads may lie under the stones of the temple: God preserves some men in judgment. Better had it been for Cham to have perished in the waters, than to live unto his father's curse. Not content to be a witness of this filthy sight, he goes on to be a proclaimer of it. Sin doth ill in the eye, but worse in the tongue. As all sin is a work of darkness, so it should be buried in darkness. The report of sin is ofttimes as ill as the commission; for it can never be blazoned without uncharitableness; seldom without infection. Oh the unnatural, and more than Chamish impiety of those sons, which rejoice to publish the nakedness of their spiritual parents, even to their enemies! Yet it was well for Noah that Cham could tell it to none but his own; and those, gracious and dutiful sons. Our shame is the less, if none know our faults but our friends. Behold how love covereth sins! These good sons are so far from going forward to see their father's shame, that they go backward to hide it. The cloak is laid on both their shoulders; they both go back with equal paces, and dare not so much as look back, lest they should unwillingly see | the cause of their shame, and will rather adventure to stumble at their father's body, than to see his nakedness. How did it grieve them to think, that they, which had so often come to their holy father with reverence, must now in reverence turn their backs upon him! that they must now clothe him in pity, which had so often clothed them in love! And, which adds more to their duty, they covered him and said nothing. This modest sorrow is their praise, and our example. The sins of those we love and honour, we must hear of with indignation, fearfully and unwillingly believe, acknowledge with grief and shame, hide with honest excuses, and bury in silence. How equal a regard is this both of piety and disobedience! Because Cham sinned against his father, therefore he shall be plagued in his children: Japheth is dutiful to his father, and finds it in his posterity. Because Cham was an ill son to his father, therefore his sons shall be servants to his brethren: because Japheth set his shoulder to Shem's, to bear the cloak of shame, therefore shall Japheth dwell in the tents of Shem, partaking with him in blessings as in duty. When we do but what we ought, yet God is thankful to us; and re How soon are men and sins multiplied! within one hundred years, the world is as full of both, as if there had been no deluge. Though men could not but see the fearful monuments of the ruin of their ancestors, yet how quickly had they forgotten a flood! Good Noah lived to see the world both populous and wicked again: and doubtless ofttimes repented to have been the preserver of some, whom he saw to traduce the vices of the former world to the renewed. It could not but grieve him to see the destroyed giants revive out of his own loins, and to see them of his flesh and blood tyrannise over themselves. In his sight Nimrod, casting off the awe of his holy grandfather, grew imperious and cruel, and made his own kinsmen servants. How easy a thing it is for a great spirit to be the head of a faction, when even brethren will stoop to servitude! And now, when men are combined together, evil and presumptuous motions find encouragment in multitudes, and each man takes a pride in seeming forwardest: we are the cheerfuller in good, when we have the assistance of company; much more in sinning, by how much we are more prone to evil than good. It was a proud word-" Come, let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach to heaven.' They were newly come down from the hills unto the plains, and now think of raising up of an hill of building in the plain. When their tents were pitched upon the mountains of Armenia, they were as near to heaven as their tower could make them; but their ambition must needs aspire to an height of their own raising. Pride is ever discontented, and still seeks matter of boasting in her own works. How fondly do men reckon without God! "Come let us build ;" as if there had been no stop but in their own will; as if both earth and time had been theirs. Still do all natural men build Babel, forecasting their own plots so resolutely, as if there were no power to countermand them. It is just with God, that peremptory determinations seldom prosper: whereas those things, which are fearfully and modestly undertaken, commonly succeed. "Let us build us a city." If they had |