God will let them sleep in this confidence in the morning they shall find how vainly they have dreamed. Now they begin to find they have but gloried in their own plague, and overthrown nothing but their own peace. Dagon hath a house, when God hath but a tabernacle. It is no measuring of religion by outward glory. Into this house the proud Philistines come the next morning, to congratulate unto their god so great a captive, such divine spoils, and, in their early devotions, to fall down before him, under whom the God of Israel was fallen; and lo! where they find their god fallen down on the ground upon his face, before him whom they thought both his prisoner and theirs. Their god is forced to do that, which they should have done voluntarily; although God casts down that dumb rival of his for scorn, not for adoration. O ye foolish Philistines! could ye think that the same house would hold God and Dagon? could ye think a senseless stone a fit companion and guardian for the living God? Had ye laid your Dagon upon his face, prostrate before the ark, yet would not God have endured the indignity of such a lodging; but now that ye presume to set up your carved stone equal to his cherubims, go, read your folly in the floor of your temple; and know, that He, which cast your god so low, can cast you lower.

The true God owes a shame to those which will be making matches between himself and Belial.

But this perhaps was only a mischance, or a neglect of attendance. Lay to your hands, O ye Philistines, and raise up Dagon into his place. It is a miserable god that needs helping up: had ye not been more senseless than that stone, how could ye choose but think, How shall he raise us above our enemies, that cannot rise alone? how shall he establish us in the station of our peace, that cannot hold his own foot? If Dagon did give the foil unto the God of Israel, what power is it that hath cast him upon his face, in his own temple? It is just with God, that those which want grace shall want wit too. It is the power of superstition to turn men into those stocks and stones which they worship: they that make them are like unto them. Doubtless this first fall of Dagon was kept as secret, and excused as well as it might, and served rather for astonishment than conviction there was more strangeness than horror in that accident. That whereas Dagon had wont to stand, and the Philistines fall down,-now Dagon fell down,

| and the Philistines stood, and must become the patrons of their own god; their god worships them upon his face, and craves more help from them than ever he could give. But if their sottishness can digest this, all is well.

Dagon is set in his place; and now those hands are lift up to him which helped to lift him up; and those faces are prostrate unto him, before whom he lay prostrate. Idolatry and superstition are not easily put out of countenance: but will the jealousy of the true God put it up thus? shall Dagon escape with a harmless fall? Surely, if they had let him lie still upon the pavement, perhaps that insensible statue had found no other revenge; but now they will be advancing it to the rood-loft again, and affront God's ark with it: the event will shame them, and let them know, how much God scorns a partner, either of his own making or theirs.

The morning is fittest for devotion; then do the Philistines flock to the temple of their god. What a shame is it for us to come late to ours! although not so much piety as curiosity did now hasten their speed, to see what rest their Dagon was allowed to get in his own roof. And now, behold, their kind god is come to meet them in the way; some pieces of him salute their eyes upon the threshold: Dagon's head and hands are overrun their fellows, to tell the Philistines how much they were mistaken in their god.

This second fall breaks the idol in pieces, and threats the same confusion to the worshippers of it. Easy warnings neglected, end ever in destruction. The head is for devising; the hand for execution: in these two powers of their God did the Philistines chiefly trust; these are therefore laid under their feet upon the threshold, that they might afar off see their vanity, and that, it they would, they might set their foot on that best piece of their god, whereon their heart was set.

There was nothing wherein that idol resembled a man but in his head and hands; the rest was but a scaly portraiture of a fish: God would therefore separate from this stone that part which had mocked man with the counterfeit of himself, that man might see what an unworthy lump he had matched with himself, and set up above himself. The just quarrel of God is bent upon those means, and that parcel, which had dared to rob him of his glory.

How can the Philistines now miss the sight of their own folly? how can they be but enough convicted of their mad idolatry,

to see their god lie broken to morsels under their feet? every piece whereof proclaims the power of Him that brake it, and the stupidity of those that adored it! Who would expect any other issue of this act, but to hear the Philistines say, We now see how superstition hath blinded us! Dagon is no god for us; our hearts shall never more rest upon a broken statue; that only true God, which hath broken ours, shall challenge us by the right of conquest. But here was none of this; rather a further degree of their dotage follows upon this palpable conviction; they cannot yet suspect that god, whose head they may trample upon; but, instead of hating their Dagon, that lay broken upon their threshold, they honour the threshold on which Dagon lay, and dare not set their foot on that place, which was hallowed by the broken head and hands of their deity. O the obstinacy of idolatry, which, where it hath got hold of the heart, knows neither to blush nor yield, but rather gathers strength from that which might justly confound it! The hand of the Almighty, which moved them not in falling upon their God, falls now nearer them upon their persons, and strikes them in their bodies, which would not feel themselves stricken in their idol. Pain shall humble them whom shame cannot. Those which had entertained the secret thoughts of abominable idolatry within them, are now plagued, in the inwardest and most secret part of their bodies, with a loathsome disease; and now grow weary of themselves, instead of their idolatry. I do not hear them acknowledge it was God's hand which had stricken Dagon their god, till now they find themselves stricken. God's judgments are the rack of godless men: if one strain make them not confess, let them be stretched but one wrench higher, and they cannot be silent. The just avenger of sin will not lose the glory of his executions, but will have men know from whom they smart.

The emerods were not a disease beyond the compass of natural causes; neither was it hard for the wiser sort to give a reason of their complaint; yet they ascribe it to the hand of God. The knowledge and operation of secondary causes should be no prejudice to the first. They are worse than the Philistines, who, when they see the means, do not acknowledge the first mover, whose active just power is no less seen in employing ordinary agents, than in raising up extraordinary; neither doth he less smite by a common fever, than by a revenging angel.

They judge right of the cause: what do

"Let not the

they resolve for the cure? ark of the God of Israel abide with us;" where they should have said, Let us cast out Dagon, that we may pacify and retain the God of Israel: they determine to thrust out the ark of God, that they might peaceably enjoy themselves and Dagon. Wicked men are upon all occasions glad to be rid of God, but they can, with no patience, endure to part with their sins; and while they are weary of the hand that punisheth them, they hold fast the cause of their punishment.

Their first and only care is to put away him, who, as he hath corrected, so can ease them. Folly is never separated from wickedness.

Their heart told them that they had no right to the ark. A council is called of their princes and priests. If they had resolved to send it home, they had done wisely. Now they do not carry it away, but they carry it about from Ebenezer to Ashdod, from Ashdod to Gath, from Gath to Ekron. Their stomach was greater than their conscience. The ark was too sore for them; yet it was too good for Israel, and they will rather die than make Israel happy. Their conceit, that the change of the air could appease the ark, God useth to his own advantage; for by this means his power is known, and his judgment spread over all the country of the Philistines. What do these men now, but send the plague of God to their fellows? The justice of God can make the sins of men their mutual executioners. It is the fashion of wicked men to draw their neighbours into the partnership of their condemnation.

Wheresoever the ark goes, there is destruction. The best of God's ordinances, if they be not proper to us, are deadly. The Israelites did not more shout for joy, when they saw the ark come to them, than the Ekronites cry out for grief to see it brought amongst them. Spiritual things are either sovereign or hurtful, according to the disposition of the receivers. The ark doth either save or kill, as it is entertained.

God

At last, when the Philistines are well weary of pain and death, they are glad to be quit of their sin. The voice of the princes and people is changed to the better: "Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it return to his own place." knows how to bring the stubbornest enemy upon his knees, and makes him do that out of fear, which his best child would do out of love and duty. How miserable was the estate of these Philistines! Every man was either dead or sick. Those that were

left living, through their extremity of pain, envied the dead, and the cry of their whole cities went up to heaven. It is happy that God hath such store of plagues and thunderbolts for the wicked: if he had not a fire of judgment, wherewith the iron hearts of men might be made flexible, he would want obedience, and the world peace.

CONTEMPLATION II.—THE ARK'S REVENGE

AND RETURN.

It had wont to be a sure rule, wheresoever God is among men, there is the church: here only it failed. The testimony of God's presence was many months amongst the Philistines, for a punishment to his own people whom he left; for a curse to those foreigners which entertained it. Israel was seven months without God. How do we think faithful Samuel took this absence? How desolate and forlorn did the tabernacle of God look without the ark! There were still the altars of God; his priests, Levites, tables, vails, censers, and all their legal accoutrements: these, without the ark, were as the sun without light in the midst of an eclipse. If all these had been taken away, and only the ark had been remaining, the loss had been nothing to this, that the ark should be gone, and they left: for what are all these without God, and how allsufficient is God without these! There are times wherein God withdraws himself from his church, and seems to leave her without comfort, without protection. Sometimes we shall find Israel taken from the ark; other whiles the ark is taken from Israel: in either, there is a separation betwixt the ark and Israel. Heavy times to every true Israelite; yet such, as whose example may relieve us in our desertions. Still was this people Israel the seed of him that would not be left of God without a blessing; and therefore, without the testimony of his presence, was God present with them. It were wide with the faithful, if God were not oftentimes with them, when there is no witness of his presence.

One act was a mutual penance to the Israelites and Philistines; I know not to whether more. Israel grieved for the loss of that, whose presence grieved the Philistines; their pain was therefore no other than voluntary. It is strange that the Philistines would endure seven months' smart with the ark, since they saw that the presence of that prisoner would not requite, no, nor mitigate to them one hour's misery. Foolish men will be struggling

with God, till they be utterly either breathless or impotent. Their hope was, that time might abate displeasure, even while they persisted to offend. The false hopes of worldly men cost them dear: they could not be so miserable, if their own hearts did not deceive them with misexpectations of impossible favour.

In matters that concern a God, who is so fit to be consulted with as the priests? The princes of the Philistines had before given their voices; yet nothing is determined, nothing is done without the direction and assent of those whom they accounted sacred. Nature itself sends us, in divine things, to those persons whose calling is divine. It is either distrust or presumption, or contempt, that carries us our own ways in spiritual matters, without advising with them whose lips God hath appointed to preserve knowledge. There cannot but arise many difficulties in us about the ark of God: whom should we consult with, but those which have the tongue of the learned?

Doubtless, this question of the ark did abide much debating. There wanted not fair probabilities on both sides. A wise Philistine might well plead, If God had either so great care of the ark, or power to retain it, how is it become ours? A wiser than he would reply, If the God of Israel had wanted either care or power, Dagon and we had been still whole: why do we thus groan and die, all that are but within the air of the ark, if a divine hand do not attend it? Their smart pleads enough for the dismission of the ark. The next demand of their priests and soothsayers is, how it should be sent home. Affliction had made them so wise as to know, that every fashion of parting with the ark would not satisfy the owner. Oftentimes the circumstance of an action mars the substance. In divine matters we must not only look that the body of our service be sound, but the clothes be fit. Nothing hinders, but that sometimes good advice may fall from the mouth of wicked men. These superstitious priests can counsel them not to send away the ark of God empty, but to give it a sin-offering. They had not lived so far from the smoke of the Jewish altars, but that they knew God was accustomed to manifold oblations, and chiefly those of expiation. No Israelite could have said better: superstition is the ape of true devotion; and if we look not to the ground of both, many times it is hard, by the very outward acts, to distinguish them. Nature itself teacheth us, that God loves a full hand: he that hath

superstition be a cleanly counterfeit, yet some one slip of the tongue discovers it; as we say of devils, which, though they put on fair forms, yet are they known by their cloven feet.

What other warrant these superstitious priests had for the main substance of their advice, I know not; sure I am, the probability of the event was fair, that two kine, never used to any yoke, should run from their calves, which were newly shut up from them, to draw the ark home into a contrary way, must needs argue a hand above nature. What else should overrule brute creatures to prefer a forced carriage unto a natural burden? What should carry them from their own home towards the home of the ark? What else should guide | an untamed and untaught team in as right a path towards Israel as their teachers could have gone? What else could make very beasts more wise than their masters? There is a special providence of God in the very motions of brute creatures: neither Philistines nor Israelites saw ought that drove them, yet they saw them so run as those that were led by a divine conduct. The reasonless creatures also do the will of their Maker: every act that is done either by them, or to them, makes up the decree of the Almighty: and if, in extraordinary actions and events, his hand is more visible, yet it is no less certainly present in the common.

Little did the Israelites of Beth-shemesh look for such a sight, while they were reaping their wheat in the valley, as to see the ark of God come running to them without a convoy neither can it be said whether they were more affected with joy or with astonishment; with joy at the presence of the ark, with astonishment at the miracle of the transportation. Down went their sickles, and now every man runs to reap the comfort of this better harvest-to meet that bread of angels — to salute those cherubims to welcome that God, whose absence had been their death. But as it is hard not to overjoy in a sudden prosperity, and to use happiness is no less difficult than to forbear it, these glad Israelites cannot see, but they must gaze: they cannot gaze on the glorious outside, but they must be, whether out of rude jollity, or curiosity, or suspicion of the purloining some of those sacred implements, prying into the secrets of God's ark. Nature is too subject to extremities, and is ever either too dull in want, or wanton in fruition: it is no easy matter to keep a mean, whether in good or evil.

Beth-shemesh was a city of priests: they should have known better how to demean themselves towards the ark; this privilege doubled their offence. There was no malice in this curious inquisition: the same eyes that looked into the ark, looked also up to heaven in their offerings; and the same hands that touched it, offered sacrifice to the God that brought it. Who could expect any thing now but acceptation? who would suspect any danger? It is not a following act of devotion that can make amends for a former sin. There was a death owing them immediately upon their offence: God will take his own time for the execution. In the meanwhile they may sacrifice, but they cannot satisfy; they cannot escape. The kine are sacrificed; the

cart burns them that drew it. Here was an offering of praise, when they had more need of a trespass-offering. Many a heart is lifted up in a conceit of joy, when it hath just cause of humiliation. God lets them alone with their sacrifice; but, when that is done, he comes over them with a backreckoning for their sin. Fifty thousand and seventy Israelites are struck dead, for this unreverence to the ark: a woful welcome for the ark of God into the borders of Israel! It killed them for looking into it, who thought it their life to see it. It dealt blows and death on both hands, to Philistines, to Israelites; to both of them for profaning it, the one with their idol, the other with their eyes. It is a fearful thing to use the holy ordinances of God with an unreverent boldness. Fear and trembling become us, in our access to the majesty of the Almighty. Neither was there more state than secrecy in God's ark. Some things the wisdom of God desires to conceal. The unreverence of the Israelites was no more faulty than their curiosity. "Secret things belong to God; things revealed, to us and to our children."

CONTEMPLATION II.—THE REMOVAL OF

THE ARK.

I HEAR of the Beth-shemites' lamentation; I hear not of their repentance: they complain of their smart, they complain not of their sin; and, for aught I can perceive, speak as if God were curious, rather than they faulty: "Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God, and to whom shall he go from us?" As if none could please that God, which misliked them. is the fashion of natural men, to justify themselves in their own courses: if they

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