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to be carried back to Samaria, to teach the Assyrian colony the fashions of the god of the land; not for devotion, but for impunity. Vain politicians think to satisfy God by patching up religions: any forms are good enough for an unknown deity. The Assyrian priests teach and practise the worship of their own gods. The Israelitish priest prescribes the worship of the true God. The people will follow both; the one out of liking, the other out of fear. What a prodigious mixture was here of religions! true with false, Jewish with paganish-divine with devilish! Every division of these transplanted Assyrians had their several deities, high places, sacrifices. This high priest of Israel intercommunes with every one of them so that now these fathers of Samaritanism are in at all: "They fear the Lord, and serve their idols." No beggar's cloak is more pieced, than the religion of these new inhabitants of Israel. I know not how their bodies sped for the lions; I am sure their souls fared the worse for this medley. Above all things, God hates a mongrel devotion: if we be not all Israel, it were better to be all Ashur. It cannot so much displease God to be unknown or neglected, as to be consorted with idols.

CONTEMPLATION IX. -HEZEKIAH AND

SENNACHERIB.

ISRAEL is gone, Judah is left standing; or rather, some few sprigs of those two tribes. So we have seen, in the shredding of some large timber-tree, one or two boughs left at the top to hold up the sap. Who can but lament the poor remainders of that languishing kingdom of David!

Take out of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin one hundred and twenty thousand, whom Pekah the king of Israel slew in one day; take out two hundred thousand that were carried away captive to Samaria; take out those that were transported into the bondage of the Edomites, and those that were subdued in the south parts by the Philistines: alas! what a handful was left to the king of Judah! scarce worth the name of a dominion! Yet, even now, out of the gleeds of Judah, doth God raise up a glo- | rious light to his forlorn church; yea, from the wretched loins of Ahaz, doth God fetch a holy Hezekiah. It had been hard to conceive the state of Judah worse than it was; neither was it more miserable than sinful, and, in regard of both, desperate. When beyond hope, God revives this dying stock of David, and, out of very ruins, builds up

his own house. Ahay was not more the ill son of a good father, than he was the ill father of a good son; he was the ill son of good Jotham, the ill father of good Hezekiah. Good Hezekian makes amends for his father's impiety, and puts a new life into the heartless remnant of God's people.

The wisdom of our good God knows when his aid will be most seasonable, most welcome, which he then loves to give, when he finds us left of our hopes. That merci ful hand is reserved for a dead lift; then he fails us not.

Now ye might have seen this pious prince busily bestirring himself, in so late and needful a reformation; removing the high places, battering and burning the idols, demolishing their temples, cutting down their groves, opening the temple, purging the altars and vessels, sanctifying the priests, rekindling the lamps, renewing the incense, re-instituting the sacrifices, establishing the order of God's service, appointing the courses, settling the maintenance of the ministers, publishing the decrees of the long-neglected passover, celebrating it and the other feasts with due solemnity, encouraging the people, contributing bountifully to the offerings; and, in one word, so ordering all the affairs of God as if he had been sent down from heaven to restore religion, as if David himself had been alive again in this blessed heir, not so much of his crown, as of his piety. dah! happy in thy Hezekiah! O Hezekiah! happy in the gracious restoration of thy Judah! Ahaz shall have no thanks for such a son: the God, that is able of the very stones to raise children to Abraham, raises a true seed of David, out of the corrupt loins of an idolater. That infinite mercy is not tied to the terms of an immediate propagation: for the space of three hundred years, the man after God's own heart had no perfect heir till now. Till now did the high places stand: the devotions of the best princes of Judah were blemished with some weak omissions. Now, the zeal of good Hezekiah clears all those defects, and works an entire change.

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How seasonably hath the providence of God kept the best man for the worst times! When God hath a great work to do, he knows to fit himself with instruments.

No marvel if the paganish idols go to wreck, when even the brazen serpent, that Moses had made by God's own appoint ment, is broken in pieces. The Israelites were stung with fiery serpents; this brazen serpent healed them, which they did no sooner see than they recovered. But now, such was the venom of the Israelitish ido

latry, that this serpent of brass stung worse than the fiery; that which first cured by the eye, now by the eye poisoned the soul; that which was at first the type of a Saviour, is now the deadly engine of the enemy while it helped, it stood; it stood while it hurt not: but when once wicked abuse had turned it into an idol, what was it but Nehushtan?

The holiness of the first institution cannot privilege aught from the danger of a future profanation; nor, as the case may stand, from an utter abolition. What antiquity, what authority, what primary service, might this serpent have pleaded? All that cannot keep it out of the dust. Those things which are necessary in their being, beneficial in their continuance, may still re main when their abuse is purged: but those things whose use is but temporary, and whose duration is needless and unprofitable, may cease with the occasion, and much more perish with an inseparable abuse. Hezekiah willingly forgets who made the serpent, when he sees the Israelites make it an idol. It is no less intolerable for God to have a rival of his own making.

Since Hezekiah was thus, above all his ancestors, upright with the Lord, it is no marvel if the Lord were with him, if he prospered whithersoever he went: the same God, that would have his justice magnified in the confusion of the wicked princes of Israel and Judah, would have his mercy no less acknowledged in the blessings of faithful Hezekiah.

The great king of Assyria had, in a sort, swallowed up both the kingdoms of Judah and Israel; yet not with an equal cruelty: he made Israel captive; Judah, upon a willing composition, tributary. Israel is vanished in a transportation; Judah continues under the homage wherein Ahaz left it. Hezekiah had reigned but six years, when he saw his neighbours of Israel packing into a miserable captivity, and the proud Assyrians lording in their cities; yet, even then, when he stood alone, in a corner of Judah, durst Hezekiah draw his neck out of the yoke of the great and victorious monarch of Assyria; and, as if one enemy had not been enough, at the same time he falls upon the encroaching Philistines, and prevails. It is not to be asked what powers a man can make, but in what terms he stands with Heaven. The unworthy father of Hezekiah had clogged Judah with this servile fealty to the Assyrian; what the conditions of that subjection were, it is too late, and needless for us to inquire. If this payment were limited to a period of time, the expiration

acquitted him; if upon covenants of aid, the cessation therefore acquitted him; if the reforming of religion, and banishment of idolatry, ran under the censure of rebellion, the quarrel on Hezekiah's part was holy, on Sennacherib's unjust: but if the re-stipulation were absolute, and the withdrawing of this homage upon none but civil grounds, I cannot excuse the good king from a just offence. It was a human frailty in an obliged prince, by force to effect a free and independent sovereignty.

What! do we mince that fact, which holy Hezekiah himself censures? "I have offended, return from me; what thou puttest on me will I bear." The comfort of liberty may not be had with an unwarranted violence. Holiness cannot free us from infirmity. It was a weakness to do that act, which must be soon undone with much repentance, and more loss; this revolt shall cost Hezekiah, besides much humiliation, three hundred yearly talents of silver, thirty talents of gold. How much better had it been for the cities of Judah to have pur. chased their peace with an easy tribute, than war with intolerable taxation.

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Fourteen years had good Hezekiah fed upon a sweet peace, sauced only with a set pension; now he must prepare his palate for the bitter morsels of war. The king of Assyria is come up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and hath taken them. Hezekiah is fain to buy him out with too many talents; the poor kingdom of Judah is exhausted with so deep a payment, insomuch that the king is forced to borrow of God himself, for Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord; yea, at that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the pillars which he had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria." How hard was good Hezekiah dnven, ere he would be thus bold with his God! Surely if the mines or coffers of Judah could have yielded any supply, this shift had been hateful; to fetch back for an enemy that which he had given to his Maker. Only necessity excuses that from sacrilege in the son, which will make sacrilege in the father: that which is once devoted to a sacred use, may not be called back to a profane. But He, whose the earth is, and the fulness of it, is not so taken with our metals, that he should more regard our gold than our welfare: his goodness cannot grudge any outward thing for the price of our peace. To rob God, out of covetousness, or wantonness, or neglect, is justly damnable; we cannot rob him ou

of our need; for then he gives us all we take, and bids us ransom our lives, our liberties. The treasures of God's house were precious, for his sake, to whom they were consecrated; but more precious in the sight of the Lord was the life of any one of his

saints.

Every true Israelite was the spiritual house of God. Why should not the door of the material temple be willingly stripped, to save the whole frame of the spiritual temple? Take therefore, O Hezekiah, what thou hast given; no gold is too holy to redeem thy vexation. It matters not so much how bare the doors of the temple be, in a case of necessity, as how well the insides be furnished with sincere devotion. O the cruel hard-heartedness of those men, which will rather suffer the living temples of God to be ruined, than they will ransom their lives with farthings.

It could not be, but that the store of, needy Judah must soon be drawn dry with so deep an exaction. That sum cannot be sent, because it cannot be raised. The cruel tyrant calls for his bricks, while he allows no straw his anger is kindled, because Hezekiah's coffers have a bottom. With a mighty host doth he come up against Jerusalem; therefore shall that city be destroyed by him, because by him it hath been impoverished: the inhabitants must be slaves, because they are beggars.

O lamentable, and, in sight, desperate condition, of distressed Jerusalem! Wealth it had none; strength it had but a little: all the country round about was subdued to the Assyrian; that proud victor hath begirt the walls of it with an innumerable army, scorning that such a shovelful of earth should stand out but one day. Poor Jerusalem stands alone, blocked up with a world of enemies, helpless, friendless, comfortless, looking for the worst of a hostile fury, when Tartan, and Rabsaris, and Rabshakeh, the great captains of the Assyrians, call to a parley. Hezekiah sends to them three of his prime officers, his steward, his secretary, his recorder. Lord! what insolent blasphemies doth that foul mouth of Rabshakeh belch out against the living God, against his anointed servant!

How plausibly doth he discourage the subjects of Hezekiah! how proudly doth he insult upon their impotency! how doth he brave them with base offers of advantage! and, lastly, how cunningly doth he forelay their confidence, which was only left them, in the Almighty, protesting not to be come up thither without the Lord!" The Lord said to me, Go up to this land and destroy

it." How fearful a word was this! the rest were but vain cracks; this was a thunderbolt to strike dead the heart of Hezekiah. If Rabshakeh could have been believed, Jerusalem could not but have flown open: how could it think to stand out no less against God than men? Even thus doth the great enemy of mankind: if he can dishearten the soul from a dependence upon the God of mercies, the day is his. Lewd miscreants care not how they belie God, for their own purposes.

Eliakim, the steward of Hezekiah, well knew how much the people must needs be affected with this pernicious suggestion; and fain would, therefore, if not stop that wicked mouth, yet divert these blasphemies into a foreign expression. I wonder that any wise man should look for favour from an enemy: "Speak, I pray thee, to thy servants in the Syrian language." What was this, but to teach an adversary how to do mischief? Wherefore came Rabshakeh thither, but to gall Hezekiah, to withdraw his subjects? That tongue is most proper for him which may hurt most. Deprecations of evil, to a malicious man, are no better than advices. An unknown idiom is fit to keep counsel: they are familiar words that must convey aught to the understanding. Lewd men are the worse for admonitions.

Rabshakeh had not so strained his throat, to corrupt the citizens of Jerusalem, had it not been for the humble obtestation of Eliakim. Now he rears up his voice, and holds his sides, and roars out his double blasphemies: one while affrighting the people with the great power of the mighty king of Assyria; another while debasing the contemptible force of Hezekiah: now smoothly alluring them with the assurances of a safe and successful yieldance; then discouraging them with the impossibility of their deliverance; laying before them the fearful examples of greater nations vanquished by that sword, which was now shaken over them, triumphing in the impotency and miscarriage of their gods: "Who are they, among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their country out of mine hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of mine hand? where are the gods of Arpad and of Hamath?" Where, but in that hellish darkness that is ordained both for them and for thee, barbarous Assyrian, that darest thus open thy mouth against thy Maker. And can those atheous eyes of thine see no difference of gods? is there no distance betwixt a stock, or stone, and that infinite Deity that made heaven and earth? It is enough that thou now feel

est it; thy torments have taught thee too late, that thou affrontest a living God.

How did the fingers and tongues of those Jewish peers and people itch to be at Rabshakeh, in a revengeful answer to those impieties! All is hushed; not a word sounds from those walls. I do not more wonder at Hezekiah's wisdom, in commanding silence, than at the subjects' obedience in keeping it. This railer could not be more spited, than with no answer; and if he might be exasperated, he could not be reformed: besides, the rebounding of those multiplied blasphemies might leave some ill impressions in the multitude; this sulphurous flash, therefore, dies in its own smoke, only leaving a hateful stench behind it.

Good Hezekiah cannot easily pass over this devilish oratory: no sooner doth he hear of it, than he rends his clothes, and covers himself with sackcloth, and betakes himself to the house of the Lord, and sends his officers, and the gravest of the priests, clad in sackcloth, to Isaiah, the prophet of God, with a doleful and querulous message. O the noble piety of Hezekiah! Notwithstanding all the straits of the siege, and the danger of so powerful an enemy, I find not the garments of this good king, any otherwise than whole, and unchanged: but now, so soon as ever a blasphemy is uttered against the majesty of his God, though by a pagan dog, his clothes are torn, and turned into sackcloth. There can be no better argument of an upright heart, than to be more sensible of the indignities offered to God, than of our own dangers. Even these desperate reproaches send Hezekiah to the temple. The more we see God's name profaned, the more shall we, if we be truly religious, love and honour it.

Whither should Hezekiah run, but to the temple, to the prophet? There, there is the refuge of all faithful ones, where they may speak with God, where they may be spoken to from God, and fetch comfort from both. It is not possible that a believing heart should be disappointed. Isaiah sends that message to the good king, that may dry up his tears, and cheer his countenance, and change his suit: "Thus saith the Lord, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me: Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword, in his own land."

Lo! even while Sennacherib was in the height of his jollity and assurance, God's prophet foresees his ruin, and gives him for

dead, while that tyrant thought of nothing but life and victory. Proud and secure worldlings little dream of the near approach of their judgments: while they are plotting their deepest designs, the overruling justice of the Almighty hath contrived their sudden confusion, and sees and sets them their day.

Rabshakeh returns, and finding the king of Assyria warring against Libnah, reports to him the silent, and therein contemptuous answer, and firm resolutions of Hezekiah: in the meantime God pulls Sennacherib by the ear, with the news of the approaching arm of Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, which was coming up to raise the siege, and to succour his confederates. That dreadful power will not allow the Assyrian king, in person, to lead his other forces up against Jerusalem, nor to continue his former leaguer long before those walls. But now he writes big words to Hezekiah, and thinks, with his thundering menaces, to beat open the gates, and level the bulwarks of Jerusalem. Like the true master of Rabshakeh, he reviles the God of heaven, and basely parallels him with the dunghill deities of the heathen.

Good Hezekiah gets him into his sanctuary. There he spreads the letter before the Lord; and calls to the God that dwells between the cherubims, to revenge the blasphemies of Sennacherib, to protect and rescue himself and his people. Every one of those words pierced heaven, which was no less open to mercy unto Hezekiah, than vengeance to Sennacherib. Now is Isaiah addressed with a second message of comfort to him, who doubtless distrusted not the first only the reiteration of that furious blasphemy made him take faster hold, by his faithful devotion. Now the jealous God, in a disdain of so blasphemous a contestation, rises up in a style of majesty, and gloriously tramples upon this saucy insolency: "Because thy rage against me, and thy tumult, is come up into mine ears, therefore I will put my hook into thy nose, and my bridle into thy lips, and will turn thee back by the way thou camest." Lo, Sennacherib, the God of heaven makes a beast of thee, who hast so brutishly spurned at his name. If thou be a ravenous bear, he hath a hook for thy nostrils; if thou be a resty horse, he hath a bridle for thy mouth in spite of thee, thou shalt follow his hook, or his bridle, and shalt be led to thy just shame by either.

It is not for us to be the lords of our own actions: "Thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not

Thou art avenged, O God! thou art avenged plentifully of thine enemies! Whosoever strives with thee, is sure to gain nothing but loss, but shame, but death, but hell. The Assyrians are slain; Sennacherib is rewarded for his blasphemy: Jerusalem is rescued; Hezekiah rejoices: the nations wonder and tremble. "O love the Lord, all ye saints; for the Lord preserveth the faithful, and plenteously rewardeth the proud doer.”

come into this city, nor shoot an arrow | in spite of thy god, to arm thine own loins there, nor come before it with a shield, nor against thee. cast a bank against it; by the way that he came, shall he return," &c. Impotent men! what are we in the hands of the Almighty? We purpose, he overrules; we talk of great matters, and think to do wonders; he blows upon our projects, and they vanish with ourselves. He that hath set bounds to the sea, hath appointed limits to the rage of the proudest enemies; yea, even the devils themselves are confined. Why boast ye yourselves, O ye tyrants, that ye can do mischief? ye are stinted, and even within those lists is confusion.

O the trophies of Divine justice! “That very night the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians? an hundred fourscore and five thousand, and when they arose early in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses."

How speedy an execution was this! how miraculous! No human arm shall have the glory of this victory: it was God that was defied by that presumptuous Assyrian; it is God that shall right his own wrongs. Had the Egyptian or Ethiopian forces been come up, though the same God had done this work by them, yet some praise of this slaughter had, perhaps, cleaved to their fingers: now an invisible hand sheds all this blood, that his very enemies may clear him from all partnership of revenge. Go now, wicked Sennacherib, and tell of the gods of Hamath, and Arpad, and Sepharvaim, and Hena, and Ivah, which thou hast destroyed, and say, that Hezekiah's God is but as one of these. Go, and add this deity to the number of thy conquests; now say, that Hezekiah's God, in whom he trusted, hath deceived him, and graced thy triumphs.

With shame and grief enough is that sheeped tyrant returned to his Nineveh, having left behind him all the pride and strength of Assyria, for compost to Jewish fields. Well were it for thee, O Sennacherib! if thou couldst escape thus: vengeance waits for thee at home, and welcomes thee into thy place: while thou art worshipping in the house of Nisroch thy god, two of thine own sons shall be thine executioners. See now if that false deity of thine can preserve thee from that stroke, which the true God sends thee by the hand of thine own flesh. He, that slew thine host by his angels, slays thee by thy sons: the same angel, that killed all those thousands, could as easily have smitten thee; but he rather reserves thee for the further torment of an unnatural stroke, that thou mayest see, too late, how easy it is for him,

CONTEMPLATION X. — HEZEKIAH SICK, RECOVERED, visited.

HEZEKIAH was freed from the siege of the Assyrians, but he is surprised with a disease. He, that delivered him from the hand of his enemies, smites him with sickness. God doth not let us loose from all afflictions, when he redeems us from one.

To think that Hezekiah was either not thankful enough for his deliverance, or too much lifted up with glory of so miraculous a favour, were an injurious misconstruction of the hand of God, and an uncharitable censure of a holy prince: for though no flesh and blood can avoid the just desert of bodily punishment, yet God doth not always strike with an intuition of sin: sometimes he regards the benefit of our trial, sometimes the glory of his mercy in our cure.

It was no slight distemper that seized upon Hezekiah, but a disease both painful and fierce, and in nature deadly. O God, how thou lashest even those whom thou lovest! Hadst thou ever any such darling in the throne of Judah, as Hezekiah? yet he no sooner breatheth from a miserable siege, than he panteth under a mortal sickness, when as yet he had not so much as the comfort of a child to succeed him. Thy prophet is sent to him with a heavy message of his death: "Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live." It is no small mercy of God that he gives us warning of our end: we shall make an ill use of so gracious a premonition, if we make not a meet preparation for our passage. Even those that have not a house, yet have a soul. No soul can want important affairs to be ordered for a final dissolution: the neglect of this best t rift is desperate. Set thy soul in order, O man, for thou shalt die and not live.

If God had given Hezekiah a son, nature had bequeathed his estate: now, he must study to find heirs. Even these outward things, though in themselves worthless, re

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