their enemies, and they shall become a prey | himself greatly before the God of his faand a spoil unto all their enemies." It is enough, O God! it is enough. What ear can but tingle, what eye can but weep, what hair can but start up, what heart can be but confounded at the mention of so dreadful a revenge? Can there be a worse judgment than desolation, captivity, desertion, spoil, and torture of prevailing enemies? But however other cities and nations have undergone these disasters, without wonder, that all this should befall to thy Jerusalem, the place which thou hast chosen to thyself out of the whole earth, the lot of thine inheritance, the seat of thine abode, whereof thou hast said, "Here shall be my rest for ever," it is able to amaze all eyes, all ears. No city could fare worse than Samaria, whose inhabitants, after a woful siege, were driven, like cattle, into a wretched servitude. Jerusalem shall fare no better from Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon; Jerusalem, the glory of the earth, the darling of heaven. See, O ye vain men, that boast of the privileges of chairs and churches, see and tremble. There is no place under heaven, to which the presence of God is so wedded, as that the sins thereof shall not procure a disdainful and final divorce: the height of former favours shall be but an aggravation of vengeance. This total vastation of Jerusalem shall take time. Onwards, God begins with the person of wicked Manasseh, against whom he stirs up the captains of the host of the late friend, and old enemy of Judah. Those thorns, amongst which he had shrouded his guilty head, cannot shelter him from their violence: they take him and bind him with fetters of iron, and carry him to Babylon. There he lies, loaded with chains, in an uncomfortable dungeon, exercised with variety of tortures, fed with such coarse pittances of bread, and sips of water, as might maintain an unwilling life to the punishment of the owner. What eye can now pity the deepest miseries of Manasseh? what but bondage can befit him, that hath so lawlessly abused his liberty? what but an utter abdication can befit him, that hath cast off his God, and doted upon devils? what but a dying life, and a tormenting death, can be fit for a man of blood? Who now would not have given this man for lost, and have looked when hell should claim her own? But, O the height, O the depth, of Divine mercy! After all these prodigies of sin, Manasseh is a convert: "When he was in affliction, he be30ught the Lord his God; and humbled thers." How true is that word of the pro. phet, "Vexation gives understanding!" The viper, when he is lashed, casts up his poison. The traitor, when he is racked, tells that truth which he had else never uttered. If the cross bear us not to heaven, nothing can. What use were there of the grain, but for the edge of the sickle wherewith it is cut down, the stroke of the flail wherewith it is beaten, the weight and attrition of the mill wherewith it is crushed, the fire of the oven wherewith it is baked? Say now, Manasseh, with that grandfather of thine, who was, till now, too good for thee, "It was good for me that I was afflicted." Even thine iron was more precious to thee than thy gold; thy gaol was a more happy lodging to thee than thy palace; Babylon was a better school to thee than Jerusalem. What fools are we, to frown upon our afflictions! These, how crabbed soever, are our best friends. They are not indeed for our pleasure; they are for our profit: their issue makes them worthy of a wel come. What do we care how bitter that potion be, which brings health? How far a man may go, and yet turn! Could there be fouler sins than these? Lo! here was idolatry in the height, violation of God's house, sorceries of all kinds, bloody cruelty to his own flesh, to the saints of | God, and all these against the stream of a religious institution, of the zealous counsels of God's prophets, of the checks of his own heart. Who can complain, that the way of heaven is blocked up against him, when he sees such a sinner enter? Say the worst against thyself, O thou clamorous soul! here is one that murdered men, defied God. worshipped devits, and yet finds the way to repentance. If thou be worse than he, deny, if thou canst, that to thyself, which God hath not denied to thee, capacity of grace: in the meantime know, that it is not thy sin, but thine impenitence, that bars heaven against thee. Presume not yet, O man, whosoever thou art, of the liberty of thy conversion, as if thou couldst run on lawlessly in a course of sinning, till thou come to the brim of hell, and then couldst suddenly stop, and return at leisure. The mercy of God never set period to a wilful sinner; neither yet did his own corrupt desires, so as, when he is gone the furthest, he could yet stay himself from another step. No man that truly repents is refused: but many a one sins so long, that he cannot repent; his custom of wickedness hath obdured his heart, and The Almighty will be sure to be known for what he is, if not by fair means, yet by foul. If our prosperity and peace, and sweet experience of his mercy, can win us to acknowledge him, it is more for our ease; but if we will needs be taught by stripes, it is no less for his glory. made it flint to all good impressions. There | children, that will learn nothing but what were Jeroboams, and Abijams, and Ahabs, is put into them with the rod. and Joashes, and Ahazes, in these sacred thrones; there was but one Manasseh. God hath not left in any man's hand the reins of his own heart, to pace, and turn, and stop as he lists: this privilege is reserved to him that made it. "It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy;" and that mercy neglected, justly binds over to judgment. I wonder not at Manasseh either sinning or repenting; I wonder at thy goodness, Lord, who, after thy just permission of his sin, callest him thus graciously to repent, and so receivest him repenting so as Manasseh was not a more loathsome and monstrous spectacle of wickedness, than he is now a pleasing and useful pattern of conversion. Who can now despair of thy mercy, O God, that sees the tears of a Manasseh accepted? When we have debauched our worst, our evil cannot match with thy goodness; rather it is the praise of thy infinite store, that where sin abounds, grace abounds much more. O keep us from a presumption of grace, that we may repent; and raise us from a distrust of grace, when we have repented. No sooner is Manasseh penitent, than he is free: his prayers have at once loosed him from his sins and from his chains, and of a captive have made him a king; and, from the dungeon of Babylon, have restored him to the palace of Jerusalem. How easy is it for the same hand that wounds to cure! What cannot fervent prayers do, either for our rescuing from evil, or for our investing with good! "Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was God;" then, and not before. Could his younger years escape the knowledge of God's miraculous deliverance of Jerusalem from the Assyrians? could he but know the slaughter that God's angel made in one night, of a hundred fourscore and five thousand? could he but have heard the just revenge upon Sennacherib? could he be ignorant of his father's supernatural recovery? could he but see that everlasting monument of the noted degrees in the dial of Ahaz? could he avoid the sense of those fifteen years which were superadded to his father's age? What one of these proofs doth not evince a Deity? Yet, till his own smart and cure, Manasseh knew not that the Lord was God. Foolish sinners pay dear for their knowledge; neither will endure to be taught good cheap. So we have seen resty horses, that will not move, till they bleed with the spur; so we have seen dull and careless | | Manasseh now returns another man to Jerusalem. With what indignation doth he look upon his old follies! And now, all the amends he can make is to undo what he did, to do that which he undid: "He took away the strange gods, and the idol out of the house of the Lord, and all the altars that he had built in the mount of the house of the Lord, and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city." True repentance begins to decline at the ablative, destroying those monuments of shame which former error had reared. The thorns must first be stubbed up, ere the ground can be capable of seed. The true method of grace is, first, "Cease to do evil," then " Learn to do good." In vain had Manasseh professed a repentance, if the strange gods had still held possession of Jerusalem, if the idol had still harboured in God's temple, if foreign altars had still smoked upon the holy mountain. Away with all this trash, when once Manasseh comes to a true sense of piety! There is nothing but hypocrisy in that penitent, who, after all vows and tears, retains his old abominations. It is that poor piece of satisfaction which we can give to the Divine justice, in a hearty indignation to fling down that cup of wickedness wherewith we have been bewitched, and to trample upon the sherds; without which, confession is but wind, and the drops of contrition, water. The living God loves to dwell clean: he will not come under the roof of idols, nor admit idols to come under his. First, therefore, Manasseh casts out the strange gods, and idols, and altars, and then "he repairs the altars of the Lord, and sacrifices thereon peace-offerings and thank-offerings." Not till he had pulled down, might he build; and when he had pulled down, he must build. True repentance is no less active of good. What is it the better, if, when the idolatrous altars are defaced, the true God hath not an altar erected to his name? In many altars was superstition, in no altars atheism. Neither doth penitent Manasseh build God a new altar. but he repairs the old, which, by long disuse, lay waste, and was mossy and mouldered with age and neglect. God loves well his own institutions; | eight: Manasseh was religiously bred under neither can he abide innovations, so much Hezekiah; Josiah was misnurtured under as in the outsides of his services. It is a happy work to vindicate any ordinance of God from the injuries of times, and to restore it to the original glory. What have our pious governors done other in religion? Had we gone about to lay a new foundation, the work had been accursed: now we have only scraped off some superfluous moss, that was grown upon these holy stones; we have cemented some broken pieces, we have pointed some crazy corners with wholesome mortar, instead of base clay wherewith it was disgracefully patched up. The altar is old; it is God's altar; it is not new, not ours: if we have laid one new stone in this sacred building, let it fly in our faces, and beat out our eyes. On this repaired altar doth Manasseh send up the sacrifices of his peace, of his thankfulness; and doubtless the God of heaven smells a sweet savour of rest. No perfume is so pleasing to God, as that which is cast in by a penitent hand. It had not served the turn that Manasseh had approached alone to this renewed altar as his lewd example had drawn the people from their God, so now "he commands Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel:" had he been silent, he could not have been unfollowed. Every act of greatness is preceptive; but now, that religion is made law, what Israelite will not be devout? The true God hath now no competitor in Judah: all the idols are pulled down, the high places will not be pulled down. An ill guise is easily taken up, it is not so easily left. After a common depravation of religion, it is hard to return unto the first purity as when a garment is deeply soiled, it cannot, without many lavers, recover the former cleanness. : CONTEMPLATION XII.-JOSIAH'S REFOR MATION. YET, if we must alter from ourselves, it is better to be a Manasseh than a Joash: Joash began well, and ended ill; Manasseh began ill, and ended well. His age varied from his youth, no less than one man's condition can vary from another's; his posterity succeeded in both. Amon his son succeeded in the sins of Manasseh's youth; Josiah his grandchild succeeded in the virtues of his age. What a vast difference doth grace make in the same age! Manasseh began his reign at twelve years; Josiah at Amon: and yet Manasseh runs into absurd idolatries; Josiah is holy and devout. The Spirit of God breathes freely, not con. fining itself to times or means. No rules can bind the hands of the Almighty. It is an ordinary proof, too true a word, that was said of old, "Woe be to thee, O land, whose king is a child!" The goodness of God makes his own exceptions: Judah never fared better than in the green years of a Josiah. If we may not rather measure youth and age by government and disposition, than by years, surely thus Josiah was older with smooth cheeks, than Manasseh with grey hairs. Happy is the infancy of princes, when it falls into the hands of counsellors. A good pattern is no small help for young beginners. Josiah sets his father David before him—not Amon, not Manasseh. Examples are the best rules for the unexperienced: where their choice is good, the directions are easiest. The laws of God are the ways of David: those laws were the rule, those ways were the practice. Good Josiah walks in all the ways of his father David. Even the minority of Josiah was not idle : we cannot be good too early. At eight years, it was enough to have his ear open to hear good counsel, to have his eyes and heart open to seek after God; at twelve, he begins to act, and shows well that he hath found the God he sought. Then he addresses himself to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, groves, images, altars, wherewith it was defiled; burning the bones of the idolatrous priests upon their altars; strewing the ashes of the idols upon the graves of them that had sacrificed to them; striving, by those fires and mattocks, to testify his zealous detestation of all idolatry. The house must be first cleansed, ere it can be garnished: no man will cast away his cost upon unclean heaps. So soon as the temple was purged, Josiah bends his thoughts upon the repairing and beautifying of the house of the Lord. What stir was there in Judah, wherein God's temple suffered not? Six several times was it pillaged, whether out of force, or will. First, Joash king of Judah is fain, by the spoil of it, to stop the mouth of Hazael; then Joash king of Israel fills his own hands with that sacred spoil, in the days of Amaziah; after this, Ahaz rifles it for Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria; then Hezekiah is forced to ransack the treasures of it for Sennacherib; yet, after, the sacrilege | of Manasseh makes that booty of it, which his latter times endeavour to restore; and now, lastly, Amon his son neglects the frame, embezzles the furniture of this holy place the very pile began to complain of age and unrespect. Now comes good Josiah, and in his eighteenth year (when other young gallants would have thought of nothing but pleasure and jollity) takes up the latest care of his father David, and gives order for the repairing of the temple. The keepers of the door have received the contribution of all faithful Jews for this pious use. The king sends Shaphan the scribe to Hilkiah the priest, to sum it up, and to deliver it unto carpenters and masons for so holy a work. How well doth it beseem the care of a religious prince, to set the priests and scribes in hand with re-edifying the temple! The command is the king's, the charge is the high priest's, the execution is the workmen's. When the labourers are faithful in doing the work, and the high priest in the directing it, and the king in enjoining it, God's house cannot fail of a happy perfection; but when any of these slackens, the business must needs languish. How God blesses the devout endeavours of his servants! While Hilkiah was diligently surveying the breaches and reparation of the temple, he lights upon the book of the law. The authentic and original book of God's law, was, by a special charge, appointed to be carefully kept within a safe shrine in the sanctuary. In the depraved times of idolatry, some faithful priest, to make sure work, had locked it fast up, in some corner of the temple, from the reach of all hands, of all eyes, as knowing how impossible it was that divine monument could otherwise escape the fury of profane guiltiness. Some few transcripts there were, doubtless, parcels of this sacred book in other hands: neither doubt I, but, as Hilkiah had been formerly well acquainted with this holy volume, now of a long time hid, so the ears of good Josiah had been inured to some passages thereof. But the whole body of these awful records, since the late night of idolatrous confusion and persecution, saw no light till now. This precious treasure doth Hilkiah find, while he digs for the temple. Never man laboured to the reparation of God's church, but he met with a blessing more than he looked for. So soon as the good king hears the words of the book of the law, and in special, those dreadful threats of judgment denounced against the idolatries of his Judah, he rends his clothes, to show his heart rent with sorrow and fearful expectation of those plagues, and washes his bosom with tears. O gracious tenderness of Josiah! he doth but once hear the law read, and is thus humbled; humbled for his father's sins, for the sins of his people. How many of us, after a thousand hammerings of the menaces of God's law upon our guilty souls, continue yet insensible of our danger! The very reading of this law doth thus affect him; the preaching of it stirs not us: the sins of others struck thus deep with him; our own are slighted by us. A soft heart is the best tempered for God. So physicians are wont to like those bodies best, which are easiest to work upon. O God! make our clay wax, and our wax pliable to thine hand, so shall we be sure to be free either from sin, or from the hurt of sin. It is no holy sorrow that sends us not to God. Josiah is not moped with a distractive grief, or an astonishing fear, but, in the height of his passion, sends five choice messengers to Huldah the prophetess, to inquire of the Lord, for himself, for Judah. It is a happy trouble that drives us to this refuge. I do not hear any of these courtiers reply, to this godly motion of their young king, Alas, sir, what means this deep perplexity? what needs all this busy inquisition? If your father were idolatrous, what is that to you who have abandoned his sins? if your people were once idolatrous, what is that to you, yea, to them, who have expiated these crimes by their repentance? Have you not carefully reformed all those abuses? hath not your happy reformation made an abundant amends for those wrongs? Spare your tears, and save the labour of your messengers: all is well, all shall be well. These judgments are for the obstinate: had we been still guilty, these fears had been just were we still in danger, what had we Hilkiah the priest, and Shaphan the gained by our conversion? Rather as glad scribe, do not engross this invaluable wealth to second the religious cares of their young into their own hands, nor suppress these king, they feed his holy anxieties with a more than sacred rolls for their own advan | just aggravation of peril; and by their good counsel whet these his zealous desires of a speedy resolution. That state cannot but be happy, whose priests and peers are ready, as to suggest, so to cherish and execute the devout projects of their sovereigns. The grave priest, the learned scribe, the honourable courtiers, do not disdain to knock at the door of a prophetess: neither doth any of them say, It were hard if we should not have as much acquaintance with God, as a woman: but, in an humble acknowledgment of her graces, they come to learn the will of God from her mouth. True piety is modest, and stands not upon terms of reputation in the businesses of God, but willingly honours his gifts in any subject, least of all in itself. : proaching ruin. Even their old score must be paid, after the opinion of a clear agreement. In vain shall we hope to quit out arrearages by prorogation. This prophetess had immediate visions from God, yet she must speak out of the book. There was never any revelation from the Lord that crossed his writings: his hand and his tongue agree eternally. If that book have cursed Judah, she may not absolve it. Yet, what a gracious mixture was here of mercy with severity!-severity to Judah, mercy to Josiah: Judah shall be plagued, and shall become a desolation and a curse; Josiah shall be quietly housed in his grave, before this storm fall upon Judah: his eye shall not see what his people shall feel. It is enough that the expectation of these evils afflicts him, the sense shall not. Whence is this indulgence?" Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord." How happy a thing it is to be a reed unto God's judg gentle reed stoops, and therefore stands ; the oak stands stiffly out against the strongest gust, and therefore is turned up by the roots. At least, let us lament those sins we have not avoided; and mourn for the sins of others, while we hate our own. The sex is not more noted in Huldah, than the condition. As she was a woman, so a wife, the wife of Shallum. Holy matrimony was no hindrance to her divine revelations she was at once a prophetess in her college, a housewife in her family. It was never the practice of God to confinements, rather than an oak! the meek and his graces to virginity. At this very time, the famous prophet Jeremiah flourished: some years had he already spent in this public service; why was not he rather consulted by Josiah? It is not unlike, that some prophetical employments called him away at this time from Jerusalem: his presence could not have been baulked. Purposely, doubt less, doth God cast his message upon the point of that absence, that he might honour the weaker vessel with his divine oracle, and exercise the humility of so great clients. In the auswers of God, it is not to be regarded who speaks, but from whom. The injury redounds to God, if the weaknesses of the person cause us to undervalue the authority of the function. 66 He that found himself exempted from this vengeance by his repentance and deep humiliation, would fain find the same way for the deliverance of his people. The same words of the law, therefore, that had wrought upon his heart, are by him caused to be publicly read in the ears of Judah and Jerusalem. The assembly is universal, of priests, prophets, people both small and great; because the sin was such, the danger was such: that no man may complain to want information, the law of God sounds in every ear. If our ears be shut to the law, the sin is ours; but if the law be shut to our ears, the sin is of our governors. Woe be to them that hide God's book from the people, as they would do ratsbane from the eyes of children! Ignorant souls cannot perish without their murder. There is no fear of knowing too much; there is too much fear of practising too little. Now, if the people do not imitate their king in relenting, they are not Evil must befall Jerusalem and Judah, worthy to partake with him in his impunity. yea, all the words of that book must alight Howsoever, they shall not want a great upon the inhabitants of both. In how bad example, as of sorrow, so of amendment. a case we may be, and yet think ourselves Good Josiah stands by the pillar, and sonot safe only, but happy! These Jews had lemnly renews his covenant with his God; forgotten their old revolts; and now, having the people cannot for shame refuse to seframed themselves to holy courses, promised cond him: even they that looked for a themselves nothing but peace, when the destruction, yet do not withdraw their obeprophetess foresees and foretells their ap-dience. God's children may not be sullen As Josiah and his messengers do not despise Huldah because she was a woman, so Huldah doth not flatter Josiah, because a king: Go, tell the man that sent you, thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place." Lo! he that was as God to his subjects, is but as man to the prophetess: neither is the message ever the sweeter, because it is required by a prince. No circumstance may vary the form of divine truth. |