eternal Father, and a bowing of thine head for the change of a better crown, and a peaceable obdormition in thy bed of ease and honour, and an instant entrance into rest, triumph, glory. And now, O blessed Jesu, how easily have carnal eyes all this while mistaken the passages and intentions of this thy last and most glorious work! Our weakness could hitherto see nothing here but pain and gnominy; now my better enlightened eyes see, in this elevation of thine, both honour and happiness. Lo! thou that art the Mediator betwixt God and man, the Reconciler of heaven and earth, art lift up betwixt earth and heaven, that thou mightest accord both. Thou, that art the great Captain of our salvation, the Conqueror of all the adverse powers of death and hell, art exalted upon this triumphal chariot of the cross, that thou mightest trample upon death, and drag all those infernal principalities manacled after thee. Those arms, which thine enemies meant violently to extend, are stretched forth for the embracing of all mankind that shall come in, for the benefit of thine all-sufficient redemption. Even while thou sufferest, thou reignest. O the impotent madness of silly men! they think to disgrace thee with wry faces, with tongues put out, with bitter scoffs, with poor wretched indignities; when, in the meantime, the heavens declare thy righteousness, O Lord, and the earth shows forth thy power. The sun pulls in his light, as not abiding to see the sufferings of his Creator; the earth trembles under the sense of the wrong done to her Maker; the rocks rend, the veil of the temple tears from the top to the bottom; shortly all the frame of the world acknowledges the dominion of that Son of God, whom man despiseth. Earth and hell have done their worst. O Saviour! thou art in thy Paradise, and triumphest over the malice of men and devils: the remainders of thy sacred person are not yet free. The soldiers have parted thy garments, and cast lots upon thy seamless coat. those poor spoils cannot so much enrich then as glorify thee, whose scriptures are fulfilled by their barbarous sortitions. The Jews sue to have thy bones divided, but they sue in vain. No more could thy garments be whole, than thy body could be broken: one inviolable decree overrules both. Foolish executioners! ye look up at that crucified body, as if it were altogether in your power and mercy; nothing appears to you but impotence and death: little do ye know what an irresistible guard, there is upon that sacred corpse, such as, if all the powers of darkness shall band against, they shall find themselves confounded. In spite of all the gates of hell, that word shalt stand: "Not a bone of him shall be broken." Still the infallible decree of the Almighty leads you on to his own ends, through your own ways. Ye saw him already dead whom ye came to dispatch: those bones therefore shall be whole, which ye had no power to break. But yet, that no piece, either of your cruelty, or of divine prediction, may remain unsatisfied, he, whose bones may not be impaired, shall be wounded in his flesh; he, whose ghost was yielded up, must yield his last blood: "One of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith there came out blood and water." Malice is wont to end with life; here it overlives it. Cruel man! what means this so late wound? what commission hadst thou for this bloody act? Pilate had given leave to break the bones of the living, he gave no leave to gore the side of the dead? What wicked supererogation is this! what a superfluity of maliciousness! To what purpose did thy spear pierce so many hearts in that one? why wouldst thou kill a dead man? Methinks the blessed Virgin, and those other passionate associates of hers, and the disciple whom Jesus loved, together with the other of his fellows, the friends and followers of Christ, and especially he that was so ready to draw his sword upon the troop of his Master's apprehenders, should have work enough to contain themselves within the bounds of patience at so savage a stroke; their sorrow could not choose but turn to indignation, and their hearts could not but rise, as even mine doth now, at so impertinent a villany. How easily could I rave at that rude hand! But, Ŏ God, when I look up to thee, and consider how thy holy and wise providence so overrules the most barbarous actions of men, that, besides their will, they turn beneficial, I can at once hate them, and bless thee. This very wound hath a mouth to speak the Messiahship of my Saviour, and the truth of thy Scripture: "They shall look at him whom they have pierced." Behold now the second Adam sleeping, and out of his side formed the mother of the living, the evangelical church! Behold the Rock which was smitten, and the waters of life gushed forth! Behold the Fountain that is set open to the house of David, for sin and for uncleanness; a fountain not of water only, but of blood too! O Saviour, by thy water we are washed, by thy blood we are redeemed. Those two sacraments, which thou didst institute alive, flow also from thee dead, as the last memorials of thy love to thy church; the water of baptism, which is the laver of regeneration; "The blood of the New Testament shed for remission of sins ;" and these, together with the Spirit that gives life to them both, are the three witnesses on earth, whose attestation cannot fail us. O precious and sovereign wound, by which our souls are healed! Into this cleft of the rock let my dove fly and enter, and there safely hide herself from the talons of all the birds of prey. What a marvellous concurrence is here of strong irrefragable conviction! Meekness in suffering, prayer for his murderers, a faithful resignation of his soul into the hands of his heavenly Father, the sun eclipsed, the heavens darkened, the earth trembling, the graves open, the rocks rent, the veil of the temple torn: who could go less than this, 66 Truly this was the Son of God?" He suffers patiently; this is through the power of grace: many good men have done so through his enabling. The frame of nature suffers with him; this is proper to the God of nature, the Son of God. devils, or miraculously fed, or some way obliged in their persons or friends! These, as they were deeply affected with the mortal indignities which were offered to their acknowledged Messiah, so they could not but be ravished with wonder at those powerful demonstrations of the Deity of him in whom they believed, and strangely distracted in their thoughts, while they compared those sufferings with that Omnipotence. As yet their faith and knowledge were but in the bud, or in the blade. How could they choose but think, Were he not the Son of God, how could these things be? And if he were the Son of God, how could he die? His resurrection, his ascension, should soon after perfect their belief; but, in the meantime, their hearts could not but be conflicted with thoughts hard to be reconciled. Howsoever, they glorify God, and stand amazed at the expectation of the issue It could not be but that the death of Christ, contrived and acted at Jerusalem in so solemn a festival, must needs draw a world of beholders: the Romans, the centurion and his band, were there as actors, as supervisors of the execution. Those strangers were no otherwise engaged, than as they that would hold fair correspondence with the citizens where they were engarrisoned; their freedom from prejudice ren- But, above all other, O thou blessed dered them more capable of an ingenuous Virgin, the holy mother of our Lord, how construction of all events: "Now, when many swords pierced thy soul, while, standthe centurion, and they that were with himing close by his cross, thou sawest thy dear that watched Jesus, saw the earthquake, son and Saviour thus indignly used, thus and the things that were done, they feared stripped, thus stretched, thus nailed, thus greatly, and glorified God, and said, Truly bleeding, thus dying, thus pierced! How did this was the Son of God." thy troubled heart now recount what the angel Gabriel had reported to thee from God, in the message of thy blessed conception of that Son of God! How didst thou think of the miraculous formation of that thy divine burden by the power of the Holy Ghost! How didst thou recall those prophecies of Anna and Simeon concerning him, and all those supernatural works of his, the irrefragable proofs of his Godhead! and, laying all these together, with the miserable infirmities of his passion, how wert thou crucified with him! The care that he took for thee in the extremity of his torments, could not choose but melt thy heart into sorrow: but O, when in the height of his pain and misery, thou heardst him cry out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" what a cold horror possessed thy soul! I cannot now wonder at thy qualms and swoonings; I could rather wonder that thou survivedst so sad an hour. But when, recollecting thyself, thou sawest the heavens to bear a part with thee in thy mourning, and feltest the earth to tremble no less than thyself, and foundest that the dreadful concussion of the whole frame of nature proclaimed the Deity of him that would thus suffer and die, and rememberedst his frequent predictions of drinking this bitter cup, and of being baptized thus in blood; thou begannest to take heart, and to comfort thyself with the assured expectation of the I wonder not that these men confessed thus; I wonder that any spectator confessed it not: these proofs were enough to fetch all the world upon their knees, and to nave made all mankind converts. But all hearts are not alike; no means can work upon the wilfully obdured. Even after this, the soldier pierced that blessed side; and while pagans relented, Jews continued impenitent. Yet, even of that nation, those beholders, whom envy and partiality had not interested in this slaughter, were stricken with just astonishment, and smote their breasts, and shook their heads, and, by passionate gesture, spake what their tongues durst not. How many must there needs be, in this universal concourse, of them whom he had healed of diseases, or freed from glorious issue. More than once had he fore- | to be landlord of the Lord of ufe! how well told thee this his victorious resurrection. is thy house-room repaid with a mansion not He, who had openly professed Jonas for his made with hands, eternal in the heavens ! type, and had fore-promised in three days Thy garden and thy tomb were hard by to raise up the ruined temple of his body, Calvary, where thou couldst not fail of had doubtless given more full intimation many monitions of thy frailty. How oft unto thee, who hadst so great a share in hadst thou seasoned that new tomb with that sacred body of his. The just shall sad and savoury meditations; and hadst oft live by faith." Lo! that faith of thine in his said within thyself, Here I shall once lie ensuing resurrection, and in his triumph down to my last rest, and wait for my reover death, gives thee life, and cheers up surrection. Little didst thou then think to thy drooping soul, and bids it, in a holy have been disappointed by so blessed a confidence, to triumph over all thy fears guest; or that thy grave should be again so and sorrows; and him, whom thou seest soon empty, and in that emptiness uncadead and despised, represents unto thee pable of any mortal indweller. How gladly living, immortal, glorious. dost thou now resign thy grave to him in whom thou livest, and who liveth for ever, whose soul is in Paradise, whose Godhead CONTEMPLATION XXXIII. THE RESURRECTION. everywhere! Hadst thou not been rich be GRACE doth not ever make show where it is. There is much secret riches both in the earth and sea, which never eye saw. I never heard any news till now of Joseph of Arimathea; yet was he eminently both rich and wise and good; a worthy, though close, disciple of our Saviour. True faith may be wisely reserved, but will not be cowardly. Now he puts forth himself, and dares beg the body of Jesus. Death is wont to end all quarrels. Pilate's heart tells him he hath done too much already, in sentencing an innocent to death: no doubt that centurion had related unto him the miraculous symptoms of that passion. He, that so unwillingly condemned innocence, could rather have wished that just man alive, than have denied him dead. The body is yielded and taken down; and now that which hung naked upon the cross is wrapped in fine linen; that which was soiled with sweat and blood is curiously washed and embalmed. Now even Nicodemus comes in for a part, and fears not the envy of a good profession. Death hath let that man loose, whom the law formerly overawed with restraint. He hates to be a night-bird any longer, but boldly flies forth, and looks upon the face of the sun, and will be now as liberal in his odours as he was before niggardly in his confession. O Saviour! the earth was thine, and the fulness of it: yet as thou hadst not a house of thine own while thou livedst, so thou hadst not a grave when thou wert dead. Joseph, that rich counsellor, lent thee his; lent it so as it should never be restored: thou tookst it but for a while; but that little touch of that sacred corpse of thine made it too good for the owner. fore, this gift alone had enriched thee, and more ennobled thee than all thine earthly honour. Now great princes envy thy bounty, and have thought themselves happy to kiss the stones of that rock which thou thus hewedst, thus bestowedst. Thus purely wrapped, and sweetly embalmed, lies the precious body of our Saviour in Joseph's new vault. Are ye now also at rest, O ye Jewish rulers? is your malice dead and buried with him? hath Pilate enough served your envy and revenge? Surely it is but a common hostility that can die; yours surviveth death, and puts you upon a further project: "The chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that this deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again; command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made sure till the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say to the people, he is risen." How full of terrors and inevitable perplexities, is guiltiness! These men were not more troubled with envy at Christ alive, than now with fear of his resurrection. And what can now secure them? Pilate had helped to kill him; but who shall keep him from rising? Wicked and foolish Jews! how fain would ye fight against God, and your own hearts! how gladly would ye deceive yourselves, in believing him to be a deceiver, whom your consciences knew to be no less true than powerful! Lazarus was still in your eye: that man was no phantasm; his death, his reviving was undeniable; the so fresh resuscitation of that dead body, after four days' dissolution, was a manifest conviction of omnipotence. How do ye vainly wish, that he could deceive O happy Joseph, that hadst the honour | you in the fore-reporting of his own resur rection! Without a divine power, he could have raised neither Lazarus nor himself: with, and by it, he could as well raise himself as Lazarus. What need we other witnesses than your own mouths? that which he would do, ye confess he foretold; that the truth of his word might answer the power of this deed, and both of them might argue him the God of truth and power, and yourselves enemies to both. And now what must be done? the sepulchre must be secured, and you with it; a huge stone, a strong guard must do the deed; and that stone must be sealed, that guard of your own designing. Methinks I hear the soldiers and busy officers, when they were rolling that other weighty stone, for such we probably conceive, to the mouth of the vault, with much toil, and sweat, and breathlessness, how they bragged of the sureness of the place, and unremovableness of that load: and when that so choice a watch was set, how they boasted of their valour and vigilance, and said, they would make him safe from either rising or stealing. O the madness of impotent men, that think, by either wile or force, to frustrate the will and designs of the Almighty! How justly doth that wise and powerful Arbiter of the world laugh them to scorn in heaven, and befool them in their own vain devices! O Saviour, how much evidence had thy resurrection wanted, if these enemies had not been thus maliciously provident! how irrefragable is thy rising made, by these bootless endeavours of their prevention! All this while the devout Maries keep close, and silently spend their Sabbath in a mixture of grief and hope. How did they wear out those sad hours in bemoaning themselves each to other, in mutual relations of the patient sufferings, of the happy expiration of their Saviour, of the wonderful events both in the heavens and earth, that accompanied his crucifixion, of his frequent and clear predictions of his resurrection? and now they have gladly agreed, so soon as the time will give them leave, in the dawning of the Sunday morning, to visit that dear sepulchre. Neither will they go empty handed: she, that had bestowed that costly alabaster box of ointment upon their Saviour alive, hath prepared no less precious odours for him dead. Love is restless and fearless. In the dark of night, these good women go to buy their spices, and, ere the day break, are gone out of their houses, towards the tomb of Christ, to bestow them. This sex is commonly fearful: it was much for them to walk alone in that unsafe season: yet, as despising all fears and dangers, they thus spend the night after their Sabbath. Might they have been allowed to buy their perfumes on the Sabbath, or to have visited that holy tomb sooner, can we think they would have staid so long? can we suppose they would have cared more for the Sabbath than for the " Lord of the Sabbath,” who now kept his Sabbath in the grave? Sooner they might not come, later they would not, to present their last homage to their dead Saviour. Had these holy women known their Jesus to be alive, how had they hasted, who made such speed to do their last offices to his sacred corpse! for us, we "know that our Redeemer liveth,” we know where he is. O Saviour, how cold and heartless is our love to thee, if we do not haste to find thee in thy word and sacraments, if our souls do not fly up to thee, in all holy affections, into thy heaven! Of all the women, Mary Magdalene is first named, and in some Evangelists alone; she is noted above her fellows. None of them were so much obliged, none so zealously thankful. Seven devils were cast out of her by the command of Christ. That heart which was freed from Satan, by that powerful dispossession, was now possessed with a free and gracious bounty to her deliverer. Twice, at the least, hath she poured out her fragrant and costly odours upon him. Where there is a true sense of favour and beneficence, there cannot but be a fervent desire of retribution. O blessed Saviour, could we feel the danger of every sin, and the malignity of those spiritual possessions from which thou hast freed us, how should we pour out ourselves into thankfulness unto thee! Every thing here had horror. The place both solitary and a sepulchre; nature abhors, as the visage, so the region of death and corruption. The time, night; only the moon gave them some faint glimmering, for this being the seventeenth day of her age, afforded some light to the latter part of the night. The business, the visitation of a dead corpse. Their zealous love hath easily overcome all these. They had followed him in his sufferings, when the disciples left him; they attended him to his cross weeping; they followed him to his grave, and saw how Joseph laid him; even there they leave him not, but, ere it be day-light, return to pay him the last tribute of their duty. How much stronger is love than death! O blessed Jesu, why should not we imitate thy love to us? Those," whom thou lovest, thou lovest to the end," yea in it, yea after it even when we are dead, not our souls only, but our very dust is dearly respected of thee. What condition of thine should remove our affections from thy person in heaven, from thy limbs on earth? Well did these worthy women know what Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus had done to thee; they saw how curiously they had wrapped thee, how preciously they had embalmed thee: yet as not thinking others' beneficence could be any just excuse of theirs, they bring their own odours to thy sepulture, to be perfumed by the touch of thy sacred body. What thank is it to us, that others are obsequious to thee, while we are slack or niggardly? We may rejoice in others' forwardness, but if we rest in it, how small joy shall it be to us to see them go to heaven without us? When on the Friday evening they attend ed Joseph to the entombing of Jesus, they marked the place, they marked the passage, they marked that inner grave-stone, which the owner had fitted to the mouth of that tomb, which all their care is now to remove: "Who shall roll away the stone?" That other more weighty load wherewith the vault was barred, the seal, the guard set upon both, came not perhaps into their knowledge; this was the private plot of Pilate and the priests, beyond the reach of their thoughts. I do not hear them say, How shall we recover the charges of our odours? or how shall we avoid the envy and censure of our angry elders, for honouring him whom the governors of our nation have thought worthy of condemnation? The only thought they now take is, "Who shall roli away the stone?" Neither do they stay at home and move this doubt, but when they are well forward on their way, resolving to try the issue. Good hearts cannot be so solicitous for anything under heaven, as for removing those impediments, which lie between them and their Saviour. O blessed Jesu! thou, who art clearly revealed in heaven, art yet still both hid and sealed up from too many here on earth: neither is it some thin veil that is spread between thee and them, but a huge stone, even a true stone of offence, lies rolled upon the mouth of their hearts. Yea, if a second weight were superadded to thy grave here, no less than three spiritual bars are interposed betwixt them and the above; idleness, ignorance, unbelief. Who shall roll away these stones, but the same power that removed thine? O Lord, remove our ignorance, that we may know thee; our idleness, that we may seek thee; our unbelief, that we may find and enjoy thee. How well it succeeds when we go faithfully and conscionably about our work, and leave the issue to God! Lo, now God hath removed the cares of these holy women, together with the grave-stone. To the wicked, that falls out which they feared; to the godly, that which they wished and cared for, yea more. Holy cares ever prove well; the worldly dry the bones and disappoint the hopes. Could these good visitants have known of a greater stone sealed, of a strong watch set, their doubts had been doubled. Now God goes beyond their thoughts, and at once removes that which both they did, and might have feared. The stone is removed, the seal broken, the watch fled. What a scorn doth the Almighty God make of the impotent designs of men! they thought, the stone shall make the grave sure, the seal shall make the stone sure, the guard shall make both sure; now, when they think all safe, God sends an angel from heaven above, the earth quakes beneath, the stone rolls away, the soldiers stand like carcases, and, when they have got heart enough to run away, think themselves valiant! the tomb is opened, Christ is risen, they confounded. O the vain projects of silly men! as if, with one shovel-full of mire, they would dam up the sea; or, with a clout hanged forth, they would keep the sun from shining. these spiders' webs, or houses of cards, which fond children have, as they think, skilfully framed, which the least breath breaks and ruins! Who are we, sorry worms, that we should look, in any business, to prevail against our Creator; what creature is so base, that he cannot arm against us to our confusion! The lice and frogs shall be too strong for Pharaoh, the worms for Herod. "There is no wisdom nor counsel against the Lord." O the marvellous pomp and magnifi. cence of our Saviour's resurrection! The earth quakes, the angel appears, that it may be plainly seen that this divine person, now rising, had the command both of earth and heaven. At the dissolution of thy human nature, O Saviour, was an earthquake; at the re-uniting of it, is an earthquake: to tell the world, that the God of nature then suffered, and had now conquered. While thou layest still in the earth, the earth was still; when thou camest to fetch thine own, The earth trembled at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob." When thou, our true Samson, awakedst and foundst thyself tied with |