tency of health! How many do I see ready to famish, and forced to either beg or starve, whereas I eat my own bread! How many lie rotting in gaols and dungeons, or are driven to wander in unknown deserts, or amongst people whose language they understand not; whereas I enjoy home and liberty! How many are shrieking under scourges and racks, whereas I sit at ease! And if I shall cast mine eyes upon my spiritual condition, alas, how many do I see sit in darkness and in the shadow of death; whereas the Sun of Righteousness hath risen to me with healing in his wings!1 How many lie in a woeful bondage under sin and Satan; whereas my Saviour hath freed me from those hellish chains, and brought me to the glorious liberty of the sons of God! How many are miserably misled into the dangerous by-paths of error; whereas he hath graciously kept me in the plain and sure way of his saving truth! If we do not sometimes make these, (not proud, but thankful) comparisons, and look upon ourselves, not with direct beams, but by reflection upon others, we shall never be sensible enough of our own mercies. XCVIII. The true Christian is in a very happy condition, for no man will envy him, and he can envy nobody. None will envy him, for the world cannot know how happy he is-how happy in the favour of God; how happy in the enjoying of that favour. Those secret delights that he finds in the presence of his God; those comfortable pledges of love and mutual interchanges of blessed interest which pass between 1 Mal. iv. 2. them, are not for worldly hearts to conceive; and no man will envy an unknown happiness. On the other side, he cannot envy the world's greatest favourite under heaven, for he well knows how fickle and uncertain that man's felicity is; he sees him walking upon ice, and perceives every foot of his sliding and threatening a fall, and hears that brittle pavement at every step, crackling under him, and ready to give way to his swallowing up; and, withal, finds, if those pleasures of his could be constant and permanent, how poor and unsatisfying they are, and how utterly unable to yield true contentment to the soul. The Christian, therefore, while others look upon him with pity and scorn, laughs secretly to himself in his bosom, as well knowing there is none but he truly happy. XCIX. It was a high and honourable embassy, whereon the angel Gabriel was sent down to the Blessed Virgin, that she should be the mother of her Saviour; neither was that inferior of the glorious angel, that brought the joyful tidings of the incarnation and birth of the Son of God to the shepherds of Bethlehem; but a far more happy errand was that which the Lord Jesus, after his resurrection, committed to the Marys; Go to my brethren, and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.'1 Lo, he says not, I am risen, but I ascend; as if he had forgot the earth whence he arose and thought only on that heaven whither he was going; upon his Easter his mind is on his Ascension-day. As there 1 John xx. 17. had been nothing but discomfort in death without a resurrection, so there had been little comfort in a resurrection, without an ascension to glory. There is a contentment in the very act, I ascend; even nature is ambitious, and we do all affect to mount higher, as to come down is a death. But this height is, like the ascendant, infinite, 'I ascend to my Father;' there was the glory which he put off in his humble incarnation; there was the glory which he was now to resume and possess to all eternity. And as if nature and adoption could give a like interest, he puts both together: My Father and your Father, my God and your God.' His mercy vouchsafes to style us brethren; yet the distance is unmeasurable betwixt him, the Son of his eternal essence and us, the naturally wretched sons of his gracious election; yet, as if both he and we should be coheirs of the same blessedness, though not in the same measure, he says, My Father and your Father:' first my Father, then yours; and, indeed, therefore ours, because his. It is in him that we are elected, that we are adopted; without him, God were not only a stranger, but an enemy: it is the Son that must make us free; it is the Son that must make us sons; if we be his the Father cannot but be ours. O, the unspeakable comfort and happiness of a Christian, in respect of his bodily nature! He cannot but say with Job, to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister;' in his spiritual right, God the Son hath here authorized him to say to the Almighty, Thou art my Father;' and, in nature, in regard of our frail and dying condition, willingly say, "I descend to the grave." 1 Job, xvii. 14. Faith makes abundant amends in him, and can as cheerfully say, I ascend to my Father.' And what son, that is not altogether graceless, would not be glad to go to his father, though it were to a meaner house than his own; and therefore is ready to say, I will descend to my father." How much more, when his many mansions are infinitely glorious, and when all our happiness consists in his blessed presence, must we needs say, with a joy unspeakable and glorious, 'I ascend to my Father!' 66 C. God made man the Lord of his creatures; he made him not a tyrant; he gave the creatures to man for his lawful use, not for his wanton cruelty. Man may therefore exercise his just sovereignty over the beasts of the field, and fowls of the air, and fishes of the sea; not his lawless will to their needless destruction or torment. Had man made the creature, he could but challenge an absolute dominion over that work of his hands; but now that he is only a fellow-creature to the meanest worm, what an insolent usurpation is this, so licentiously to domineer over his fellow-dust! Yea, that great God, who gave a being to the creature, and therefore hath a full and illimited power over his own workmanship, takes no pleasure to make use of that power to the unnecessary vexation and torture of what he hath made. That all-wise and bountiful Creator, who hath put into the hands of man the subordinate dominion over all the store of these inferior elements, hath made the limit of his command, not necessity only, but convenience too: but, if man shall go beyond these bounds, and will destroy the creature only because he will, and put it to pain because it is his pleasure, he abuseth his sovereignty to a sinful imperiousness, and shall be accountable for his cruelty. When the Apostle, upon occasion of the law for not muzzling the mouth of the ox, asks, 'Doth God take care for oxen ?'' can we think he meant to question the regard for so useful a creature? Do we not hear the Psalmist say, 'He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens that cry."" Do we not hear our Saviour say, 'that not a sparrow falls to the ground without our heavenly Father? And of how much more value is an ox than many thousands of sparrows! Is not the speech, therefore, both comparative and typical? Is the main care that God takes in that law, for provision to be made for the beast? and doth he not rather, under that figure, give order for the maintenance of those spiritual oxen that labour in the husbandry of the Almighty? Doubtless, as even the savage creatures, 'The young lions seek their meat from God; so they find it from him in due season: 'He openeth his hand, and filleth every creature with good.' Is God so careful for preserving, and shall man be so licentious in destroying them? 'A righteous man,' saith Solomon, regardeth the life of his beast; he is no better, therefore, than a wicked man that regardeth it not. To offer violence to, and to take away the life from, our fellowcreatures, without a cause, is no less than tyranny. Surely, no other measure should a man offer to his beast than that, which if his beast, with Balaam's, could expostulate with him, he could well justify to it; no other than that man, if he had been 3 Matt. x. 29. Prov. xii. 10. 1 Cor. ix. 9. 2 Psalm cxlvii. 9. |