religion and publication of worship as we are invited by the great blessings and advantages of communion, so also we are in some proportions more straightly limited by the analogy and exigence of the duty. It is a persecution when we are forced from public worshippings; no man can hinder our private addresses to God, every man can build a chapel in his breast, and himself be the priest, and his heart the sacrifice, and every foot of glebe he treads on be the altar; and this no tyrant can prevent. If then there can be persecution in the offices of religion, it is the prohibition of public profession and communions, and therefore he that denies to himself the opportunities of public rites and conventions is his own persecutor.

3. But when Jesus was twelve years old, and His parents had finished their offices, and returned filled with the pleasures of religion, they missed the Child, and sought Him amongst their kindred, but there they found Him not; for whoever seeks Jesus must seek Him in the offices of religion, in the temple, not amongst the engagements and pursuits of worldly interests: "I forgat also mine own father's house," said David, the father of this holy Child; and so must we, when we run in an enquiry after the Son of David. But our relinquishing must not be a dereliction of duty, but of engagement; our affections toward kindred must always be with charity, and according to the endearments of our relation, but without immersion, and such adherencies as either contradict or lessen our duty towards God.

4. It was a sad effect of their pious journey to lose the joy of their family, and the hopes of all the world: but it often happens that after spiritual employments God seems to absent Himself, and withdraw the sensible effects of His presence, that we may seek Him with the same diligence and care and holy fears with which the holy Virgin-mother sought the blessed Jesus. And it is a design of great mercy in God. to take off the light from the eyes of a holy person, that he may not be abused with complacencies and too confident opinions and reflections upon his fair performances. For we usually judge of the well or ill of our devotions and services by what we feel, and we think God rewards every thing in the present, and by proportion to our own expectations; and if we feel a present rejoicing of spirit, all is well with us, the smoke of the sacrifice ascended right in a holy cloud : but if we feel nothing of comfort, then we count it a prodigy and ominous, and we suspect ourselves; and most commonly we have reason. Such irradiations of cheerfulness are always welcome, but it is not always anger that takes them away: the cloud removed from before the camp of Israel and stood before the host of Pharaoh ; but this was a design of ruin to the Egyptians, and of security to Israel and if those bright angels that go with us to direct our journeys, remove out of our sight and stand behind us, it is not always an argument that the anger of the Lord is gone out against us; but such decays of sense and clouds of spirit are excellent con

servators of humility, and restrain those intemperances and vainer thoughts which we are prompted to in the gaiety of our spirits.

5. But we often give God cause to remove and for a while to absent Himself, and His doing of it sometimes upon the just provocations of our demerits makes us at other times with good reason to suspect ourselves even in our best actions. But sometimes we are vain, or remiss, or pride invades us in the darkness and incuriousness of our spirits, and we have a secret sin which God would have us to enquire after; and when we suspect every thing, and condemn ourselves with strictest and most angry sentence, then, it may be, God will with a ray of light break through the cloud; if not, it is nothing the worse for us: for although the visible remonstrance and face of things in all the absences and withdrawings of Jesus be the same, yet if a sin be the cause of it, the withdrawing is a taking away His favour and His love; but if God does it to secure thy piety and to enflame thy desires, or to prevent a crime, then He withdraws a gift only, nothing of His love, and yet the darkness of the spirit and sadness seem equal. It is hard in these cases to discover the cause, as it is nice to judge the condition of the effect; and therefore it is prudent to ascertain our condition by improving our care and our religion, and in all accidents to make no judgment concerning God's favour by what we feel, but by what we do.

6. When the holy Virgin with much religion and sadness had sought her joy, at last she "found Him disputing among the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions;" and besides that He now first opened a fontinel, and there sprang out an excellent rivulet from His abyss of wisdom, He consigned this truth to His disciples, that they who mean to be doctors and teach others, must in their first accesses and degrees of discipline learn of those whom God and public order hath set over us in the mysteries of religion.

THE PRAYER.

Blessed and most holy Jesus, fountain of grace and comfort, treasure of wisdom and spiritual emanations, be pleased to abide with me for ever by the inhabitation of Thy interior assistances and refreshments; and give me a corresponding love, acceptable and unstained purity, care and watchfulness over my ways, that I may never, by provoking Thee to anger, cause Thee to remove Thy dwelling, or draw a cloud before Thy holy face: but if Thou art pleased upon a design of charity or trial to cover my eyes that I may not behold the bright rays of Thy favour, nor be refreshed with spiritual comforts; let Thy love support my spirit by ways insensible, and in all my needs give me such a portion as may be instrumental and incentive to performance of my duty; and in all accidents let me continue to seek Thee by prayers, and humiliation, and frequent desires, and the strictness of a holy life; that I may follow Thy

example, pursue Thy foot-steps, be supported by Thy strength, guided by Thy hand, enlightened by Thy favour, and may at last after a persevering holiness and an unwearied industry dwell with Thee in the regions of light and eternal glory, where there shall be no fears of parting from the habitations of felicity, and the union and fruition of Thy presence, O blessed and most holy Jesus. Amen.

SECTION VIII.

Of the preaching of John the baptist, preparative to the manifestation of Jesus.

WHEN Herod had drunk so great a draught of blood at Bethlehem, and sought for more from the hill-country, Elizabeth carried her son into the wilderness, there in the desert places and recesses to hide him from the fury of that beast, where she attended him with as much care and tenderness as the affections and fears of a mother could express in the permission of those fruitless solitudes. The child was about eighteen months old when he first fled to sanctuary; but after forty days his mother died, and his father Zachary at the time of his ministration, which happened about this time, was killed in the court of the temple; so that the child was exposed to all the dangers and infelicities of an orphan, in a place of solitariness and discomfort, in a time when a bloody king endeavoured his destruction. But "when his father and mother were taken from him, the Lord took him up." For, according to the tradition of the GreeksP, God deputed an angel to be his nourisher and guardian; as he had formerly done to Ishmael q who dwelt in the wilderness, and to Elias when he fled from the rage of Ahab', so to this child, who came in the spirit of Elias; to make demonstration that there can be no want where God undertakes the care and provision.

2. The entertainment that St. John's proveditore the angel gave him was such as the wilderness did afford, and such as might dispose him to a life of austerity; for there he continued spending his time in meditations, contemplation, prayer, affections and colloquies with God, eating flies and wild honey, not clothed in soft, but a hairy garment and a leathern girdle, till he was thirty years of age. And then, being the fifteenth year of Tiberius, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, "the word of God came unto John in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching and baptizing."

Vestis erat curvi setis conserta cameli,
Contra luxuriem molles duraret ut artus,

Arceretque graves compuncto corpore somos.

Paulinus. [Poem. vi. De S. Joan. Bapt. lin. 228.]

3. This John, according to the prophecies of him and designation of his person by the holy Ghost, was the fore-runner of Christ, sent to dispose the people for His entertainment, and "prepare His ways;" and therefore it was necessary his person should be so extraordinary and full of sanctity, and so clarified by great concurrences and wonder in the circumstances of his life, as might gain credit and reputation to the testimony he was to give concerning his Lord, the Saviour of the world. And so it happened.

4. For as the Baptist, while he was in the wilderness, became the pattern of solitary and contemplative life, a school of virtue, and example of sanctity and singular austerity; so at his emigration from the places of his retirement he seemed, what indeed he was, a rare and excellent personage: and the wonders which were great at his birth, the prediction of his conception by an angel, which never had before happened but in the persons of Isaac and Sampson, the contempt of the world which he bore about him, his mortified countenance and deportment, his austere and eremitical life, his vehement spirit and excellent zeal in preaching, created so great opinions of him among the people, that "all held him for a prophet" in his office, for a heavenly person in his own particular, and a rare example of sanctity and holy life to all others and all this being made solemn and ceremonious by his baptism, he prevailed so, that he made excellent and apt preparations for the Lord's appearing; for "there went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the regions round about Jordan, and were baptized of him, confessing their sins."

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5. The Baptist having by so heavenly means won upon the affections of all men, his sermons and his testimony concerning Christ were the more likely to be prevalent and accepted; and the sum of them was "repentance and dereliction of sins," and "bringing forth the fruits of good life;" in the promoting of which doctrine he was a severe reprehender of the pharisees and sadducees, he exhorted the people to works of mercy, the publicans to do justice and to decline oppression, the soldiers to abstain from plundering and doing violence or rapine: and publishing that " he was not the Christ," that he only "baptized with water," but the Messias should "baptize with the holy Ghost and with fire," he finally denounced judgment and great severities to all the world of impenitents, even abscission and "fire unquenchable." And from this time forward, viz. "from the days of John the baptist, the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent take it by force." For now the gospel began to dawn, and John was like the morning star, or the blushings springing from the windows of the east, foretelling the approach of the Sun of righteousness: and as St. John baptist laid the first rough, hard and unhewn stone of this building in mortification, self-denial, and doing violence to our natural affections; so it was continued by the Master-builder himself, who propounded the glories of the crown of the heavenly kingdom to them only who should climb the cross to reach it. Now it was that multi

tudes should throng and crowd to enter in at the straight gate, and press into the kingdom; and the younger brothers should snatch the inheritance from the elder, the unlikely from the more likely, the gentiles from the Jews, the strangers from the natives, the publicans and harlots from the scribes and pharisees; who, like violent persons, shall by their importunity, obedience, watchfulness, and diligence, snatch the kingdom from them to whom it was first offered; and "Jacob shall be loved, and Esau rejected."

Ad SECTION VIII.

Considerations upon the preaching of John the baptist.

1. FROM the disputation of Jesus with the doctors to the time of His manifestation to Israel, which was eighteen years, the holy Child dwelt in Nazareth in great obedience to His parents, in exemplar modesty, singular humility, working with His hands in His supposed father's trade, for the support of His own and His mother's necessi ties, and that He might bear the curse of Adam, that "in the sweat of His brows He should eat His bread:" all the while "He increased in favour with God and man," sending forth excellent testimonies of a rare spirit and a wise understanding in the temperate instances of such a conversation to which His humility and great obedience had engaged Him. But all this while the stream ran under ground: and though little bubblings were discerned in all the course, and all the way men looked upon Him as upon an excellent person, diligent in His calling, wise and humble, temperate and just, pious and rarely tempered; yet at the manifestation of John the baptist He brake forth like the stream from the bowels of the earth, or the sun from a cloud, and gave us a precedent that we should not shew our lights to minister to vanity, but then only when God, and public order, and just dispositions of men call for a manifestation: and yet the ages of men have been so forward in prophetical ministries, and to undertake ecclesiastical employment, that the viciousness and indiscretions and scandals the church of God feels as great burdens upon the tenderness of her spirit, are in great part owing to the neglect of this instance of the prudence and modesty of the holy Jesus.

2. But now the time appointed was come, the Baptist comes forth upon the theatre of Palestine, a forerunner of the office and publication of Jesus, and by the great reputation of his sanctity prevailed upon the affections and judgment of the people, who with much ease believed his doctrine, when they had reason to approve his life; for the good example of the preacher is always the most prevailing homily, his life is his best sermon. He that will raise affections in his auditory must affect their eyes; for we seldom see the people weep if the orator laughs loud and loosely; and there is no reason to think that his discourse should work more with me than himself. If his