from ourselves: and better yet, if the beauty of the tabernacle be covered with skins, that none of our beauties be seen but by worshippers, that is, when the glory of God and the interests of religion or charity are concerned in their publication. For so it happened to be in the case of the blessed Virgin, as she related to her cousin Elizabeth; and so it happened not to be, as she referred to her husband Joseph.

9. The holy Virgin could not but know that Joseph would be troubled with sorrow and insecure apprehensions concerning her being with child; but such was her innocence and her confidence in God, that she held her peace, expecting which way God would provide a remedy to the inconvenience: for if we "commit ourselves to God in well-doing, as unto a faithful creator," preserving the tranquillity of our spirits and the evenness of our temper in the assault of infamy and disreputation, God, who loves our innocence, will be its patron, and will assert it from the scandal, if it be expedient for us: if it be not, it is not fit we should desire it. But if the holy Jesus did suffer His mother to fall into misinterpretation and suspect, which could not but be a great affliction to her excellent spirit, rarely tempered, as an eye, highly sensible of every ruder touch, we must not think it strange, if we be tried and pressed with a calamity and unhandsome accidents: only remember, that God will find a remedy to the trouble, and will sanctify the affliction, and secure the person, if we be innocent, as was the holy Virgin.

10. But Joseph was not hasty in the execution of his purposes, nor of making his thoughts determinate, but stood long in deliberation, and longer before he acted it, because it was an invidious matter, and a rigour. He was, first, to have defamed and accused her publicly, and, being convicted, by the law she was to die, if he had gone the ordinary way; but he, who was a just man, that is, according to the style of scripture and other wise writers", "a good, a charitable man," found that it was more agreeable to justice to treat an offending person with the easiest sentence, than to put things to extremity, and render the person desperate and without remedy, and provoked by the suffering of the worst of what she could fear. No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence1. A just man does justice to every man, and to every thing; and then, if he be also wise, he knows there is a debt of mercy and compassion due to the infirmities of a man's nature, and that debt is to be paid: and he that is cruel and ungentle to a sinning person, and does the worst thing to him, dies in his debt, and is unjust. Pity, and forbearance, and long-suffering, and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking things in the

1 John i. 9; Psalm cxi. 3. Aikaιoσύνη, χρηστότης, ἀγαθότης, φιλανθρωπία. -Philostr. De vita Apollon. [lib. iii. c. 7. p. 131.]

1 Non solum ab ultionis atrocitate, sed etiam ab accusationis severitate, aliena justi persona est.-S. Ambros. [In Psalm. cxviii. § 24. tom. i. col. 1051.]

best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as certainly our duty and owing to every person that does offend and can repent, as calling men to account can be owing to the law; and are first to be paid; and he that does not so, is an unjust person: which because Joseph was not, he did not call furiously for justice, or pretend that God required it at his hands presently, to undo a suspected person, but waved the killing letter of the law, and secured his own interest and his justice too, by intending to dismiss her privately. But, before the thing was irremediable, God ended his question by a heavenly demonstration, and sent an angel to reveal to him the innocence of his spouse, and the divinity of her son; and that He was an immediate derivative from heaven, and the heir of all the world. And in all our doubts we shall have a resolution from heaven, or some of its ministers, if we have recourse thither for a guide, and be not hasty in our discourses, or inconsiderate in our purposes, or rash in judgment. For God loves to give assistances to us, when we most fairly and prudently endeavour that grace be not put to do all our work, but to facilitate our labour; not creating new faculties, but improving those of nature. If we consider warily, God will guide us in the determination; but a hasty person outruns his guide, prevaricates his rule, and very often engages upon error.

THE PRAYER.

O holy Jesu, Son of the eternal God, Thy glory is far above all heavens, and yet Thou didst descend to earth, that Thy descent might be the more gracious, by how much Thy glories were admirable, and natural, and inseparable: I adore Thy holy humanity with humble veneration, and the thankful addresses of religious joy, because Thou hast personally united human nature to the eternal Word, carrying it above the seats of the highest cherubim. This great and glorious mystery is the honour and glory of man. It was the expectation of our fathers, who saw the mysteriousness of Thy incarnation at great and obscure distances. And blessed be Thy name, that Thou hast caused me to be born after the fulfilling of Thy prophecies, and the consummation and exhibition of so great a love, so great mysteriousness. Holy Jesu, though I admire and adore the immensity of Thy love and condescension, who wert pleased to undergo our burdens and infirmities for us; yet I abhor myself, and detest my own impurities, which were so great, and contradictory to the excellency of God, that, to destroy sin, and save us, it became necessary that Thou shouldst be sent into the world, to die our death for us, and to give us of Thy life.

II.

Dearest Jesu, Thou didst not breathe one sigh, nor shed one drop of blood, nor weep one tear, nor suffer one stripe, nor preach one

sermon for the salvation of the devils: and what sadness and shame is it then, that I should cause so many insufferable loads of sorrows to fall upon Thy sacred head! Thou art wholly given for me, wholly spent upon my uses, and wholly for every one of the elect. Thou in the beginning of the work of our redemption didst suffer nine months' imprisonment in the pure womb of Thy holy mother, to redeem me from the eternal servitude of sin, and its miserable consequents. Holy Jesu, let me be born anew, receive a new birth and a new life, imitating Thy graces and excellencies, by which Thou art beloved of Thy Father, and hast obtained for us a favour and atonement. Let Thy holy will be done by me, let all Thy will be wrought in me, let Thy will be wrought concerning me; that I may do Thy pleasure, and submit to the dispensation of Thy providence, and conform to Thy holy will, and may for ever serve Thee in the communion of saints, in the society of Thy redeemed ones now, and in the glories of eternity. Amen.

SECTION III.

The nativity of our blessed Saviour Jesus.

1. THE holy maid longed to be a glad mother; and she who carried a burden whose proper commensuration is the days of eternity, counted the tedious minutes, expecting when the Sun of righteousness should break forth from His bed, where nine months He hid Himself as behind a fruitful cloud. About the same time, God, who in His infinite wisdom does concentre and tie together in one end things of disparate and disproportionate natures, making things improbable to co-operate to what wonder or to what truth He pleases, brought the holy Virgin to Bethlehem, the city of David, "to be taxed" with her husband Joseph, according to a decree upon all the world, issuing from Augustus Cæsark. But this happened in this conjunction of time, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet Micah, "And thou Bethlehem in the land of Judah art not the least among the princes of Judah, for out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule My people Israel." This rare act of providence was highly remarkable, because this taxing seems wholly to have been ordered by God to serve and minister to the circumstances of this birth'. For this taxing was not in order to tribute: Herod was now king, and received all the revenues of the

* Ην δὴ οὖν τοῦτο δεύτερον καὶ τεσσα ρακοστὸν ἔτος τῆς Αὐγούστου βασιλείας, Αἰγύπτου δ' ὑποταγῆς καὶ τῆς τελευτῆς Αντωνίου καὶ Κλεοπάτρας . . ὄγδοον ἔτος Kai eixoσTóv.-Euseb. H. E. [lib. i. c. 5. p. 17.] Anno scil. tertio Olympiad.

194. Cæsare Augusto et Plautio Silano Coss.

1 Ὁ Αὔγουστος ὑπηρετεῖται τῷ ἐν Βηθε λεὲμ τόκῳ διὰ τοῦ προστάγματος τῆς ἀποYpapns.-S. Chrysost. [Hom. viii. in Matt., tom. vii. p. 125.]

fiscus, and paid to Augustus an appointed tribute, after the manner of other kings, friends and relatives of the Roman empire; neither doth it appear that the Romans laid a new tribute on the Jews before the confiscation of the goods of Archelaus. Augustus therefore, sending special delegates to tax every city, made only an inquest after the strength of the Roman empire in men and monies; and did himself no other advantage, but was directed by Him who rules and turns the hearts of princes, that he might, by verifying a prophecy, signify and publish the divinity of the mission and the birth of Jesus.

m

2. She that had conceived by the operation of that Spirit who dwells within the element of love, was no ways impeded in her journey by the greatness of her burden; but arrived at Bethlehem in the throng of strangers, who had so filled up the places of hospitality and public entertainment, that "there was no room" for Joseph and Mary "in the inn." But yet she felt that it was necessary to retire where she might softly lay her burden, who began now to call at the gates of His prison, and nature was ready to let Him forth. But she that was mother to the king of all the creatures, could find no other but a stable, a cave of a rock", whither she retired; where, when it began to be with her after the manner of women, she humbly bowed her knees, in the posture and guise of worshippers, and in the midst of glorious thoughts and highest speculations "brought forth her first-born into the world."

3. As there was no sin in the conception, so neither had she pains in the production, as the church, from the days of Gregory Nazianzen until now, hath piously believed°; though before his days there were some opinions to the contrary, but certainly neither so pious, nor so reasonable. For to her alone did not the punishment of Eve extend, that "in sorrow she should bring forth:" for where nothing of sin was an ingredient, there misery cannot cohabit. For though amongst the daughters of men many conceptions are innocent and holy, being sanctified by the word of God and prayer, hallowed by marriage, designed by prudence, seasoned by temperance, conducted by religion towards a just, a hallowed, and a holy end, and yet their productions are in sorrow; yet this of the blessed Virgin might be otherwise, because here sin was no relative, and neither was in the principle nor the derivative, in the act nor in the habit, in the root nor in the branch: there was nothing in this but the sanctification of a virgin's womb, and that could not be the parent of sorrow, especially that gate not having been opened by which the curse

m Vide Suidam in verbo απογραφή. [col. 473.] Dio., lib. lvi. [p. 588.] éñeμvev ἄλλους ἄλλῃ τά τε τῶν ἰδιωτῶν καὶ τὰ τῶν πόλεων [κτήματα] ἀπογραψομένους.

Juxta propheticum illud, Esai. xxxiii. 16. οὗτος οἰκήσει ἐν ὑψηλῷ σπηλαίῳ πέτρας ἰσχυρᾶς· ἄρτος δοθήσεται αὐτῷ, apud

LXX., sed hanc periodum Judæi eraserunt ex hebræo textu; sic et Symmachus. [Hexapl. Montf., vol. ii. p. 146.] ἄρτος δοθήσεται, mystice Bethlehem, sive Domus panis, indigitatur.

o Vide Waddingum, [§ ii. cap. 36. p.

270.]

always entered. And as to conceive by the Holy Ghost was glorious, so to bring forth any of "the fruits of the Spirit" is joyful, and full of felicities. And He that came from His grave fast tied with a stone and signature, and into the college of apostles "the doors being shut," and into the glories of His Father through the solid orbs of all the firmament, came also (as the church piously believes) into the world so without doing violence to the virginal and pure body of His mother, that He did also leave her virginity entire, to be as a seal, that none might open the gate of that sanctuary; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, "This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the Lord God of Israel hath entered by it, therefore it shall be shut."

4. Although all the world were concerned in the birth of this great Prince, yet I find no story of any one that ministered at it, save only angels, who knew their duty to their Lord, and the great interests of that person; whom, as soon as He was born, they presented to His mother, who could not but receive Him with a joy next to the rejoicings of glory and beatific vision, seeing Him to be born her son, who was the Son of God, of greater beauty than the sun, purer than angels, more loving than the seraphims, as dear as the eye and heart of God, where He was from eternity engraven, His beloved and His only-begotten.

5. When the virgin mother now felt the first tenderness and yearnings of a mother's bowels, and saw the Saviour of the world born, poor as her fortunes could represent Him, naked as the innocence of Adam, she took Him, and "wrapt Him in swaddling-clothes;" and after she had a while cradled Him in her arms, she "laid Him in a manger;" for so was the design of His humility; that as the last scene of His life was represented among thieves, so the first was amongst beasts, the sheep and the oxen; according to that mysterious hymn of the prophet Habakkuk, "His brightness was as the light; He had horns coming out of His hand, and there was the hiding of His power."

6. But this place, which was one of the great instances of His humility, grew to be as venerable as became an instrument'; and it was consecrated into a church, the crib into an altar, where first lay that "Lamb of God," which afterwards was sacrificed for the sins of all the world. And when Adrian the emperor, who intended a great despite to it, built a temple to Venus and Adonis in that place where the holy virgin-mother, and her more holy Son, were humbly laid; even so he could not obtain but that even amongst the gentile inhabitants of the neighbouring countries it was held in an account far above scandal and contempt. For God can ennoble even the