wise man will be hasty to bring ill tidings to the great; rather doth he stay till the importunity of his master should wring it from his unwillingness; and then, as his concealment showed his love, so his full relation shall approve his fidelity. If the heart of Eli had not told him this news, before God told it Samuel, he had never been so instant with Samuel not to conceal it: his conscience did well presage that it concerned himself. Guiltiness needs no prophet to assure it of punishment. The mind that is troubled projecteth terrible things; and though it cannot single out the judgment allotted to it, yet it is in a confused expectation of some grievous evil. Surely Eli could not think it worse than it was; the sentence was fearful, and such as, I wonder, the neck, or the heart of old Eli could hold out the report of: That God swears he will judge Eli's house, and that with beggary, with death, with desolation, and that the wickedness of his house shall not be purged with sacrifice or offerings for ever and yet this, which every Israelite's ear should tingle to hear of, when it should be done, old Eli hears with an unmoved patience and humble submission: "It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good." O admirable faith, and more than human constancy and resolution, worthy of the aged president of Shiloh, worthy of a heart sacrificed to that God, whose justice had refused to expiate his sin by sacrifice! If Eli have been an ill father to his sons, yet he is a good son to God, and is ready to kiss the very rod he shall smart withal; "It is the Lord," whom I have ever found holy and just and gracious, and he cannot but be himself: "Let him do what seemeth him good;" for whatsoever seemeth good to him, cannot but be good, howsoever it seems to me. Every man can open his hand to God while he blesses; but to expose ourselves willingly to the affiicting hand of our Maker, and to kneel to him, while he scourges us, is peculiar only to the faithful.

If ever a good heart could have freed a man from temporal punishments, Eli must needs have escaped. God's anger was appeased by his humble repentance, but his justice must be satisfied. Eli's sin, and his sons', was in the eye and mouth of all Israel; his therefore should have been much wronged by their impunity. Who would not have made these spiritual guides an example of lawlessness, and have said, What care I how I live, if Eli's sons go away unpunished? As not the tears of Eli, so not the words of Samuel, may fall to the ground. We may not measure the displeasure of God by his stripes. Many times, after the remission of the sin, the very chastisements of the Almighty are deadly. No repentance can assure us, that we shall not smart with outward afflictions; that can prevent the eternal displeasure of God, but still it may be necessary and good we should be corrected: our care and suit must be, that the evils, which shall not be averted, may be sanctified.

If the prediction of these evils were fearful, what shall the execution be? The presumption of the ill-taught Israelites shall give occasion to this judgment; for, being smitten before the Philistines, they send for the ark into the field. Who gave them authority to command the ark of God at their pleasure? Here was no consulting with the ark, which they would fetch; no inquiry of Samuel, whether they should fetch it; but a heady resolution of presumptuous elders to force God into the

field, and to challenge success. If God were not with the ark, why did they send for it, and rejoice in the coming of it? If God were with it, why was not his allowance asked that it should come? How can the people be good, where the priests are wicked? When the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts, that dwells between the cherubims, was brought into the host, though with mean and wicked attendance, Israel doth, as it were, fill the heaven, and shake the earth with shouts; as if the ark and victory were no less inseparable, than they and their sins. Even the lewdest men will be looking for favour from that God, whom they cared not to displease, contrary to the conscience of their deservings. Presumption doth the same in wicked men, which faith doth in the holiest. Those, that regarded not the God of the ark, think themselves safe and happy in the ark of God. Vain men are transported with a confidence in the outside of religion, not regarding the substance and soul of it, which only can give them true peace. But, rather than God will humour superstition in Israelites, he will suffer his own ark to fall into the hands of Philistines. Rather will he seem to slacken his hand of protection, than he will be thought to have his hands bound by a formal misconfidence. The slaughter of the Israelites was no plague to this; it was a greater plague rather to them that should survive and behold it. The two sons of Eli, which had helped to corrupt their brethren, die by the hands of the uncircumcised, and are now too late separated from the ark of God by Philistines, which should have been before separated by their father. They had lived formerly to bring God's altar into contempt, and now live to carry his ark into captivity: and, at last, as those that had made up the measure of their wickedness, are slain in their sin.

Ill news doth ever either run or fly. The man of Benjamin, which ran from the host, hath soon filled the city with outcries, and Eli's ears with the cry of the city. The good old man, after ninety and eight years, sits in the gate, as one that never thought himself too aged to do God service, and hears the news of Israel's discomfiture, and his son's death, though with sorrow, yet with patience: but when the messenger tells him of the ark of God taken, he can live no longer; that word strikes him down backward from his throne, and kills him in the fall. No sword of a Philistine could have slain him more painfully: neither know I whether his neck or his heart were first broken. O fearful judgment, that ever any Israelite's ear could tingle withal! The ark lost! What good man would wish to live without God? Who can choose but think he hath lived too long, that hath overlived the testimonies of God's presence with his church? Yea, the very daughter-in-law of Eli, a woman, the wife of a lewd husband, when she was at once travailing, (upon that tidings,) and in that travail dying, to make up the full sum of God' judgment upon that wicked house, as one insensible of the death of her father, of her husband, of herself, in comparison of this loss, calls her (then unseasonable) son Ichabod, and with her last breath says, glory is departed from Israel, the ark is taken." What cares she for a posterity which should want the ark? What cares she for a son come into the world of Israel, when God was gone from it? And how willingly doth she depart from them, from whom God was departed! Not

"The

outward magnificence, not state, not wealth, not favour of the mighty, but the presence of God in his ordinances, are the glory of Israel; the subduing whereof is a greater judgment than destruction.

O Israel, worse now than no people! a thousand times more miserable than Philistines! Those Pagans went away triumphing with the ark of God and victory, and leave the remnants of the chosen people to lament that they once had a God.

O cruel and wicked indulgence, that is now found guilty of the death, not only of the priests and people, but of religion! Unjust mercy can never end in less than blood: and it were well, if only the body should have cause to complain of that kind cruelty.

BOOK XII.

CONTEMPLATION L-ARK AND DAGON.

IF men did not mistake God, they could not arise to such height of impiety; the acts of his just judgment are imputed to impotence. That God would send his ark captive to the Philistines, is so construed by them, as if he could not keep it. The wife of Phinehas cried out, that glory was departed from Israel; the Philistines dare say in triumph that glory is departed from the God of Israel. The ark was not Israel's but God's; this victory reaches higher than to men. Dagon had never so great a day, so many sacrifices, as now that he seems to take the God of Israel prisoner. Where should the captive be bestowed, but in custody of the victor? It is not love, but insultation, that lodges the ark close beside Dagon. What a spectacle was this, to see uncircumcised Philistines laying their profane hands upon the testimony of God's presence! to see the glorious mercy-seat under the roof of an idol: to see the two cherubims spreading their wings under a false god!

O the deep and holy wisdom of the Almighty, which overreaches all the finite conceits of his creatures, who, while he seems most to neglect himself, fetches about most glory to his own name ! He winks, and sits still on purpose to see what men would do, and is content to suffer indignity from his creature for a time, that he may be everlastingly magnified in his justice and power. That honour pleaseth God and men best, which is raised out of contempt.

The ark of God was not used to such porters: the Philistines carry it unto Ashdod that the victory of Dagon may be more glorious. What pains superstition puts men unto, for the triumph of a false cause! And if profane Philistines can think it no toil to carry the ark where they should not, what a shame is it for us, if we do not gladly attend it where we should! How justly may God's truth scorn the imparity of our zeal !

If the Israelites did put confidence in the ark, can we marvel, that the Philistines did put confidence in that power, which, as they thought, had conquered the ark? The less is ever subject unto the greater; what could they now think, but that heaven and earth were theirs?

Who

shall stand out against them, when the God of Israel hath yielded? Security and presumption attend ever at the threshold of ruin.

God will let them sleep in this confidence; in the morning they shall find how vainly they have dreamed. Now they begin to find they have but gloried in their own plague, and overthrown nothing but their own peace. Dagon hath a house, when God hath but a tabernacle. It is no measuring of religion by outward glory. Into this house the proud Philistines come, the next morning, to congratulate unto their god, so great a captive, such divine spoils, and, in their early devotions, to fall down before him, under whom the God of Israel was fallen; and lo! where they find their god fallen down on the ground upon his face, before him whom they thought both his prisoner and theirs. Their god is forced to do that, which they should have done voluntarily; although God casts down that dumb rival of his for scorn, not for adoration. O ye foolish Philistines, could ye think that the same house would hold God and Dagon? Could ye think a senseless stone a fit companion and guardian for the living God? Had ye laid your Dagon upon his face, prostrate before the ark, yet would not God have endured the indignity of such a lodging; but now that ye presume to set up your carved stone equal to his cherubims, go read your folly in the floor of your temple; and know, that He, which cast your God so low, can cast you lower.

The true God owes a shame to those which will be making matches between himself and Belial.

But this perhaps was only a mischance, or a neglect of attendance. Lay to your hands, O ye Philistines, and raise up Dagon into his place. It is a miserable god that needs helping up: had ye not been more senseless than that stone, how could you choose but think, How shall he raise us above our enemies, that cannot rise alone? How shall he establish us in the station of our peace, that cannot hold his own foot? If Dagon did give the foil unto the God of Israel, what power is it that hath cast him upon his face, in his own temple? It is just with God, that those which want grace, shall want wit too. It is the power of superstition to turn men into those stocks and stones which they worship: they that make them are like unto them. Doubtless this first fall of Dagon was kept as secret, and excused as well as it might, and served rather for astonishment than conviction; there was more strangeness than horror in that accident. That whereas Dagon had wont to stand, and the Philistines fall down,-now Dagon fell down and the Philistines stood, and must become the patrons of their own god; their god worships them upon his face, and craves more help from them than ever he could give. But, if their sottishness can digest this, all is well.

Dagon is set in his place, and now those hands are lift up to him which helped to lift him up; and those faces are prostrate unto him, before whom he lay prostrate. Idolatry and superstition are not easily put out of countenance; but will the jealousy of the true God put it up thus? shall Dagon escape with a harmless fall? Surely, if they had let him lie still upon the pavement, perhaps that insensible statue had found no other revenge; but now they will be advancing it to the rood-loft again, and affront God's ark with it; the event will shame them, and let them know, how much God scorns a partner, either of his own making or theirs.

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The morning is fittest for devotion; then do the Philistines flock to the temple of their God. What a shame is it for us to come late to ours! Although not so much piety as curiosity did now hasten their speed, to see what rest their Dagon was allowed to get in his own roof: and now, behold, their kind god is come to meet them in the way; some pieces of him salute their eyes upon the threshold. Dagon's head and hands are overrun their fellows, to tell the Philistines how much they were mistaken in a god.

This second fall breaks the idol in pieces, and threats the same confusion to the worshippers of it. Easy warnings neglected end ever in destruction. The head is for devising, the hand for execution; in these two powers of their god did the Philistines chiefly trust; these are therefore laid under their feet upon the threshold, that they might afar off see their vanity, and that, if they would, they might set their foot on that best piece of their god, whereon their heart was set.

There was nothing wherein that idol resembled a man, but in his head and hands, the rest was but a scaly portraiture of a fish; God would therefore separate from this stone that part which had mocked man with the counterfeit of himself; that man might see what an unworthy lump he had matched with himself, and set up above himself. The just quarrel of God is bent upon those means, and that parcel, which have dared to rob him of his glory.

How can the Philistines now miss the sight of their own folly? How can they be but enough convicted of their mad idolatry, to see their god lie broken to morsels under their feet; every piece whereof proclaims the power of Him that brake it, and the stupidity of those that adored it! Who would expect any other issue of this act, but to hear the Philistines say, We now see how superstition hath blinded us! Dagon is no god for us; our hearts shall never more rest upon a broken statue; that only true God which hath broken ours, shall challenge us by the right of conquest. But here was none of this; rather a further degree of their dotage follows upon this palpable conviction; they cannot yet suspect that god, whose head they may trample upon; but, instead of hating their Dagon, that lay broken upon their threshold, they honour the threshold on which Dagon lay, and dare not set their foot on that place, which was hallowed by the broken head and hands of their deity. O the obstinacy of idolatry, which, where it hath got hold of the heart, knows neither to blush nor yield, but rather gathers strength from that which might justly confound it! The hand of the Almighty, which moved them not, in falling upon their God, falls now nearer them upon their persons, and strikes them in their bodies, which would not feel themselves stricken in their idol. Pain shall humble them whom shame cannot. Those, which had entertained the secret thoughts of abominable idolatry within them, are now plagued in the inwardest and most secret part of their bodies, with a loathsome disease; and now grow weary of themselves, instead of their idolatry. I do not hear them acknowledge it was God's hand which had stricken Dagon their god, till now they find themselves stricken. God's judgments are the rack of godless men; if one strain make them not confess, let them be stretched but one wrench higher, and they cannot be silent. The just avenger of