than with suspicion. It grieves Joseph to see their fear, and to find they had not forgotten their own sin, and to hear them so passionately crave that which they had.

"Forgive the trespass of the servants of thy father's God." What a conjuration of pardon was this! What wound could be either so deep, or so festered, as this plaster could not cure! They say not, the sons of thy father, for they knew Jacob was dead, and they had degenerated; but the servants of thy father's God. How much stronger are the bonds of religion than of nature! If Joseph had been rancorous, this deprecation had charmed him; but now it dissolves him into tears: they are not so ready to acknowledge their old offence, as he to protest his love; and if he chide them for any thing, it is for that they thought they needed to entreat; since they might know it could not stand with the fellowservant of their father's God to harbour maliciousness, to purpose revenge. "Am not I under God?" And, fully to secure them, he turns their eyes from themselves to the decree of God, from the action to the event; as one that would have them think, there was no cause to repent of that which proved so successful.

Even late confession finds forgiveness. Joseph had long ago seen their sorrow, never but now heard he their humble acknowledgment. Mercy stays not for outward solemnities. How much more shall that infinite goodness pardon our sins, when he finds the truth of our repentance !

BOOK IV.

CONTEMPLATION I.-OF THE AFFLICTION OF ISRAEL.

EGYPT was long an harbour to the Israelites; now it proves a jail: the posterity of Jacob finds too late, what it was for their forefathers to sell Joseph a slave into Egypt. Those whom the Egyptians honoured before as lords, now they contemn as drudges. One Pharaoh advances, whom another labours to depress. Not seldom the same man changes copies : but if favours outlive one age, they prove decrepit and heartless. It is a rare thing to find posterity heirs of their father's love. How should men's favour be but like themselves, variable and inconstant ? There is no certainty but in the favour of God, in whom can be no change, whose love is intailed upon a thousand generations.

Yet if the Israelites had been treacherous to Pharaoh, if disobedient, this great change of countenance had been just now the only offence of Israel is, that he prospereth. That which should be the motive of their gratulation and friendship, is the cause of their malice. There is no more hateful sight to a wicked man, than the prosperity of the conscionable.

None but the Spirit of that true harbinger of Christ, can teach us to say with contentment, "He must increase, but I must decrease."

And what if Israel be mighty and rich? "If there be war, they may join with our enemies, and get them out of the land." Behold, they are afraid to part with those whom they are grieved to entertain: either staying or going is offence enough to those that seek quarrels: there were no wars, and yet they say, If there be wars. The Israelites had never

given cause of fear to revolt, and yet they say, "Lest they join to our enemies," to those enemies which we may have: so they make their certain friends slaves for fear of uncertain enemies. Wickedness is ever cowardly, and full of unjust suspicions; it makes a man fear, where no fear is fly, when none pursues him. What difference there is betwixt David and Pharaoh! The faith of the one says, "I will not be afraid for ten thousand that should beset me:" the fear of the other says, "Lest, if there be war, they join with our enemies;" therefore should he have made much of the Israelites, that they might be his: his favour might have made them firm. Why might they not as well draw their swords for him?

Weak and base minds ever incline to the worse, and seek safety rather in an impossibility of hurt, than in the likelihood of just advantage. Favours had been more binding than cruelties: yet the foolish Egyptian had rather have impotent servants, than able friends. For their welfare alone Pharaoh owes Israel a mischief; and how will he pay it?

"Come let us work wisely." Lewd men call wicked policies wisdom, and their success happiness. Herein Satan is wiser than they, who both lays the plot, and makes them such fools as to mistake villany and madness for the best virtue.

Injustice is upheld by violence, whereas just governments are maintained by love. Task-masters must be set over Israel; they should not be the true seed of Israel, if they were not still set to wrestle with God in afflic tions: heavy burdens must be laid upon them. Israel is never but loaded the destiny of one of Jacob's sons is common to all, to lie down betwixt their burdens. If they had seemed to breathe them in Goshen sometimes, yet even there it was no small misery to be foreigners, and to live among idolaters; but now the name of a slave is added to the name of a stranger. Israel hath gathered some rust in idolatrous Egypt, and now he must be scoured: they had borne the burden of God's anger, if they had not borne the burdens of the Egyptians.

As God afflicted them with another mind than the Egyptians (God to exercise them, the Egyptians to suppress them), so causes he the event to differ. Who would not have thought with these Egyptians, that so extreme misery should not have made the Israelites unfit, both for generation and resistance? Moderate exercise strengthens, extreme destroys nature that God, which many times works by contrary means, caused them to grow with depression, with persecution to multiply. How can God's church but fare well, since the very malice of their enemies benefits them! Oh the sovereign goodness of our God, that turns all our poisons into cordials! God's vine bears the better with bleeding.

And now the Egyptians could be angry with their own maliciousness, that this was the occasion of multiplying them whom they hated and feared; to see that this service gained more to the workmen than to their masters: the stronger therefore the Israelites grew, the more impotent grew the malice of their persecutors. And since their own labour strengthens them, now tyranny will try what can be done by the violence of others. Since the present strength cannot be subdued, the hopes of succession must be prevented: women must be suborned to be murderers; and those whose office is to help the birth, must destroy it.

There was less suspicion of cruelty in that sex, and more opportunity

of doing mischief. The male children must be born, and die at once. What can be more innocent than the child that hath not lived so much as to cry, or to see light? It is fault enough to be the son of an Israelite. The daughters may live for bondage, for lust; a condition so much (at the least) worse than death, as their sex was weaker. O marvellous cruelty, that a man should kill a man for his sex's sake! Whosoever hath loosed the reins unto cruelty, is easily carried into incredible extremities.

From burdens they proceed to bondage, and from bondage to blood: from an unjust vexation of their body, to an inhuman destruction of the fruit of their body. As the sins of the concupiscible part, from slight motions, grow on to foul executions, so do those of the irascible. There is no sin whose harbour is more unsafe than that of malice: but ofttimes the power of tyrants answers not their will. Evil commanders cannot always meet with equally mischievous agents.

The fear of God teaches the midwives to disobey an unjust command; they well knew how no excuse it is for evil, I was bidden. God said to their hearts, "Thou shalt not kill." This voice was louder than Pharaoh's. I commend their obedience in disobeying; I dare not commend their excuse. There was as much weakness in their answer, as strength in their practice: as they feared God in not killing, so they feared Pharaoh in dissembling. Ofttimes those that make conscience of greater sins are overtaken with less. It is well and rare, if we can come forth of a dangerous action without any soil; and if we have escaped the storm, that some after-drops wet us not.

Who would not have expected that the midwives should be murdered, for not murdering? Pharaoh could not be so simple to think these women trusty; yet his indignation had no power to reach to their punishment. God prospered the midwives: who can harm them? Even the not doing of evil is rewarded with good. And why did they prosper? Because they feared God; not for their dissimulation, but their piety; so did God regard their mercy, that he regarded not their infirmity. How fondly do men lay the thank upon the sin, which is due to the virtue. True wisdom teaches to distinguish God's actions, and to ascribe them to the right causes: pardon belongs to the lie of the midwives, and remuneration to their goodness; prosperity to their fear of God.

But that which the midwives will not, the multitude shall do. It were strange if wicked rulers should not find some or other instruments of violence: all the people must drown whom the women saved: cruelty hath but smoked before, now it flames up; secret practising hath made it shameless, that now it dare proclaim tyranny. It is a miserable state, where every man is made an executioner. There can be no greater argument of an ill cause, than a bloody persecution; whereas truth upholds herself by mildness, and is promoted by patience. This is their act, what was their issue? The people must drown their males, themselves are drowned: they die by the same means by which they caused the Israelitish infants to die. That law of retaliation which God will not allow to us, because we are fellow-creatures, he justly practiseth in us. God would have us read our sins in our judgments, that we might both repent of our sins and give glory to his justice.

Pharaoh raged before; much more now, that he received a message

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of dismission. The monitions of God make ill men worse the waves do not beat, nor roar any where so much as at the bank which restrains them. Corruption, when it is checked, grows mad with rage: as the vapour in a cloud would not make that fearful report, if it met not with opposition. A good heart yields at the stillest voice of God: but the most gracious motions of God harden the wicked. Many would not be so desperately settled in their sins, if the world had not controlled them. How mild a message was this to Pharaoh, and yet how galling! "We pray thee let us go." God commands him that which he feared. He took pleasure in the present servitude of Israel: God calls for a release. If the suit had been for mitigation of labour, for preservation of their children, it might have carried some hope, and have found some favour : but now God requires that which he knows will as much discontent Pharaoh, as Pharaoh's cruelty could discontent the Israelites; "Let us go." How contrary are God's precepts to natural minds! And indeed, as they love to cross him in their practice, so he loves to cross them in their commands before, and his punishments afterwards. It is a dangerous sign of an ill heart to feel God's yoke heavy.

Moses talks of sacrifice. Pharaoh talks of work. Any thing seems due work to a carnal mind, saving God's service; nothing superfluous, but religious duties. Christ tells us, there is but one thing necessary; nature tells us, there is nothing but that needless: Moses speaks of devotion, Pharaoh of idleness. It hath been an old use, as to cast fair colours upon our own vicious actions, so to cast evil aspersions upon the good actions of others. The same devil that spoke in Pharaoh, speaks still in our scoffers, and calls religion hypocrisy; conscionable care, singularity. Every vice hath a title, and every virtue a disgrace.

Yet while possible tasks were imposed, there was some comfort: their diligence might save their back from stripes. The conceit of a benefit to the commander, and hope of impunity to the labourer, might give a good pretence to great difficulties. But to require tasks not feasible is tyrannical, and doth only pick a quarrel to punish. They could neither make straw, nor find it, yet they must have it. Do what may be, is tolerable;

but do what cannot be, is cruel. Those which are above others in place, must measure their commands, not by their own wills, but by the strength of their inferiors. To require more of a beast than he can do, is inhuman. The task is not done; the task-masters are beaten the punishment lies where the charge is: they must exact it of the people, Pharaoh of them. It is the misery of those which are trusted with authority, that their inferiors' faults are beaten upon their backs. This was not the fault to require it of the task-masters, but to require it by the task-masters of the people. Public persons do either good or ill with a thousand hands,

and with no fewer shall receive it.

CONTEMPLATION II-OF THE BIRTH AND BREEDING OF MOSES.

It is a wonder that Amram, the father of Moses, would think of the marriage-bed in so troublesome a time, when he knew he should beget children either to slavery or slaughter Yet even now, in the heat of

this bondage, he marries Ichabod. The drowning of his sons was not so great an evil, as his own burning; the thraldom of his daughters not so great an evil, as the subjection unto sinful desires. He therefore uses God's remedy for his sin, and refers the sequel of his danger to God. How necessary is this intimation for those which have not the power of containing! Perhaps he would have thought it better to live childless: but Amram and Ichabod durst not incur the danger of a sin, to avoid the danger of a mischief. No doubt when Ichabod, the mother of Moses, saw a man-child born of her, and him beautiful and comely, she fell into extreme passion, to think that the executioner's hand should succeed the midwife's. All the time of her conception, she could not but fear a son; now she sees him, and thinks of his birth and death at once: her second throes are more grievous than her first. The pains of travail in others are somewhat mitigated with hope, and countervailed with joy, that a man-child is born; in her they are doubled with fear. The remedy of others is her complaint. Still she looks when some fierce Egyptian would come in, and snatch her new-born infant out of her bosom, whose comeliness had now also added to her affection.

Many times God writes presages of majesty and honour, even in the faces of children. Little did she think that she held in her lap the deliverer of Israel. It is good to hazard in greatest appearances of danger. If Ichabod had said, If I bear a son, they will kill him; where had been the great rescuer of Israel? Happy is that resolution which can follow God hoodwinked, and let him dispose of the event. When she can no longer hide him in her womb, she hides him in her house, afraid lest every one of his cryings should guide the executioners to his cradle. And now she sees her treasure can be no longer hid, she ships him in a bark of bulrushes, and commits him to the mercy of the waves, and (which was more merciless) to the danger of an Egyptian passenger, yet doth she not leave him without a guardian.

No tyranny can forbid her to love him whom she is forbidden to keep. Her daughter's eyes must supply the place of her arms. And if the weak affection of a mother were thus effectually careful, what shall we think of Him whose love, whose compassion, is (as himself) infinite? His eye, his hand, cannot but be with us, even when we forsake ourselves. Moses had never a stronger protection about him, no, not when all his Israelites were pitched about his tent in the wilderness, than now when he lay sprawling alone upon the waves: no water, no Egyptian can hurt him. Neither friend nor mother dare own him, and now God challenges his custody. When we seem most neglected and forlorn in ourselves, then is God most present, most vigilant.

His providence brings Pharaoh's daughter thither to wash herself. Those times looked for no great state: a princess comes to bathe herself in the open stream. She meant only to wash herself: God fetches her thither to deliver the deliverer of his people. His designs go beyond ours. We know not (when we set our foot over our threshold) what he hath to do with us. This event seemed casual to this princess, but predetermined and provided by God before she was. How wisely and sweetly God brings to pass his own purposes, in our ignorance and regardlessness! She saw the ark, opens it, finds the child weeping his beauty and his tears had God provided for the strong persuasions of mercy.

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