would not requite, no, nor mitigate to them one hour's misery. Foolish men will be struggling with God, till they be utterly either breathless or impotent. Their hope was, that time might abate displeasure, even while they persisted to offend. The false hopes of worldly men cost them dear; they could not be so miserable, if their own hearts did not deceive them with misexpectations of impossible favour.

In matters that concern a God, who is so fit to be consulted with as the priests? The princes of the Philistines had before given their voices; yet nothing is determined, nothing is done without the direction and assent of those whom they accounted sacred. Nature itself sends us, in divine things, to those persons whose calling is divine. It is either distrust, or presumption, or contempt, that carries us our own ways in spiritual matters, without advising with them whose lips God hath appointed to preserve knowledge. There cannot but arise many difficulties in us about the ark of God: whom should we consult with, but those which have the tongue of the learned?

Doubtless, this question of the ark did abide much debating. There wanted not fair probabilities on both sides. A wise Philistine might well plead, if God had either so great care of the ark, or power to retain it, how is it become ours? A wiser than he would reply, If the God of Israel had wanted either care or power, Dagon and we had been still whole: why do we thus groan and die, all that are but within the air of the ark, if a divine hand do not attend it? Their smart pleads enough for the dismission of the ark. The next demand of their priests and soothsayers is, how it should be sent home. Affliction had made them so wise, as to know, that every fashion of parting with the ark would not satisfy the owner. Oftentimes the circumstance of an action mars the substance, In divine matters we must not only look that the body of our service be sound, but that the clothes be fit. Nothing hinders, but that sometimes good advice may fall from the mouth of wicked men. These superstitious priests can counsel them, not to send away the ark of God empty, but to give it a sin-offering. They had not lived so far from the smoke of the Jewish altars, but that they knew God was accustomed to manifold oblations, and chiefly those of expiation. No Israelite could have said better: superstition is the ape of true devotion; and if we look not to the ground of both, many

times it is hard, by the very outward acts, to distinguish them. Nature itself teacheth us, that God loves a full hand: he that hath been so bountiful to us as to give us all, looks for a return of some offering from us. If we present him with nothing but our sins, how can we look to be accepted? The sacrifices under the gospel are spiritual; with these must we come into the presence of God, if we desire to carry away remission and favour.

The Philistines knew well, that it were bootless for them to offer what they listed; their next suit is to be directed in the matter of their oblation. Pagans can teach us how unsafe it is to walk in the ways of religion without a guide; yet here their best teachers can but guess at their duty, and must devise for the people that which the people durst not impose upon themselves. The golden emerods and mice were but conjectural prescripts. With what security may we consult with them, which have their directions from the mouth and hand of the Almighty.

God struck the Philistines at once in their god, in their bodies, in their land: in their god, by his ruin and dismembering; in their bodies, by the emerods; in their land, by the mice. That base vermin did God send among them, on purpose to shame their Dagon and them, that they might see how unable their god was, which they thought the victor of the ark, to subdue the least mouse, which the true God did create, and command to plague them. This plague upon their fields began together with that upon their bodies; it was mentioned, not complained of, till they think of dismissing the ark. Greater crosses do commonly swallow up the less; at least, lesser evils are either silent or unheard, while the ear is filled with the clamour of greater. Their very princes were punished with the mice, as well as with the emerods. God knows no persons in the execution of judgments; the least and meanest of all God's creatures, is sufficient to be the revenger of his Creator.

God sent them mice, and emerods of flesh and blood: they return him both these of gold, to imply both that these judgments came out from God, and that they did gladly give him the glory of that whereof he gave them pain and sorrow, and that they would willingly buy off their pain with the best of their substance. The proportion betwixt the complaint and satisfaction is more precious to him than the metal. There

was a public confession in this resemblance, which is so pleasing unto God, that he rewards it, even in wicked men, with a relaxation of outward punishment. The number was no less significant than the form: five golden emerods and mice, for the five princes and divisions of Philistines. As God made no difference in punishing, so they make none in their oblation. The people are comprised in them, in whom they are united, their several princes: they were one with their prince, their offspring is one with his; as they were ring-leaders in the sin, so they must be in the satisfaction. In a multitude it is ever seen, as in a beast, that the body follows the head. Of all others, great men had need look to their ways; it is in them, as in figures, one stands for a thousand. One offering serves not all, there must be five, according to the five heads of the offence. Generalities will not content God; every man must make his several peace, if not in himself, yet in his head. Nature taught them a shadow of that, the substance and perfection whereof is taught us by the grace of the gospel. Every soul must satisfy God, if not in itself, yet in him in whom we are both one, and absolute. We are the body, whereof Christ is the head; our sin is in ourselves, our satisfaction must be in him.

Samuel himself could not have spoken more divinely than these priests of Dagon; they do not only talk of giving glory to the God of Israel, but fall into an holy and grave expostulation; wherefore then should ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts, when he wrought wonderfully amongst them? &c. They confess a super-eminent and revenging hand of God over their gods, they parallel their plagues with the Egyptian, they make use of Pharaoh's sin and judgment; what could be better said? All religions have afforded them that could speak well. These good words left them still both Philistines and superstitious. How should men be hyprocrites, if they had not good tongues? Yet, as wickedness can hardly hide itself, these holy speeches are not without a tincture of that idolatry, wherewith the heart. was infected; for they profess care not only of the persons and lands of the Philistines, but of their gods; "That he may take his hand from you, and from your gods." Who would think that wisdom and folly could lodge so near together, that the same men should have care both of the glory of the true God, and preservation of the false! That they should

be so vain as to take thought for those gods which they granted to be obnoxious unto an higher Deity! Ofttimes even one word bewrayeth a whole pack of falsehood; and though superstition be a cleanly counterfeit, yet some one slip of the tongue discovers it; as we say of devils, which, though they put on fair forms, yet are they known by their cloven feet.

What other warrant these superstitious priests had for the main substance of their advice, I know not; sure I am, the probability of the event was fair, that two kine, never used to any yoke, should run from their calves, which were newly shut up from them, to draw the ark home into a contrary way, must needs argue an hand about nature. What else should overrule brute creatures to prefer a forced carriage unto a natural burden? What should carry them from their own home, towards the home of the ark? What else should guide an untamed and untaught team, in as right a path towards Israel, as their teachers could have gone? What else could make very beasts more wise than their masters? There is a special providence of God in the very motions of brute creatures; neither Philistines nor Israelites saw ought that drove them, yet they saw them so run as those that were led by a divine conduct. The reasonless creatures also do the will of their Maker; every act that is done either by them, or to them, makes up the decree of the Almighty: and if in extraordinary actions and events his hand is more visible, yet it is no less certainly present in the common.

Little did the Israelites of Beth-shemesh look for such a sight, while they were reaping their wheat in the valley, as to see the ark of God come running to them without a convoy : neither can it be said, whether they were more affected with joy, or with astonishment; with joy at the presence of the ark, with astonishment at the miracle of the transportation. Down went their sickles, and now every man runs to reap the comfort of this better harvest, to meet that bread of angels, to salute those cherubims, to welcome that God, whose absence had been their death. But as it is hard not to overjoy in a sudden prosperity, and to use happiness is no less difficult than to forbear it, these glad Israelites cannot see, but they must gaze; they cannot gaze on the glorious outside, but they must be, whether out of rude jollity, or curiosity, or suspicion of the purloining some of those sacred implements, prying into the secrets of God's ark. Nature is too subject

to extremities, and is ever either too dull in want, or wanton in fruition: it is no easy matter to keep a mean, whether in good or evil.

Beth-shemesh was a city of priests, they should have known better how to demean themselves towards the ark; this privilege doubled their offence. There was no malice in this curious inquisition; the same eyes that looked into the ark, looked also up to heaven in their offerings; and the same hands that touched it, offered sacrifice to the God that brought it. Who could expect any thing now but acceptation? Who would suspect any danger? It is not a following act of devotion that can make amends for a former sin. There was a death owing them immediately upon their offence: God will take his own time for the execution. In the mean while they may sacrifice, but they cannot satisfy; they cannot escape. The kine are sacrificed, the cart burns them that drew it. Here was an offering of praise, when they had more need of a trespass-offering. Many an heart is lifted up in a conceit of joy, when it hath just cause of humiliation. God lets them alone with their sacrifice; but, when that is done, he comes over them with a back-reckoning for their sin. Fifty thousand and seventy Israelites are struck dead, for this unreverence to the ark. A woeful welcome for the ark of God into the borders of Israel! It killed them for looking into it, who thought it their life to see it. It dealt blows and death on both hands, to Philistines, to Israelites; to both of them for profaning it, the one with their idol, the other with their eyes. It is a fearful thing to use the holy ordinances of God with an unreverent boldness. Fear and trembling become us, in our access to the majesty of the Almighty. Neither was there more state than secrecy in God's ark. Some things the wisdom of God desires to conceal. The unreverence of the Israelites was no more faulty than their curiosity. "Secret things belong to God; things revealed, to us, and to our children."

CONTEMPLATION III.

The Remove of the Ark.

I HEAR of the Beth-shemites' lamentation, I hear not of their repentance they complain of their smart, they complain not