durable and vigorous effects) will not admit preventions, nor anticipations, nor obligations upon her, for they are precontracts, and she will be left to her liberty. Nature would not be spurred, nor forced to mend her pace; nor power, the power of man, greatness, loves not that kind of violence neither. There are of them that will give, that will do justice, that will pardon, but they have their own seasons for all these, and he that knows not them shall starve before that gift come, and ruin before the justice, and die before the pardon save him. Some tree bears no fruit, except much dung be laid about it; and justice comes not from some till they be richly manured: some trees require much visiting, much watering, much labour; and some men give not their fruits but upon importunity: some trees require incision, and pruning, and lopping; some men must be intimidated and syndicated with commissions, before they will deliver the fruits of justice: some trees require the early and the often access of the sun; some men open not, but upon the favours and letters of court mediation: some trees must be housed and kept within doors; some men lock up, not only their liberality, but their justice and their compassion, till the solicitation of a wife, or a son, or a friend, or a servant, turn the key. Reward is the season of one man, and importunity of another; fear the season of one man, and favour of another; friendship the season of one man, and natural affection of another; and he that knows not their seasons, nor cannot stay them, must lose the fruits: as nature will not, so power and greatness will not be put to change their seasons, and shall we look for this indulgence in a disease, or think to shake it off before it be ripe? All this while, therefore, we are but upon a defensive war, and that is but a doubtful state; especially where they who are besieged do know the best of their defences, and do not know the worst of their enemy's power; when they cannot mend their works within, and the enemy can increase his numbers without. O how many far more miserable, and far more worthy to be less miserable than I, are besieged with this sickness, and lack their sentinels, their physicians to watch, and lack their munition, their cordials to defend, and perish before the enemy's weakness might invite them to sally, before the disease show any declination, or admit any way of working upon itself! In me the siege is so far slackened, as that we may come to fight, and so die in the field, if I die, and not in a prison. M XIX. EXPOSTULATION, Y God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not say a literal God, a God that wouldst be understood literally, and according to the plain sense of all that thou sayest? but thou art also (Lord, I intend it to thy glory, and let no profane misinterpreter abuse it to thy diminution), thou art a figurative, a metaphorical God too; a God in whose words there is such a height of figures, such voyages, such peregrinations to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such extensions, such spreadings, such curtains of allegories, such third heavens of hyperboles, so harmonious elocutions, so retired and so reserved expressions, so commanding persuasions, so persuading commandments, such sinews even in thy milk, and such things in thy words, as all profane authors seem of the seed of the serpent that creeps, thou art the Dove that flies. O, what words but thine can express the inexpressible texture and composition of thy word, in which to one man that argument that binds his faith to believe that to be the word of God, is the reverent simplicity of the word, and to another the majesty of the word; and in which two men equally pious may meet, and one wonder that all should not understand it, and the other as much that any man should. So, Lord, thou givest us the same earth to labour on and to lie in, a house and a grave of the same earth; so, Lord, thou givest us the same word for our satisfaction and for our inquisition, for our instruction and for our admiration too; for there are places that thy servants Hierom and Augustine would scarce believe (when they grew warm by mutual letters) of one another, that they understood them, and yet both Hierom and Augustine call upon persons whom they knew to be far weaker than they thought one another (old women and young maids) to read the Scriptures, without confining them to these or those places. Neither art thou thus a figurative, a metaphorical God in thy word only, but in thy works too. The style of thy works, the phrase of thine actions, is metaphorical. The institution of thy whole worship in the old law was a continual allegory; types and figures overspread all, and figures flowed into figures, and poured themselves out into farther figures; circumcision carried a figure of baptism, and baptism carries a figure of that purity which we shall have in perfection in the new Jerusalem. Neither didst thou speak and work in this language only in the time of thy prophets; but since thou spokest in thy Son it is so too. How often, how much more often, doth thy Son call himself a way, and a light, and a gate, and a vine, and bread, than the Son of God, or of man! How much oftener doth he exhibit a metaphorical Christ, than a real, a literal! This hath occasioned thine ancient servants, whose delight it was to write after thy copy, to proceed the same way in their expositions of the Scriptures, and in their composing both of public liturgies and of private prayers to thee, to make their accesses to thee in such a kind of language as thou wast pleased to speak to them, in a figurative, in a metaphorical language, in which manner I am bold to call the comfort which I receive now in this sickness in the indication of the concoction and maturity thereof, in certain clouds and recidences, which the physicians observe, a discovering of land from sea after a long and tempestuous voyage. But wherefore, O my God, hast thou presented to us the afflictions and calamities of this life in the name of waters? so often in the name of waters, and deep waters, and seas of waters? Must we look to be drowned? are they bottomless, are they boundless ? That is not the dialect of thy language; thou hast given remedy against the deepest water by water; against the inundation of sin by baptism; and the first life that thou gavest to any creatures was in waters: therefore thou dost not threaten us with an irremediableness when our affliction is a sea. It is so if we consider ourselves; so thou callest Genezareth, which was but a lake, and not salt, a sea; so thou callest the Mediterranean sea still the great sea, because the inhabitants saw no other sea; they that dwelt there thought a lake a sea, and the others thought a little sea the greatest, and we that know not the afflictions of others call our own the heaviest. But, O my God, that is truly great that overflows the channel; that is really a great affliction which is above my strength; but thou, O God, art my strength, and then what can be above it? Mountains shake with the swelling of thy sea1; secular mountains, men strong in power; spiritual mountains, men strong in grace, are shaken with afflictions; but thou layest up thy sea in storehouses; even thy corrections are of thy treasure, and thou wilt not waste thy corrections; when they 1 Psalm xlvi. 3. 2 Psalm xxxiii. 7. have done their service to humble thy patient, thou wilt call them in again, for thou givest the sea thy decree, that the waters should not pass thy commandment3. All our waters shall run into Jordan, and thy servants passed Jordan dry foot*; they shall run into the red sea (the sea of thy Son's blood), and the red sea, that red sea, drowns none of thine: but they that sail on the sea tell of the danger thereof. I that am yet in this affliction, owe thee the glory of speaking of it; but, as the wise man bids me, I say, I may speak much and come short, wherefore in sum thou art all. Since thou art so, O my God, and affliction is a sea too deep for us, what is our refuge? Thine ark, thy ship. In all other seas, in all other afflictions, those means which thou hast ordained in this sea, in sickness, thy ship is thy physician. Thou hast made a way in the sea, and a safe path in the waters, showing that thou canst save from all dangers, yea, though a man went to sea without art": yet, where I find all that, I find this added; nevertheless thou wouldst not, that the work of thy wisdom should be idle. Thou canst save without means, but thou hast told no man that thou wilt; thou hast told every man that thou wilt not. When the centurion believed the master of the ship more than St. Paul, they were all opened to a great danger; this was a preferring of thy means before thee, the author of the means but, my God, though thou beest every where, I have no promise of appearing to me but in thy ship: thy blessed Son preached out of a ship 10: the means is preaching, he did that; and the ship was a type of the church, he did it there. Thou gavest St. Paul the lives of all them that sailed with him"; if they 3 Prov. viii. 29. 4 Josh. iii. 17. 5 Ecclus. xliii. 24. 8 Wisd. xiv. 5. 11 Acts, xxvii. 24. |