Μ My VII. EXPOSTULATION, Y God, my God, thy blessed servant Augustine begged of thee, that Moses might come and tell him what he meant by some places of Genesis : may I have leave to ask of that Spirit that writ that book, why, when David expected news from Joab's army', and that the watchman told him that he saw a man running alone, David concluded out of that circumstance, that if he came alone, he brought good news2? I see the grammar, the word signifies so, and is so ever accepted, good news; but I see not the logic nor the rhetoric, how David would prove or persuade that his news was good because he was alone, except a greater company might have made great impressions of danger, by imploring and importuning present supplies: howsoever that be, I am sure, that that which thy apostle says to Timothy, Only Luke is with me3, Luke, and nobody but Luke, hath a taste of complaint and sorrow in it: though Luke want no testimony of ability, of forwardness, of constancy, and perseverance, in assisting that great building which St. Paul laboured in, yet St. Paul is affected with that, that there was none but Luke to assist. We take St. Luke to have been a physician, and it admits the application the better, that in the presence of one good physician we may be glad of more. It was not only a civil spirit of policy, or order, that moved Moses's father-in-law to persuade him to divide the burden of government and judicature with others, and take others to his assistance1, but it was also thy immediate Spirit, O my God, that moved Moses to present unto 1 2 Sam. xviii. 25, 2 So all but our translation takes it; even Buxdor and Schindler. 32 Tim, iv. 11, 4 Exod. xviii. 13. thee seventy of the elders of Israel", to receive of that Spirit, which was upon Moses only before, such a portion as might ease him in the government of that people; though Moses alone had endowments above all, thou gavest him other assistants. I consider thy plentiful goodness, O my God, in employing angels, more than one, in so many of thy remarkable works. Of thy Son, thou sayest, Let all the angels of God worship him; if that be in heaven, upon earth he says, that he could command twelve legions of angels'; and when heaven and earth shall be all one, at the last day, thy Son, O God, the Son of man, shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him. The angels that celebrated his birth to the shepherds, the angels that celebrated his second birth, his resurrection, to the Maries 10, were in the plural, angels associated with angels. In Jacob's ladder", they who ascended and descended, and maintained the trade between heaven and earth, between thee and us, they who have the commission, and charge to guide us in all our ways, they who hastened Lot 13, and in him, us, from places of danger and temptation, they who are appointed to instruct and govern us in the church here, they who are sent to punish the disobedient and refractory 15, that they are to be the mowers and harvestmen 16 after we are grown up in one field, the church, at the day of judgment, they that are to carry our souls whither they carried Lazarus ", they who attend at the several gates of the new Jerusalem 18, to admit us there; all these who administer to thy servants, from the first to their last, are angels, angels in the plural, in every 5 Num. xi. 16. 8 Matt. xxv. 31. 11 Gen. xxviii. 12. 14 Rev. i. 20. 17 Luke, xvi. 22. 6 Heb. i. 6. 7 Matt. xxvi, 53. 10 John, xx. 12. 13 Gen. xix. 15. 16 Matt. xiii. 39. way, service, angels associated with angels. The power of a single angel we see in that one, who, in one night destroyed almost two hundred thousand in Sennacherib's army 19, yet thou often employest many; as we know the power of salvation is abundantly in any one evangelist, and yet thou hast afforded us four. Thy Son proclaims of himself, that thy Spirit hath anointed him to preach the Gospel 20, yet he hath given others for the perfecting of the saints in the work of the ministry". Thou hast made him Bishop of our souls22, but there are others bishops too. He gave the Holy Ghost 23, and others gave it also. Thy my God (and, O my God, thou lovest to walk in thine own ways, for they are large), thy way from the beginning, is multiplication of thy helps; and therefore it were a degree of ingratitude, not to accept this mercy of affording me many helps for my bodily health, as a type and earnest of thy gracious purpose now, and ever, to afford me the same assistances. That for thy great help, thy word, I may seek that, not from corners, nor conventicles, nor schismatical singularities, but from the association and communion of thy Catholic church, and those persons whom thou hast always furnished that church withal: and that I may associate thy word with thy sacrament, thy seal with thy patent; and in that sacrament associate the sign with the thing signified, the bread with the body of thy Son, so as I may be sure to have received both, and to be made thereby (as thy blessed servant Augustine says) the ark, and the monument, and the tomb of thy most blessed Son, that he, and all the merits of his death, may, by that receiving, be buried in me, to my quickening in this world, and my immortal establishing in the next. 19 2 Kings, xix. 35. 22 1 Pet. ii. 25. 20 Luke, iv. 18. 21 Eph. iv. 12. 23 John, xx. 22. VII. PRAYER. ETERNAL and most gracious God, who gavest to thy servants in the wilderness thy manna, bread so conditioned, qualified so, as that, to every man, manna tasted like that which that man liked best, I humbly beseech thee to make this correction, which I acknowledge to be part of my daily bread, to taste so to me, not as I would, but as thou wouldst have it taste, and to conform my taste, and make it agreeable to thy will. Thou wouldst have thy corrections taste of humiliation, but thou wouldst have them taste of consolation too; taste of danger, but taste of assurance too. As therefore thou hast imprinted in all thine elements of which our bodies consist, two manifest qualities, so that as thy fire dries, so it heats too; and as thy water moists, so it cools too; so, O Lord, in these corrections which are the elements of our regeneration, by which our souls are made thine, imprint thy two qualities, those two operations, that, as they scourge us, they may scourge us into the way to thee: that when they have showed us that we are nothing in ourselves, they may also show us, that thou art all things unto us. When therefore in this particular circumstance, O Lord (but none of thy judgments are circumstances, they are all of all substance of thy good purpose upon us), when in this particular, that he, whom thou hast sent to assist me, desires assistants to him, thou hast let me see in how few hours thou canst throw me beyond the help of man, let me by the same light see that no vehemence of sickness, no temptation of Satan, no guiltiness of sin, no prison of death, not this first, this sick bed, not the other prison, the close and dark grave, can remove me from the determined and good purpose which thou hast sealed concerning me. Let me think no degree of this thy correction casual, or without signification; but yet when I have read it in that language, as a correction, let me translate it into another, and read it as a mercy; and which of these is the original, and which is the translation; whether thy mercy or thy correction were thy primary and original intention in this sickness, I cannot conclude, though death conclude me; for as it must necessarily appear to be a correction, so I can have no greater argument of thy mercy, than to die in thee, and by that death to be united to him who died for me. STILL VIII. ET REX IPSE SUUM MITTIT. The King sends his own Physician. VIII. MEDITATION. TILL when we return to that meditation, that is a world, we find new discoveries. Let him be a world, and himself will be the land, and misery the sea. His misery (for misery is his, his own; of the happiness even of this world, he is but tenant, but of misery the freeholder; of happiness he is but the farmer, but the usufructuary, but of misery the lord, the proprietary), his misery, as the sea, swells above all the hills, and reaches to the remotest parts of this earth, man; who of himself is but dust, and coagulated and kneaded into earth; by tears his matter is earth, his form misery. In this world, that is mankind, the highest ground, the eminentest hills, are kings; and have they line and lead enough to fathom this sea, and say, "My misery is but this deep?" Scarce any misery equal to sickness, and they are subject to that equally with their lowest subject. A glass is not the less brittle, because a king's face is represented in it; nor a king the less brittle, because God is represented in him. They have physicians continually about them, and therefore |