No man can hope to hold pace with time: the best names may not think scorn to be unknown to following generations. But ere their deliverer was cold in his coffin, to pay his benefits (which deserve to be everlasting) with the extirpation of his posterity, it was more than savage. What can be looked for from idolaters? If a man have cast off his God, he will easily cast off his friends. When religion is once gone, humanity will not stay long after.

That which the people were punished afterwards for but desiring, he enjoys. Now is Abimelech seated in the throne which his father refused, and no rival is seen to envy his peace. But how long will this glory last? Stay but three years, and ye shall see this bramble withered and burnt. The prosperity of the wicked is short and fickle. A stolen crown (though it may look fair) cannot be made of any but brittle stuff. All life is uncertain; but wickedness overruns nature.

It

The evil spirit thrust himself into the plot of Abimelech's usurpation and murder, and wrought with the Shechemites for both; and now God sends the evil spirit betwixt Abimelech and the Shechemites to work the ruin of each other. The first could not have been without God; but, in the second, God challenges a part. Revenge is his, where the sin is ours. had been pity that the Shechemites should have been plagued by any other hand than Abimelech's. They raised him unjustly to the throne, they are the first that feel the weight of his sceptre. The foolish bird limes herself with that which grew from her own excretion. Who wonders to see the kind peasant stung with his own snake?

The breach begins at Shechem: his own countrymen fly off from their promised allegiance. Though all Israel should have fallen off from Abimelech, yet they of Shechem should have stuck close. It was their act, they ought to have made it good. How should good princes be honoured, when even Abimelechs, once settled, cannot be opposed with safety? Now they begin to revolt to the rest of Israel. Yet, if this had been done out of repentance, it had been praiseworthy; but to be done out of a treacherous inconstancy, was unworthy of Israelites. How could Abimelech hope for fidelity of them, whom he had made and found traitors to his father's blood? No man knows how to be sure of him that is unconscionable. He that hath been unfaithful to one, knows the way to be perfidious, and is only fit for his trust that is worthy to be de

ceived; whereas faithfulness, besides the present good, lays a ground of further assurance. The friendship that is begun in evil cannot stand; wickedness both of its own nature, and through the curse of God, is ever unsteady: and though there be not a disagreement in hell, (being but the place of retribution, not of action) yet on earth there is no peace among the wicked; whereas that affection which is knit in God, is indissoluble.

If the men of Shechem had abandoned their false god, with their false king, and out of a serious remorse, and desire of satisfaction for their idolatry and blood, had opposed this tyrant, and preferred Jotham to his throne, there might have been both warrant for their quarrel, and hope of success: but now, if Abimelech be a wicked usurper, yet the Shechemites are idolatrous traitors. How could they think, that God would rather revenge Abimelech's bloody intrusion by them, than their treachery and idolatry by Abimelech? When the quarrel is betwixt God and Satan, there is no doubt of the issue; but when one devil fights with another, what certainty is there of the victory? Though the cause of God had been good, yet it had been safe for them to look to themselves. The unworthi. ness of the agent many times curses a good enterprise.

No sooner is a secret dislike kindled in any people against their governors, than there is a gale ready to blow the coals. It were a wonder, if ever any faction should want a head; as, contrarily, never any man was so ill, as not to have some favourers: Abimelech hath a Zebul in the midst of Shechem. Lightly, all treasons are betrayed, even with some of their own his intelligence brings the sword of Abimelech upon Shechem, who now hath demolished the city, and sown it with salt. O the just successions of the revenges of God! Gideon's ephod is punished with the blood of his sons; the blood of his sons is shed by the procurement of the Shechemites; the blood of the Shechemites is shed by Abimelech; the blood of Abimelech is spilt by a woman. The retaliations of God are sure and just, and make a more due pedigree than descent of nature.

The pursued Shechemites fly to the house of their god Berith; now they are safe: that place is at once a fort, and a sanctuary. Whither should we fly in our distress, but to our God? And now this refuge shall teach them what a God they have served. The jealous God, whom they had forsaken, hath them now where he would, and rejoices at once to be

avenged of their god and them. Had they not made the house of Baal their shelter, they had not died so fearfully. Now, according to the prophecy of Jotham, a fire goes out of the bramble, and consumes these cedars, and their eternal flames begin in the house of their Berith. The confusion of wicked men rises out of the false deities which they have doted on.

Of all the conspirators against Gideon's sons, only Abimelech yet survives; and his day is now coming. His success against Shechem hath filled his heart with thoughts of victory; he hath caged up the inhabitants of Tebez within their tower also; and what remains for them, but the same end with their neighbours? And behold, while his hand is busy in putting fire to the door of their tower, which yet was not high, (for then he could not have discerned a woman to be his executioner), a stone from a woman's hand strikes his head. His pain in dying was not so much, as his indignation to know by whom he died; and rather will he die twice, than a woman should kill him. If God had not known his stomach so big, he had not vexed him with the impotency of his victor. God finds a time to reckon with wicked men, for all the arrearages of their sins. Our sins are not more our debts to God, than his judgments are his debts to our sins, which at last he will be sure to pay home. There now lies the greatness of Abimelech: upon one stone had he slain his seventy brethren, and now a stone slays him: his head had stolen the crown of Israel, and now his head is smitten. And what is Abimelech better that he was a king? What difference is there between him and any of his seventy brethren whom he murdered, save only in guiltiness? They bear but their own blood; he, the weight of all theirs. How happy a thing it is to live well, that our death, as it is certain, so may be comfortable! What a vanity is it to insult in the death of them, whom we must follow the same way!

The tyrant hath his payment, and that time which he should have bestowed in calling for mercy to God, and washing his soul with the last tears of contrition, he vainly spends in deprecating an idle reproach: "Kill me," that it may not be said he died by a woman-a fit conclusion for such a life! The expectation of true and endless torment doth not so much vex him, as the frivolous report of a dishonour: neither is he so much troubled with Abimelech's frying in hell, as Abimelech is slain by a woman. So vain fools are

niggardly of their reputation, and prodigal of their souls. Do we not see them run wilfully into the field, into the grave, into hell! and all lest it should be said, they have but as much fear as wit.

BOOK X.

CONTEMPLATION I.
Jephthah.

ISRAEL, that had now long gone a whoring from God, hath been punished by the regiment of the concubine's son, and at last seeks protection from the son of an harlot. It is no small misery to be obliged unto the unworthy. The concubine's son made suit to them; they made suit to the son of the harlot. It was no fault of Jephthah that he had an ill mother, yet is he branded with the indignity of his bastardy. Neither would God conceal this blemish of nature, which Jephthah could neither avoid nor remedy. God, to shew his detestation of whoredom, revenges it not only upon the actors, but upon their issue. their issue. Hence he hath shut out the base son from the congregation of Israel, to the tenth generation, that a transient evil might have a durable reproach attending it; and that, after the death of the adulterer, yet his shame might live. But that God, who justly ties men to his laws, will not abide we should tie him to our laws, or his own: he can both rectify and ennoble the blood of Jephthah. That no man should be too much discouraged with the errors of his propagation, even the base son of man may be the lawfully begotten of God; and though he be cast out from the inheritance of his brethren upon earth, may be admitted to the kingdom of Israel.

I hear no praise of the lawful issue of Gilead; only this misbegotten son is commended for his valour, and set at the stern of Israel. The common gifts of God respect not the parentage or blood, but are indifferently scattered where he pleases to let them fall. The choice of the Almighty is not guided by our rules: as in spiritual, so in earthly things, it is not in him that willeth. If God would have men glory in these outward privileges, he would bestow them upon none but the worthy.

Now, who can be proud of strength or greatness, when he sees him that is not so honest, yet is more valiant, and more advanced? Had not Jephthah been base, he had not been thrust out; and if he had not been thrust out from his brethren, he had never been the captain of Israel. By contrary paces to ours, it pleaseth God to come to his own ends and how usually doth he look the contrary way to that he moves? No man can measure the conclusion of God's act by his beginning. He that fetches good out of evil, raises the glory of men out of their ruin. Men love to go the nearest way, and often fail. God commonly goes about, and in his own time comes surely home.

The Gileadites were not so forward to expel Jephthah, as glad to recall him. No Ammonite threatened them, when they parted with such an helper: now whom they cast out in their peace, they fetch home in their danger and misery. That God, who never gave ought in vain, will find a time to make use of any gift that he hath bestowed upon men. valour of Jephthah shall not rust in his secrecy, but be employed to the common preservation of Israel. Necessity will drive us to seek up all our helps, even those whom our wantonness hath despised.

The

How justly are the suits of our need upbraided with the errors of our prosperity! The elders of Gilead now hear of their ancient wrong, and dare not find fault with their exprobation: "Did ye not hate me, and expel me out of my father's house? how then come ye now to me in time of tribulation?" The same expostulation that Jephthah makes with Gilead, God also at the same time makes with Israel: "Ye have forsaken me, and have served other gods; wherefore should I deliver you any more? Go, and cry unto the gods whom ye have served." As we, so God also finds it seasonable to tell his children of their faults, while he is whipping them. It is a safe and wise course, to make much of those in our peace, whom we must make use of in our extremity; else it is but just, that we should be rejected of those whom we have rejected.

Can we look for any other answer from God than this? Did ye not drive me out of your houses, out of your hearts, in the time of your health and jollity? Did ye not plead the strictness of my charge, and the weight of my yoke? Did not your wilful sins expel me from your souls?

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