offered that violence to himself: the hand of this Amalekite therefore was not guilty, his tongue was. Had not this inessenger measured David's foot by his own last, he had forborne this piece of the news, and not hoped to advantage himself by this falsehood. Now he thinks the tidings of a kingdom cannot but please; none but Saul and Jonathan stood in David's way he cannot choose but like to hear of their removal; especially since Saul did so tyrannously persecute his innocence. If I shall only report the fact done by another, I shall go away but with the recompense of a lucky post; whereas, if I take upon me the action, I am the man to whom David is beholden for the kingdom: he cannot but honour and requite me as the author of his deliverance and happiness. Worldly minds think no man can be of any other than their own diet; and because they find the respects of self-love, and private profit, so strongly prevailing with themselves, they cannot conceive how these should be capable of a repulse from others.

How much was this Amalekite mocked of his hopes ! While he imagined that David would now triumph and feast in the assured expectation of the kingdom, and possession of the crown of Israel, he finds him renting his clothes, and wringing his hands, and weeping and mourning as if all his comfort had been dead with Saul and Jonathan and yet perhaps he thought, This sorrow of David is but fashionable, such as great heirs make shew of in the fatal day they have longed for; these tears will be soon dry; the sight of a crown will soon breed a succession of other passions: but this error is soon corrected; for when David had entertained this bearer with a sad fast all the day, he calls him forth in the evening to execution. "How, wast thou not afraid, saith he, to put forth thy hand to destroy the anointed of the Lord?" Doubtless the Amalekite made many fair pleas for himself, out of the grounds of his own report. Alas! Saul was before fallen upon his own spear; it was but mercy to kill him that was half dead, that he might die the shorter; besides, his entreaty and importunate prayers moved me to hasten him through those painful gates of death; had I stricken him as an enemy, I had deserved the blow I had given; now I lent him the hand of a friend; why am I punished for obeying the voice of a king, and for perfecting what himself had begun, and could not finish? And if neither his own wound, nor mine, had

dispatched him, the Philistines were at his heels, ready to do this same act with insultation, which I did in favour; and if my hand had not prevented him, where had been the crown of Israel, which I now have here presented to thee? I could have delivered that to king Achish, and have been rewarded with honour let me not die for an act well meant to thee, however construed by thee. But no pretence can make his own tale not deadly: "Thy blood be upon thine own head, for thine own mouth hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain the Lord's anointed." It is a just supposition, that every man is so great a favourer of himself, that he will not misreport his own actions, nor say the worst of himself. In matter of confession, men may, without injury, be taken at their words: if he did it, his fact was capital; if he did it not, his lie. It is pity any other recompense should befal those false flatterers, that can be content to father a sin to get thanks. Every drop of royal blood is sacred; for a man to say that he hath shed it, is mortal. Of how far different spirits from this of David, are those men which suborn the death of princes, and celebrate and canonize the murderers!" Into their secret, let not my soul come; my glory, be not thou joined to their assembly."

CONTEMPLATION VII.
Abner and Joab.

How merciful and seasonable are the provisions of God! Ziklag was now nothing but ruins and ashes: David might return to the soil where it stood, to the roofs and walls he could not; no sooner is he disappointed of that harbour, than God provides him cities of Hebron: Saul shall die to give him elbow-room. Now doth David find the comfort that his extremity sought in the Lord his God. Now are his clouds for a time passed over, and the sun breaks gloriously forth: David shall reign after his sufferings. So shall we, if we endure to the end, find a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give us at that day. But though David well knew that his head was long before anointed, and had heard Saul himself confidently avouching his succession, yet he will not stir from the heaps of Ziklag, till he has consulted with the Lord. It did not content him,

that he had God's warrant for the kingdom, but he must have his instructions for the taking possession of it. How safe and happy is the man that is resolved to do nothing without God! Neither will generalities of direction be sufficient; even particular circumstances must look for a word; still is God a pillar of fire and cloud to the eye of every Israelite: neither may there be any motion or stay but from him; that action cannot but succeed, which proceeds upon so sure a warrant.

God sends him to Hebron, a city of Judah; neither will David go up thither alone, but he takes with him all his men, with their whole households: they shall take such part as himself; as they had shared with him in his misery, so they shall now in his prosperity: neither doth he take advantage of their late mutiny, which was yet fresh and green, to cashier those unthankful and ungracious followers; but pardoning their secret rebellions, he makes them partakers of his good success. Thus doth our heavenly leader, whom David prefigured, take us to reign with him who have suffered with him. Passing by our manifold infirmities, as if they had not been, he removeth us from the land of our banishment, and the ashes of our forlorn Ziklag, to the Hebron of our peace and glory: the expectation of this day must, as it did with David's soldiers, digest all our sorrows.

Never any calling of God was so conspicuous, as not to find some opposites. What Israelite did not know David appointed by God to the succession of the kingdom? Even the Amalekite could carry the crown to him as the true owner: yet there wants not an Abner to resist him, and the title of an Ishbosheth to colour his resistance. If any of Saul's house could have made challenge to the crown, it should have been Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan, who, it seems, had too much of his father's blood to be a competitor with David; the question is not, who may claim the most right, but who may best serve the faction: neither was Ishbosheth any other than Abner's stall. Saul could not have a fitter courtier; whether in the imitation of his master's envy, or the ambition of ruling under a borrowed name, he strongly opposed David. There are those who strive against their own hearts, to make a side with whom conscience is oppressed by affection. An ill quarrel once undertaken shall be maintained, although with blood: now, not so much the blood of Saul, as the engagement of Abner makes the war. The sons of Zeruiah stand

fast to David. It is much how a man placeth his first interest: if Abner had been in Joab's room, when Saul's displeasure drove David from the court, or Joab in Abner's, these actions, these events had been changed with the persons: it was the only happiness of Joab that he fell on the better side.

Both the commanders under David and Ishbosheth were equally cruel: both are so inured to blood, that they make but a sport of killing. Custom makes sin so familiar, that the horror of it is to some turned into pleasure. "Come, let the young men play before us." Abner is the challenger, and speeds thereafter: for though, in the matches of duel, both sides miscarried, yet, in the following conflict, Abner and his men are beaten by the success of those single combats no man knows the better of the cause: both sides perish, to shew how little God liked either the offer or the acceptation of such a trial: but, when both did their best, God punisheth the wrong part with discomfiture.

son.

O the misery of civil dissension! Israel and Judah were brethren; one carried the name of the father, the other of the Judah was but a branch of Israel: Israel was the root of Judah yet Israel and Judah must fight, and kill each other, only upon the quarrel of an ill leader's ambition. The speed of Asahel was not greater than his courage. It was a mind fit for one of David's worthies, to strike at the head, to match himself with the best. He was both swift and strong; but "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." If he had gone never so slowly, he might have overtaken death : now he runs to fetch it. So little lust had Abner to shed the blood of a son of Zeruiah, that he twice advises him to retreat from pursuing his own peril. Asahel's cause was so much better as Abner's success. Many a one miscarries in the rash prosecution of a good quarrel, when the abettors of the worst part go away with victory. Heat of zeal, sometimes in the undiscreet pursuit of a just adversary, proves mortal to the agent, prejudicial to the service.

Abner, while he kills, yet he flies, and runs away from his own death, while he inflicts it upon another. David's followers had the better of the field and day. The sun, as unwilling to see any more Israelitish blood shed by brethren, hath withdrawn himself: and now both parts, having got the advantage of an hill under them, have safe convenience of parley: Abner

begins, and persuades Joab to surcease the fight; "Shall the sword devour for ever? Knowest thou not, that it will be bitterness in the end? How long shall it be ere thou bid the people return from following their brethren ?" It was his fault that the sword devoured at all: and why was not the beginning of a civil war bitterness? Why did he call forth the people to skirmish, and invite them to death? Had Abner been on the winning hand, this motion had been thank-worthy. It was a noble disposition in a victor, to call for a cessation of arms whereas necessity wrings this suit from the over-mastered. There cannot be a greater praise to a valiant and wise commander, than a propension to all just terms of peace: for war, as it is sometimes necessary, so it is always evil and if fighting have any other end proposed besides peace, it proves murder. Abner shall find himself no less overcome by Joab in clemency, than power: he says not, I will not so easily leave the advantage of my victory; since the dice of war run on my side, I will follow the chance of my good success: thou shouldst have considered of this before thy provocation: it is now too late to move unto forbearance. But, as a man that meant to approve himself equally free from cowardice in the beginning of the conflict, and from cruelty in the end, he professeth his forwardness to entertain any pretence of sheathing up the swords of Israel; and swears to Abner, that if it had not been for his proud irritation, the people had in the morning before ceased from that bloody pursuit of their brethren. As it becomes public persons to be lovers of peace, so they must show it upon all good occasions: letting pass no opportunity of making spare of blood.

Ishbosheth was, it seems, a man of no great spirits; for being no less than forty years old when his father went into his last field against the Philistines, he was content to stay at home. Abner hath put ambition into him; and hath easily raised him to the head of a faction, against the anointed prince of God's people. If this usurped crown of Saul's son had any worth or glory in it, he cannot but acknowledge to owe it all unto Abner; yet how forward is unthankful Ishbosheth to receive a false suggestion against his chief abettor: "Wherefore hast thou gone in to my father's concubine?" He that made no conscience of an unjust claim to the crown, and a maintenance of it with blood, yet seems scrupulous of a less sin, that carried in it the colour of a disgrace: the touch of