can reach, will not abide that the very Egyptians should falsely tax his power and mercy? Wise men must care, not only to deserve well, but to hear well; and to wipe off, not only crimes, but censures.

There was never so precious a monument, as the tables written with God's own hand. If we see but the stone which Jacob's head rested on, or on which the foot of Christ did once tread, we look upon it with more than ordinary respect; with what eye should we have beheld this stone, which was hewn and written with the very finger of God? Any manuscript scroll written by the hand of a famous man, is laid up amongst our jewels; what place then should we have given to the hand-writing of the Almighty! That, which he hath dictated to his servants the prophets, challenges just honour from us; how doth that deserve veneration, which his own hand wrote immediately!

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Prophecies and evangelical discourses he hath written by others; never did he write any thing himself but these tables of the law neither did he ever speak any thing audibly to the whole of mankind, but it; the hand, the stone, the law, were all his. By how much more precious this record was, by so much was the fault greater, of defacing it. What king holds it less than rebellion, to tear his writing and blemish his seal? At the first he engraved his image in the table of man's heart; Adam blurred the image, but, through God's mercy, saved the tablet. Now he writes his will in the tables of stone; Moses breaks the tables, and defaces the writing: if they had been given him for himself, the author, the matter had deserved, that, as they were written in stone for permanency, so they should be kept for ever; and as they were everlasting in use, so they should be in preservation. Had they been written in clay, they could but have been broken; but now they were given for all Israel, for all mankind. He was but the messenger, not the owner. Howsoever therefore Israel had deserved, by breaking this covenant with God, to have this monument of God's covenant with them broken by the same hand that wrote it, yet how durst Moses thus carelessly cast away the treasure of all the world; and by his hands undo that, which was with such cost and care done by his Creator? How durst he fail the trust of that God, whose pledge he received with awe and reverence? He that expostulated with God, to have Israel live and prosper, why would he deface the rule of their life, in the keeping whereof they should prosper?

I see, that forty days' talk with God cannot bereave a man of passionate infirmity: he, that was the meekest upon earth, in a sudden indignation abandons that, which in cold blood he would have held faster than his life: he forgets the law written, when he sees it broken; his zeal for God hath transported him from himself, and his duty to the charge of God: he more hates the

golden calf, wherein he sees engraven the idolatry of Israel, than he honours the tables of stone, wherein God had engraven his commandments; and more longs to deface the idol, than he cares to preserve the tables. Yet that God, which so sharply revenged the breach of one law upon the Israelites, checks not Moses for breaking both the tables of the law. The law of God is spiritual; the internal breach of one law is so heinous, that, in comparison of it, God scarce counts the breaking of the outward tables a breach of the law. The goodness of God winks at the errors of honest zeal, and so loves the strength of good affections, that it passeth over their infirmities: how highly God doth esteem a well-governed zeal, when his mercy crowns it with all the faults!

The tables had not offended; the calf had, and Israel in it. Moses takes revenge on both: he burns and stamps the calf to powder, and gives it Israel to drink; that they might have it in their guts, instead of their eyes: how he hasteth to destroy the idol, wherein they sinned! that, as an idol is nothing, so it might be brought to nothing; and atoms and dust are nearest to nothing; that, instead of going before Israel, it might pass through them; so as the next day they might find their god in their excrements; to the just shame of Israel, when they should see their new God cannot defend himself, from being either nothing

or worse.

Who can but wonder, to see a multitude of so many hundred thousands, when Moses came running down the hill, to turn their eyes from their god to him; and on a sudden, instead of worshipping their idol, to batter it in pieces, in the very height of the novelty! instead of building altars, and kindling fires to it, to kindle a hotter fire than that, wherewith it was melted, to consume it! instead of dancing before it, to abhor and deface it; instead of singing, to weep before it!

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There was never a more stiff-necked people; yet I do not hear any one of them say, He is but one man, We are many; how easily may we destroy him, rather than he our god? If his brother durst not resist our motion in making it, why will we suffer him to dare resist the keeping of it? It is our act, and we will maintain it." Here was none of this; but an humble obeisance to the basest and bloodiest revenge that Moses shall impose. God hath set such an impression of majesty in the face of lawful authority, that wickedness is confounded in itself to behold it. If from hence visible powers were not more feared than the invisible God, the world would be overrun with outrage. Sin hath such a guiltiness in itself, that when it is seasonably checked, it pulls in its head, and seeks rather a hiding-place than a fort.

The idol is not capable of further revenge: it is not enough, unless the idolaters smart: the gold was good, if the Israelites

had not been evil: so great a sin cannot be expiated without blood. Behold, that meek spirit, which in his plea with God would rather perish himself than Israel should perish, arms the Levites against their brethren, and rejoices to see thousands of the Israelites bleed, and blesses their executioners.

It was the mercy of Moses that made him cruel: he had been cruel to all, if some had not found him cruel. They are merciless hands, which are not sometimes imbrued in blood: there is no less charity, than justice, in punishing sinners with death; God delights no less in a killing mercy, than in a pitiful justice: some tender hearts would be ready to censure the rigour of Moses. "Might not Israel have repented and lived? Or if they must die, must their brethren's hand be upon them? or, if their throats must be cut by their brethren, shall it be done in the very heat of their sin?" But they must learn a difference betwixt pity and fondness, mercy and injustice. Moses had a heart as soft as theirs, but more hot; as pitiful, but wiser. He was a good physician, and saw that Israel could not live unless he bled; he therefore lets out this corrupt blood, to save the whole body. There cannot be a better sacrifice to God, than the blood of malefactors; and this first sacrifice so pleased God in the hands of the Levites, that he would have none but them sacrifice to him for ever. The blood of the idolatrous Israelites cleared that tribe from the blood of the innocent Shechemites.

CONTEMPLATIONS.

BOOK VI.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THOMAS, LORD VISCOUNT FENTON,

CAPTAIN OF THE ROYAL GUARD; ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNSELLORS; ONE OF THE HAPPY RESCUERS OF THE dear life of OUR GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN LORD, A WORTHY PATTERN OF ALL TRUE HONOUR:

J. H.

DEDICATES THIS PART OF HIS MEDITATIONS,

AND WISHETH ALL INCREASE OF GRACE AND HAPPINESS.

CONTEMPLATION I.-THE VEIL OF MOSES.

EXODUS XXXIV.

It is a wonder, that neither Moses nor any Israelite gathered up the shivers of the former tables: every shred of that stone, and every letter of that writing, had been a relic worth laying up; but he well saw how headlong the people were to superstition; and how unsafe it were to feed that disposition in them. The same zeal, that burnt the calf to ashes, concealed the ruins of this monument. Holy things, besides their use, challenge no further respect. The breaking of the tables did as good as blot out all the writing; and the writing defaced, left no virtue in the stone, no reverence to it.

If God had not been friends with Israel, he had not renewed his law. As the Israelites were wilfully blind, if they did not see God's anger in the tables broken; so could they not but hold it a good sign of grace, that God gave them his testimonies.

There was nothing, wherein Israel outstripped all the rest of the world more, than in this privilege; the pledge of his Covenant, the law written with God's own hand. Oh what a favour then is it, where God bestows his Gospel upon any nation! That was but a killing letter; this is the power of God to salvation. Never is God thoroughly displeased with any people, where that continues: for, like as those which purpose love, when they

fall off, call for their tokens back again; so when God begins once perfectly to mislike, the first thing he withdraws is his Gospel.

Israel recovers this favour, but with an abatement: Hew thee two tables. God made the first tables: the matter, the form was his; now Moses must hew the next: as God created the first man after his own image, but that, once defaced, Adam begat Cain after his own; or, as the first temple rased, a second was built, yet so far short, that the Israelites wept at the sight of it. The first works of God are still the purest: those, that he secondarily works by us, decline in their perfection. It was reason, that though God had forgiven Israel, they should still find they had sinned. They might see the footsteps of displeasure in the differences of the agent.

When God had told Moses before, I will not go before Israel, but my angel shall lead them; Moses so noted the difference, that he rested not till God himself undertook their conduct, so might the Israelites have noted some remainders of offence, while, instead of that which his own hand did formerly make, he saith now, Hew thee; and yet these second tables are kept reverently in the ark, when the other lay mouldered in shivers upon Sinai; like as the repaired image of God in our regeneration is preserved, perfected, and laid up at last safe in heaven; whereas the first image of our created innocence is quite defaced: so the second temple had the glory of Christ's exhibition, though meaner in frame. The merciful respects of God are not tied to glorious outsides, or the inward worthiness of things or persons: he hath chosen the weak and simple, to confound the wise and mighty.

Yet God did this work by Moses; Moses hewed, and God wrote: our true Moses repairs that law of God, which we in our nature had broken; he revives it for us, and it is accepted of God, no less than if the first characters of his law had been still entire. We can give nothing but the table; it is God that must write in it. Our hearts are but a bare board, till God by his finger engrave his law in them; yea, Lord, we are a rough quarry; hew thou us out, and square us fit for thee to write upon.

Well may we marvel, to see Moses, after this oversight, admitted to this charge again: who of us would not have said, "Your care indeed deserves trust; you did so carefully keep the first tables, that it would do well to trust you with such another burden!" It was good for Moses, that he had to do with God, not with men: the God of mercy will not impute the slips of our infirmity to the prejudice of our faithfulness. He, that after the misuse of the one talent, would not trust the evil servant with a second, because he saw a wilful neglect; will trust Moses with his second law, because he saw fidelity in the worst error of his zeal. Our charity must learn, as to forgive, so to be