directly, nor by consequence, seeks for praise, and suffers it not to rest upon its own pavement, but reflects it all upon God, and receives all lessenings and instruments of affront and disgrace, that mingle not with sin or indecencies, more willingly than panegyrics. When others have their desires, thou not thine; the sayings of another are esteemed, thine slighted; others ask and obtain, thou beggest and art refused; they are cried up, thou disgraced and hissed at; and, while they are employed, thou art laid by, as fit for nothing; or an unworthy person commands thee, and rules thee like a tyrant; he reproves thee, suspects thee, reviles thee: canst thou bear this sweetly, and entertain the usage as thy just portion, and as an accident most fit and proper to thy person and condition? Dost thou not raise theatres to thyself, and take delight in the suppletories of thy own good opinion, and the flatteries of such whom thou endearest to thee, that their praising thee should heal the wounds of thine honor by an imaginary and fantastic restitution? He that is not content and patient in affronts, hath not yet learned humility of the holy Jesus. But 3. As Christ's humble man is content in affronts, and not greedy of praise; so, when it is presented to him, he takes no contentment in it; and, if it be easy to want praise when it is denied, yet it is harder not to be delighted with it when it is offered. there is much reason that we should put restraints upon ourselves, lest, if we be praised without desert, we find a greater judgment of God; or, if we have done well, and received praise for it, we lose all our reward, which God hath deposited for them that "receive" not " their good things in this life." For "as silver is tried in the melter, and gold in the crucible, so is a man tried by the mouth of him that praises him :" that is, he is either clarified from his dross, by looking upon the praise as a homily to teach, and an instrument to invite his duty; or else, if he be already pure, he is consolidated, strengthened in the sobriety of his spirit, and retires himself closer into the strengths and securities of humility. Nay, this step of humility uses, in very holy per sons, to be enlarged to a delight in affronts and disreputation in the world. Now I begin to be Christ's disciple,' said Ignatius the martyr, when, in his journey to Rome, he suffered perpetual revilings and abuse. St. Paul "rejoiced in his infirmities and reproach:" and all the apostles at Jerusalem went from the tribunal," rejoicing that they were esteemed worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus." This is an excellent condition and degree of humility. If we need any new incentives to the practice of this grace, I can say no more, but that humility is truth, and pride is a lie; that the one glorifies God, the other dishonors him; humility makes men like angels, pride makes angels to become devils; that pride is folly, humility is the temper of a holy spirit and excellent wisdom; that humility is the way to glory, pride to ruin and confusion: humility makes saints on earth, pride undoes them: humility beatifies the saints in heaven, and "the elders throw their crowns at the foot of the throne;" pride disgraces a man among all the societies of earth: God loves one, and Satan solicits the cause of the other, and promotes his own interest in it most of all. And there is no one grace, in which Christ propounded himself imitable so signally as in this meekness and humility: for the enforcing of which, he undertook the condition of a servant, and a life of poverty, and a death of disgrace; and washed the feet of his disciples, and even of Judas himself, that his action might be turned into a sermon, to preach this duty, and to make it as eternal as his own story. The Prayer. O holy and eternal Jesus, who wert pleased to lay aside the glories and incomprehensible majesty, which clothed thy infinity from before the beginning of creatures, and didst put on a cloud upon thy brightness, and wert invested with the impure and imperfect broken robe of human nature, and didst abate those splendors which broke through the veil, commanding devils pot to publish thee, and men not to proclaim thy excellences, and the apostles not to reveal those glories of thine, which they discovered encircling thee, upon Mount Tabor, in thy transfiguration, and didst, by perpetual homilies, and symbolical mysterious actions, as with deep characters, engrave humility into the spirits of thy disciples, and the discipline of Christianity; teach us to approach near to these, thy glories, which thou hast so covered with a cloud, that we might, without amazement, behold thy excellences; make us to imitate thy gracious condescensions; take from us all vanity and fantastic complacencies in our own persons or actions; and, when there arises a reputation consequent to the performance of any part of our duty, make us to reflect the glory upon thee, suffering nothing to adhere to our own spirits but shame at our own imperfection, and thankfulness to thee for all thy assistances: let us never seek the praise of men from unhandsome actions, from flatteries and unworthy discourses, nor entertain the praise with delight, though it proceed from better principles; but fear and tremble, lest we deserve punishment, or lose a reward, which thou hast deposited for all them that seek thy glory, and despise their own, that they may imitate the example of their Lord. Thou, O Lord, didst triumph over sin and death; subdue, also, my proud understanding, and my prouder affections, and bring me under thy yoke; that I may do thy work, and obey my superiors, and be a servant of all my brethren in their necessities, and esteem myself inferior to all men by a deep sense of my own unworthiness, and in all things may obey thy laws, and conform to thy precedents, and enter into thine inheritance, O holy and eternal Jesus. Amen. SECTION XIV. Considerations upon the Accidents happening on the Vespers of the Passion. WHEN Jesus had supped and sang a hymn, and prayed, and exhorted and comforted his disciples with a farewell-sermon, in which he repeated such of his former precepts, which were now apposite to the present condition, and reinforced them with proper and pertinent arguments, he went over the brook Cedron, and entered into a garden, and into the prologue of his passion; choosing that place for his agony and satisfactory pains, in which the first scene of human misery was represented, and where he might best attend the offices of devotion preparatory to his death. Besides this, he therefore departed from the house, that he might give opportunity to his enemies' surprise, and yet not incommodate the good man by whose hospitality they had eaten the paschal lamb; so that he went "like a lamb to the slaughter," to the garden as to a prison, as if, by an agreement with his persecutors, he had expected their arrest, and staid there to prevent their farther inquiry. For so great was his desire to pay our ransom, that himself did assist, by a froward patience and active opportunity, towards the persecution: teaching us, that, by an active zeal and a ready spirit, we assist the designs of God's glory, though in our own sufferings and secular infelicities. When he entered the garden, he left his disciples at the entrance of it, calling with him only Peter, James, and John: "he withdrew himself from the rest about a stone's cast, and began to be exceeding heavy." He was not sad till he had called them; for his sorrow began when he pleased: which sorrow he also chose to represent to those three who had seen his transfiguration, the earnest of his future glory, that they might see of how great glory for our sakes he disrobed himself; and that they also might, by the confronting those contradictory accidents, observe, that God uses to dispense his comforts, the irradiations and emissions of his glory, to be preparatives to those sorrows, with which our life must be allayed and seasoned; that none should refuse to partake of the sufferings of Christ, if either they have already felt his comforts, or hope hereafter to wear his crown. 66 "Jesus began to be exceeding sorrowful," to be 'sore amazed," and "sad even to death." And because he was now to suffer the pains of our sins, there began his passion, whence our sins spring. From an evil heart, and a prevaricating spirit, all our sins arise; and in the spirit of Christ began his sorrow, where he truly felt the full value and demerit of sin, which we think not worthy of a tear or a hearty sigh: but he groaned, and fell under the burden. But therefore he took upon him this sadness, that our imperfect sorrow and contrition might be heightened in his example, and accepted in its union and confederacy with his. And Jesus still designed a farther mercy for us; for he sanctified the passion of fear, and hallowed natural sadness, that we might not think the infelicities of our nature, and the calamities of our temporal condition, to become criminal, so long as they make us not omit a |