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would not content them of Saul's sons, but a cursed and ignominious; hanging on the tree: neither would that death content them, unless their own hands might be the executioners: neither would any place serve for the execution, but Gibeah, the court of Saul: neither would they do any of this, for the wreaking of their own fury, but for the appeasing of God's wrath; We will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul.

David might not refuse the condition: he must deliver; they must execute. He chooses out seven of the sons and grand-children of Saul. That house had raised long an unjust persecution against David: now God pays it upon another score.

David's love and oath to Jonathan preserves lame Mephibosheth: how much more shall the Father of all Mercies do good unto the children of the faithful, for the covenant made with their parents!

The five sons of Adriel, the Meholathite, David's antient rival in his first love, which were borne to him by Merab, Saul's daughter, and brought up by her barren sister Michal, the wife of David, are yielded up to death. Merab, was, after a promise of marriage to David, unjustly given away by Saul to Adriel. Michal seems to abet the match, in breeding the children: now, in one act, not of David's seeking, the wrong is thus late avenged upon Saul, Adriel, Merab, Michal, the children. It is a dangerous matter to offer injury to any of God's faithful ones. If their meekness have easily remitted it, their God will not pass it over without a severe retribution.

These five, together with two sons of Rizpah, Saul's concubine, are hanged up at once before the Lord, yea and before the eyes of the world. No place but a hill will serve for this execution. The acts of justice, as they are intended for example, so they should be done in that eminent fashion, that may make them both most instructive and most terrifying. Unwarrantable courses of private revenge seek to hide their heads in secresy: the beautiful face of justice both affects the light and becomes it.

It was the general charge of God's law, that no corpse should remain all night upon the gibbet. The Almighty hath power to dispense with his own command; so, doubtless, he did in this extraordinary case. These carcasses did not defile but expiate.

Sorrowful Rizpah spreads her tent of sackcloth upon the rock, for a sad attendance upon those sons of her womb: death might bereave her of them, not them of her love. This spectacle was not more grievous to her, than pleasing to God, and happy to Israel. Now the clouds drop fatness, and the earth runs forth into plenty. The Gibeonites are satisfied, God reconciled, Israel relieved.

How blessed a thing is it for any nation, that justice is impartially executed, even upon the mighty! A few drops of blood. have procured large showers from heaven. A few carcasses are a rich compost to the earth. The drought and dearth remove away, with the breath of those pledges of the offender. Judgment cannot tyrannize, where justice reigns: as, contrarily, there can be no peace, where blood cries unheard, unregarded.

2 Sam. xxi.

THE NUMBERING OF THE PEOPLE.

ISRAEL was grown wanton and mutinous. God pulls them down: first, by the sword; then, by famine; now, by pestilence.

Oh the wondrous, and yet just ways of the Almighty! Because Israel hath sinned, therefore David shall sin, that Israel may be punished; because God is angry with Israel, therefore David shall anger him more, and strike himself in Israel, and Israel through

himself.

The Spirit of God elsewhere ascribes this motion to Satan, which here it attributes to God. Both had their hand in the work; God by permission, Satan by suggestion; God as a judge, Satan as an enemy; God as in a just punishment for sin, Satan as in an act of sin; God in a wise ordination of it to good, Satan in a malicious intent of confusion. Thus at once, God moved, and Satan moved : neither is it any excuse to Satan or David, that God moved; neither is it any blemish to God, that Satan moved.

The ruler's sin is a punishment to a wicked people. Though they had many sins of their own, whereon God might have grounded a judgment, yet, as before he had punished them with dearth for Saul's sin, so now he will not punish them with plague but for David's sin. If God were not angry with a people, he would not give up their governors to such evils, as whereby he is provoked to vengeance; and if their governors be thus given up, the people cannot be safe. The body drowns not, while the head is above the water; when that once sinks, death is near: justly therefore are we charged to make prayers and supplications, as for all, so especially for those that are in eminent authority. When we pray for ourselves, we pray not always for them; but we cannot pray for them, and not pray for ourselves: the public weal is not comprised in the private, but the private in the public.

What then was David's sin? He will needs have Israel and Judah numbered: surely there is no malignity in numbers; neither is it unfit for a prince to know his own strength: this is not the first time, that Israel had gone under a reckoning. The act offends not, but the misaffection: the same thing had been commendably done out of a princely providence, which now, through the curiosity, pride, mis-confidence of the doer, proves heinously vicious: those actions, which are in themselves indifferent, receive either their life or their bane from the intentions of the agent. Moses numbereth the people with thanks; David, with displeasure. Those sins, which carry the smoothest foreheads and have the most honest appearances, may more provoke the wrath of God, than those that bear the most abomination in their faces. How many thousand wickednesses passed through the hands of Israel, which we men would rather have branded out for judgment, than this of David's! The righteous Judge of the world censures sins, not by their ill looks, but by their foul hearts.

Who can but wonder to see Joab the saint, and David the trespasser? No prophet could speak better than that man of blood;

The Lord thy God increase the people a hundred fold more than they be, and that the eyes of my lord the king may see it; but why doth my lord the king desire this thing? There is no man so lewd, as not to be sometimes in good moods, as not to dislike some evil; contrarily, no man on earth can be so holy as not sometimes to overlash. It were pity, that either Joab or David should be tried by every act. How commonly have we seen those men ready to give good advice to others for the avoiding of some sins, who, in more gross outrages, have not had grace to counsel their own hearts! The same man, that had deserved death from David for his treacherous cruelty, dissuades David from an act that carried but a suspicion of evil. It is not so much to be regarded, who it is that admonisheth us, as what he brings: good counsel is never the worse, for the foul carriage. There are some dishes, that we may cat even from sluttish hands.

The purpose of sin, in a faithful man, is odious; much more the resolution. Notwithstanding Joab's discreet admonition, David will hold on his course; and will know the number of the people, only that he may know it.

Joab and the captains address themselves to the work. In things which are not in themselves evil, it is not for subjects to dispute, but to obey. That, which authority may sin in commanding, is done of the inferior, not with safety only, but with praise.

Nine months and twenty days, is this general muster in hand: at last, the number is brought in. Israel is found eight hundred thousand strong; Judah, five hundred thousand. The ordinary companies, which served by course for the royal guard (four and twenty thousand each month) needed not to be reckoned. The addition of them, with their several captains, raises the sum of Israel to the rate of eleven hundred thousand: a power, able to puff up a carnal heart; but how can a heart, that is more than flesh, trust to an arm of flesh? O holy David, whither hath a glorious vanity transported thee? Thou, which once didst sing so sweetly, Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, for there is no help in him. His breath departeth, and he returneth to his earth; then his thoughts perish. Blessed is he, that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God; how canst thou now stoop, to so unsafe and unworthy a confidence!

As some stomachful horse, that will not be stopt in his career with the sharpest bit, but runs on headily till he come to some wall or ditch, and there stands still and trembles; so did David. All the dissuasions of Joab could not restrain him from his intended course. Almost ten months, doth he run on impetuously, in a way of his own, rough and dangerous: at last, his heart smites him; the conscience of his offence, and the fear of judgment, hath fetched him upon his knees; O Lord, I have sinned exceedingly in that I have done; therefore now, Lord, I beseech thee take away the trespass of thy servant, for I have done very foolishly. It is possible for a sin, not to bait only, but to sojourn, in the holiest soul; but though it sojourn there as a stranger, it shall not dwell there as an

owner. The renewed heart, after some rovings of error, will once, ere overlong, return home to itself; and fall out with that ill guide, wherewith it was misled, and with itself for being misled; and now it is resolved into tears, and breathes forth nothing but sighs, and confessions, and deprecations.

Here needed no Nathan, by a parabolical circumlocution to fetch in David to a sight and acknowledgment of his sin. The heart of the penitent supplied the prophet. No other tongue could smite him so deep, as his own thoughts. But though his reins chastised him in the night, yet his seer scourges him in the morning; Thus saith the Lord, I offer thee three things, choose thee which of them I shall do unto thee. But what shall we say to this? When, upon the prophet's reproof for an adultery cloked with murder, David did but say, I have sinned, it was presently returned, God hath put away thy sin; neither did any smart follow, but the death of a misbegotten infant: and now, when he voluntarily reproveth himself for but a needless muster, and sought for pardon unbidden with great humiliation, God sends him the three terrible scourges, famine, sword, or pestilence, that he may choose with which of them he would rather to bleed. He shall have the favour of an election, not of a remission. God is more angered with a spiritual and immediate affront offered to his majesty, in our pride, and false confidence in earthly things, than with a fleshly crime, though heinously seconded.

It was a hard and woeful choice of three years' famine added to three forepast; or of three months' flight from the sword of an enemy; or three days' pestilence. The Almighty, that hath foredetermined his judgment, refers it to David's will, as fully, as if it were utterly undetermined. God had resolved; yet David may choose. That infinite wisdom hath foreseen the very will of his creature, which, while it freely inclines itself to what it would rather, unwittingly wills that which was fore-appointed in heaven.

We do well believe thee, O David, that thou wert in a wonderful strait. This very liberty is no other than fetters. Thou needst not have famine; thou needst not have the sword; thou needst not have pestilence: one of them thou must have: there is misery in all; there is misery in any. Thou and thy people can die but once; and once they must die, either by famine, war, or pestilence. O God, how vainly do we hope to pass over our sins with impunity, when all the favour that David and Israel can receive is, to choose their bane!

Yet, behold, neither sins, nor threats, nor fears can bereave a truc penitent of his faith; Let us now fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercies are great. There can be no evil of punishment, wherein God hath not a hand: there could be no famine, no sword, without him but some evils are more immediate from a divine stroke; such was that plague, into which David is unwillingly willing to fall. He had his choice of days, months, years, in the same number; and, though the shortness of time prefixed to the threatened pestilence might seem to offer some advantage for

the leading of his election, yet God meant, and David knew it, herein to proportion the difference of time to the violence of the plague; neither should any fewer perish, by so few days' pestilence, than by so many years' famine: the wealthiest might avoid the dearth; the swiftest might run away from the sword; no man could promise himself safety from that pestilence. In likelihood, God's angel would rather strike the most guilty; however, therefore, David might well look to be enwrapped in the common destruction, yet he rather chooseth to fall into that mercy which he had abused, and to suffer from that justice which he had provoked; Let us now fall into the hands of the Lord.

Humble confessions and devout penance cannot always avert temporal judgments. God's angel is abroad; and, within that short compass of time, sweeps away seventy thousand Israelites. David was proud of the number of his subjects: now they are abated, that he may see cause of humiliation in the matter of his glory in what we have offended, we commonly smart.

These thousands of Israel were not so innocent, that they should only perish for David's sin: their sins were the motives, both of this sin and punishment: besides the respect of David's offence, they die for themselves.

It was no ordinary pestilence, that was thus suddenly and universally mortal. Common eyes saw the botch and the marks; saw not the angel: David's clearer sight hath espied him, after that killing peragration through the tribes of Israel, shaking his sword over Jerusalem, and hovering over Mount Sion; and now he, who doubtless had spent those three dismal days in the saddest contrition, humbly casts himself down at the feet of the avenger, and lays himself ready for the fatal stroke of justice.

It was more terror, that God intended, in the visible shape of his angel, and deeper humiliation; and what he meant, he wrought. Never soul could be more dejected, more anguished, with the sense of a judgment; in the bitterness whereof he cries out, Behold, I have sinned, yea, I have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father's house. The better any man is, the more sensible he is of his own wretchedness. Many of those sheep were wolves to David. What had they done? They had done that, which was the occasion of David's sin, and the cause of their own punishment; but that gracious penitent knew his own sin; he knew not theirs and therefore can say, I have sinned; What have they done? It is safe accusing, where we may be boldest, and are best acquainted, ourselves.

Oh the admirable charity of David, that would have engrossed the plague to himself and his house, from the rest of Israel; and sues to interpose himself, betwixt his people and the vengeance! He, that had put himself upon the paws of the bear and lion for the rescue of his sheep, will now cast himself upon the sword of the angel, for the preservation of Israel: there was hope in those con

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