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What wrong could it be, to wish a freedom from wrongs? Were this people so mighty, that there could be danger in overpowering their neighbours, or in resisting a common sovereign, there might have appeared some colour for this hostile opposition; but, alas! what could a despised handful do to the prejudice of either? It is quarrel enough to Jerusalem, that it would not be miserable.

Neither is it otherwise with the Head of these hellish complices. There needs no other cause of his utmost fury, than to see a poor soul struggling to get out of the reach of his tyranny. So do savage beasts bristle up themselves, and make the most fierce assaults, when they are in danger of losing the prey, which they had once seized on.

In the mean while, what doth Nehemiah, with his Jews, for their common safety? They pray, and watch; they pray unto God; they watch against the enemy. Thus, thus shall we happily prevail against those spiritual wickednesses, which war against our souls. No evil can surprise us, if we watch; no evil can hurt us, if we pray; This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.

There was need of a continued vigilancy. The enemy was not more malicious, than subtle, and had said; They shall not know, neither see, till we come in the midst amongst them, and slay them. Open force is not so dangerous, as close dissimulation. They meant to seem Jews, while they were Moabites and Ammonites; and, in the clothes of brethren, purposed to hide murderers. Never is Satan so prevalent, as when he comes transformed into an angel of light.

It was a merciful providence of God, that made these men's tongues the blabs of their own counsel. Many a fearful design had prospered, if wickedness could have been silent. Warning is a lawful guard to a wise adversary. Now doth Nehemiah arm his people; and, for the time, changes their trowels into swords, and spears, and bows; raising up their courage with a vehement exhortation, to remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and to fight for their brethren, their sons, their daughters, their wives, and their houses. Nothing can so hearten us to the encountering of any evil, as the remembrance of that infinite power and wisdom, which can either avert, or mitigate, or sanctify it. We could not faint, if we did not forget God.

Necessity urges a man to fight for himself; love enables his hand to fight for those, which challenge a part in him. Where love meets with necessity, there can want no endeavour of victory. Necessity can make even cowards, valiant; love make the valiant, unresistible: Nehemiah doth not, therefore, persuade these Jews to fight for themselves, but for theirs. The judgment of the interest and danger cannot but quicken the dullest spirits.

Discovered counsels are already prevented. These serpents die, by being first seen; When the enemies heard that it was known unto us, they let fall their plot. Could we descry the enterprises of Satan, that tempter would return ashamed.

It is a safe point of wisdom, to carry a jealous eye over those, whom we have once found hollow and hostile. From that time forth, Nehemiah divided the task, betwixt the trowel and the sword! so disposing of every Israelite, that, while one hand was a mason, the other was a soldier: one is for work; the other, for defence.

Oh lively image of the Church Militant, wherein every one labours weaponed; wherein there is neither an idle soldier, nor a secure workman! Every one so builds, as that he is ready to ward temptations: every one so wields the sword of the Spirit, for defence, that withal he builds up himself in his most holy faith. Here is neither a fruitless valour, nor an unsafe diligence.

But what can our weapons avail us, if there be not means to warn us of an enemy? Without a trumpet, we are armed in vain: The work is great and large, and we are separated upon the wall, one far from another. Yea, so far as the utmost bounds of the earth, are we separated one from another, upon the walls of the spiritual Jerusalem: only the sacred trumpets of God call us, who are distant in place, to a combination in profession.

And who are those trumpets, but the public messengers of God, of whom God hath said; If the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand? Woe be to us, if we sound not; if the sound we give be uncertain! Woe be to our people, if when we premonish them of enemies, of judgments, they sit still unmoved; not buckling themselves to a resistance, to a prevention!

It is a mutual aid, to which these trumpets invite us; we might fight apart, without the signals of war; In what place ye hear the sound of the trumpet, resort ye thither unto us. There can be no safety to the Church, but where every man thinks his life, and welfare, consists in his fellows. Conjoined forces may prosper; single oppositions are desperate. All hearts and hands must meet in the common quarrel.

CONTEMPLATION III.-NEHEMIAH REDRESSING THE EXTORTION OF THE JEWS.

NEHEMIAH V., VI.

WITH What difficulty do these miserable Jews settle in their Jerusalem! The fear of foreign enemies doth not more afflict them, than the extortion of their own. Dearth is added unto war. Miseries do not stay for a mannerly succession to each other, but in a rude importunity throng in at once. Babel may

be built with ease; but whosoever goes about to raise the walls of God's city, shall have his hands full. The incursion of public enemies may be prevented, with vigilancy and power; but there is no defence against the secret gripes of oppression.

There is no remedy. The Jews are so taken up with their trowel and sword, for the time, that they cannot attend their trades; so as, while the wall did rise, their estates must needs impair. Even in the cheapest season, they must needs be poor, that earned nothing but the public safety: how much more in a common scarcity! Their houses, lands, vineyards are therefore mortgaged; yea their very skins are sold for corn, to their brethren. Necessity forces them to sell that, which it was cruelty to buy. What will we not, what must we not, part with for life?

The covetous rulers did not consider the occasions of this want, but the advantage. Sometimes, a bargain may be as unmerciful, as a robbery. Charity must be the rule of all contracts; the violation whereof, whether in the matter or the price, cannot but be sinful.

There could not be a juster ground of expostulation, than this of the oppressed Jews; "Our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children; and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters. While there is no difference in nature, why should there be such an injurious disproportion in condition?"

Even the same flesh may bear a just inequality: some may be rulers, while others are subject; some wealthy, others poor; but why those wealthy rulers should tyrannize over those poor inferiors, and turn brotherhood into bondage, no reason can be given, but lawless ambition. If there were one flesh of peers, another of peasants, there should be some colour for the proud impositions of the great; as, because the flesh of beasts is in a lower rank than ours, we kill, we devour it, at pleasure: but now, since the large body of mankind consists of the same flesh, why should the hand strike the foot?

And if one flesh may challenge meet respects from us, how much more one spirit! The spirit is more noble, than the flesh

is base. The flesh is dead without the spirit; the spirit, without the flesh, active and immortal. Our soul, though shapeless and immaterial, is more apparently one, than the flesh. And if the unity of our human spirit call us to a mutual care and tenderness in our carriage each to other, how much more of the divine! By that, we are men; by this, we are Christians. As the soul animates us to a natural life, so doth God's Spirit animate the soul to a heavenly; which is so one, that it cannot be divided. How should that one Spirit cause us so far to forget all natural and civil differences, as not to contemn, not to oppress any, whom it informeth!

They are not Christians, not men, that can enjoy the miseries of their brethren, whether in the flesh or spirit.

Good Nehemiah cannot choose but be much moved, at the barbarous extortion of the people; and now, like an impartial governor, he rebukes the rulers and nobles, whose hand was thus bloody with oppression. As of fishes, so of men, the lesser are a prey to the great. It is an ill use made of power, when the weight of it serves only to crush the weak. There were no living amongst men, had not God ordained higher than the highest; and yet higher than they. Eminency of place cannot be better improved, than by taking down mighty offenders. If nobility do embase itself to any foul sin, it is so much more worthy of coercion, by how much the person is of greater mark.

The justice of this reproof could not but shame impudence itself; "We, after our ability, have redeemed our brethren the Jews, which were sold to the heathen; and will you sell your brethren? or shall they be sold to us? Shall they find at home that yoke of bondage, which they had put off abroad? While they are still Jews, shall we turn Assyrians? If they must be slaves, why not rather to enemies, than to brethren? How much more tolerable were a foreign servitude, than a domestical! Be ashamed, O ye nobles of Israel, to renew Babylon in Jerusalem." I marvel not, if the offenders be stricken dumb, with so unanswerable an expostulation. Guiltiness and confusion have stopped their mouths.

Many of those who have not had grace enough to refrain sin, yet are not so utterly void of grace, as to maintain sin. Our afterwits are able to discern a kind of unreasonableness in those wicked actions, which the first appearance represents unto us plausible. Gain leads in sin; but shame follows it out.

There are those, that are bold and witty, to bear out commodious or pleasant evils. Neither could these Jewish enormities have wanted some colours of defence. Their stock was their own; which might have been otherwise improved, to no less profit. The offer, the suit, of these bargains was from the sellers these escheats fell into their hands, unsought; neither did their contract cause the need of their brethren, but relieve

it. But their conscience will not bear this plea. I know not whether the maintenance of the least evil be not worse, than the commission of the greatest: this may be of frailty; that argues obstinacy. There is hope of that man, that can blush and be silent.

After the conviction of the fact, it is seasonable for Nehemiah, to persuade reformation. No oratory is so powerful, as that of mildness; especially when we have to do with those, who, either through stomach or greatness, may not endure a rough reproof. The drops, that fall easily upon the corn, ripen and fill the ear; but the stormy showers, that fall with violence, beat down the stalks flat to the earth, and lay whole fields, without hope of recovery.

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Who can resist this sweet and sovereign reprehension; Ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God, because of the reproach of the heathen, our enemies? Did we dwell alone in the midst of the earth, yet the fear of our God should overawe our ways; but now that we dwell in the midst of our enemies, whose eyes are bent upon all our actions, whose tongues are as ready to blaspheme God as we to offend him, how carefully should we avoid those sins, which may draw shame upon our profession! Now the scandal is worse than the fact. Thus shall religion suffer more from the heathen, than our brethren do from us. If justice, if charity cannot sway with us, yet let the scornful insultations of the profane Gentiles affright us from these pressures."

No ingenuous disposition can be so tender of his own disgrace, as the true Israelite is of the reproach of his God. What is it, that he will not rather refrain, do, suffer, than that glorious name shall hazard a blemish? They cannot want outward retentives from sin, that live either among friends or enemies: if friends, they may not be grieved; if enemies, they may not be provoked. Those, that would live well, must stand in awe of all eyes. Even those, that are without the Church, yet may not be without regard. No person can be so contemptible, as that his censure should be contemned.

In dissuading from sin, reason itself cannot prevail more than example: "I likewise, and my brethren, and my servants, might exact of them money and corn. But from the time that I was appointed to the charge of Judah, I and my brethren have not eaten the bread of the governor. He shall never rule well, that doth all that he may. It is not safe for either part, that a prince should live at the height of his power; and if the greatest abate of their right, is it for inferiors to exhort?

Had Nehemiah aimed at his own greatness, no man could have had fairer pretences for his gain: The former governors that were before me, were chargeable unto the people, and had taken of them bread and wine, besides forty shekels of silver. His foot

VOL. II.

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