reserved for a scourge to the exorbitant son of David. God would have us make account that our peace ends with our innocence. The same sin that sets debate betwixt God and us, arms the creatures against us: it were pity we should be at any quiet, while we are fallen out with the God of peace. son, BOOK XVIII. CONTEMPLATION I. REHOBOAM. WHO would not but have looked, that seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, should have furnished Solomon's palace with choice of heirs, and have peopled Israel with royal issue? and now, behold, Solomon has by all these but one and him by an Ammonitess! Many a poor man hath an houseful of children by one wife, while this great king has but one son by many housefuls of wives. Fertility is not from the means, but from the author. It was for Solomon that David sung of old, Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward!" How oft doth God deny this heritage of heirs, where he gives the largest heritage of lands, and gives most of these living possessions, where he gives least of the dead, that his blessings may be acknowledged free unto both, entailed upon neither! ancient. Israel wanted not for thousands that were wiser than Rehoboam; yet, because they knew him to be the son of Solomon, no man makes question of his government. In the case of succession into kingdoms, we may not look into the quali. ties of the person, but into the right. So secure is Solomon of the people's fidelity to David's seed, that he follows not his father's example, in setting his son by him in his own throne; here was no danger of a rivality to enforce it, no eminency in the son to merit it: it sufficeth him to know, that no bond can be surer than the natural allegiance of subjects. I do not find that the following kings stood upon the confirmation of their people; but, as those that knew the way to the throne, ascended their steps without aid. As yet the sovereignty of David's house was green and unsettled: Israel, therefore, doth not now come to attend Rehoboam, but Rehoboam goes up to meet Israel; they come not to his Jerusalem, but he goes to their Shechem: “To Shechem were all Israel come to make him king." If loyalty drew them together, why not rather to Jerusalem? There, the majesty of his father's temple, the magnificence of his palace, the very stones in those walls, besides the strength of his guards, had pleaded strongly for their subjection. Shechem had been many ways fatal, was every way incommodious. It is an infinite help or disadvantage that arises from circumstances. The very place puts Israel in mind of a rebellion: there Abime tion over and against his brethren; there Gaal against Abimelech; there was Joseph sold by his brethren; as if the very soil had been stained with perfidiousness. The time is no less ill chosen: Rehoboam had ill counsel ere he bewrayed it; for had he speedily called up Israel, before Jeroboam could have been sent for out of Egypt, he had found the way clear: a little delay may lose a great deal of opportunity; what shall we say of both, but that misery is led in by infatuation? As the greatest persons cannot give themselves children, so the wisest cannot give their children wisdom. Was it not of Re-lech had raised up his treacherous usurpahoboam that Solomon said, "I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it to the man that shall be after me; and who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool: yet shall he rule over all my labour, wherein I have laboured, and showed myself wise under the sun." All Israel found that Solomon's wit was not propagated; many a fool hath had a wiser son than this wisest father: amongst many sons, it is no news to find some one defective; Solomon hath but one son, and he no miracle of wisdom. God gives purposely so eminent an instance, to teach men to look up to heaven, both for heirs and graces. Solomon was both the king of Israel, and the father of Rehoboam, when he was scarce out of his childhood: Rehoboam enters into the kingdom at a ripe age; yet Solomon was the man, and Rehoboam the child. Age is no just measure of wisdom; there are beardless sages, and grey-headed children; not the ancient are wise, but the wise are Had not Israel been somewhat predisposed to a mutiny, they had never sent into Egypt for such a spokesman as Jeroboam, a fugitive, a traitor to Solomon; long had that crafty conspirator lurked in a foreign court. The alliances of princes are not ever necessary bonds of friendship: the brother-in-law of Solomon harbours this snake in his bosom, and gives that heat, which is repaid with a sting to the posterity of so near an ally. And now Solomon's death calls him back to his native soil. That Israel would entertain a rebel, it was an ill sign; worse yet, that they would countenance him; worst of all, that they would employ him. Nothing doth more bewray evil intentions, than the choice of vicious agents. Those that mean well, will not hazard either the success or credit of their actions upon offensive instruments: none but the sluttish will wipe their faces with foul cloths. Upright hearts would have said, as David did to God, so to his anointed, "Do not I hate them that hate thee? yea, I hate them with a perfect hatred." Jeroboam's head had been a fit present to have been tendered unto their new king; and now, instead thereof, they tender themselves to Jeroboam, as the head of their faction. 66 Had not Rehoboam wanted spirits, he had first, after Solomon's example, done justice to his father's traitor, and then have treated of mercy towards his subjects; the people soon found the weakness of their new sovereign, else they durst not have spoken to him by so obnoxious a tongue: Thy father made our yoke grievous, make thou it lighter, and we will serve thee." Doubtless the crafty head of Jeroboam was in this suit which his mouth uttered in the name of Israel: nothing could have been more subtile; it seemed a promise, but it was a threat; that which seemed a supplication, was a complaint: humility was but a vail for discontentment; one hand held a paper, the other a sword. Had they said, Free us from tributes, the capitulation had been gross, and strongly savouring of sedition; now they say, "Ease us;" they profess his power to impose, and their willingness to yield; only craving favour in the weight of the imposition. If Rehoboam yield, he blemishes his father; if he deny, he endangers his kingdom; his wilfulness shall seem worthily to abandon his sceptre, if he stick at so unreasonable a suit: surely Israel came with a purpose to cavil; Jeroboam had secretly troubled these waters, that he might fish more gainfully. One malcontent is enough to embroil a whole kingdom. How harshly must it needs sound in the ears of Rehoboam, that the first word he hears from his people is a querulous challenge of his father's government! "Thy father made our yoke grievous." For aught I see, the suggestion was not more spiteful than unjust. Where was the weight of this yoke, the toil of these services? Here were none of the turmoils of war; no trainings, marchings, encampings, entrenchings, watchings, minings, sieges, fortifications; none of that tedious world of work that attends hostility. Solomon had not his name for nought: all was calm, during that long reign; and if they had paid dear for their peace, they had no cause to complain of a hard match: the warlike times of Saul and David had exhausted their blood, together with their substance; what ingratitude was this to cry out of ease! Yea, but that peace brought forth costly and laborious buildings; God's house, and the king's, the walls of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, the cities of store, the cities of defence, could not rise without many a shoulder: true, but not of any Israelites ; the remainders of Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, were put to all the drudgery of these great works: the tasks of Israel were easy and ingenuous, free from servility, free from painfulness. "But the charge was theirs, whosoever's was the labour. The diet of so endless a retinue, the attendance of his seraglio, the purveyance for his forty thousand stables, the cost of his sacrifices, must needs weigh heavy." Certainly, if it had lain on none but his own. But wherefore went Solomon's navy every three years to Ophir? to what use served the six hundred threescore and six talents of gold, that came in one year to his exchequer? wherefore served the large tributes of foreign nations? how did he make silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, if the exactions were so pressive? The multitude is ever prone to pick quarrels with their governors; and whom they feared alive, to censure dead. The benefits of so quiet and happy a reign are passed over in silence; the grievances are recounted with clamour. Who can hope that merit or greatness can shield him from obloquy, when Solomon is traduced to his own loins? The proposition of Israel puts Rehoboam to a deliberation: "Depart ye for three days, then come again to me.' I hear no other word of his that argued wisdom: not to give sudden resolutions, in cases of importance, was a point that well might beseem the son of Solomon. I wonder that he, who had so much wit as to call for leisure in his answer, should show so little wit in the improving of that leisure, in the return of that answer. Who cannot but hope well to see the grey heads of Solomon's secret council called to Rehoboam's cabinet? As counsellors, as ancient as Solomon's, they cannot choose but see the best, the safest course for their new sovereign: they had learned of their old master, that " A soft answer appeaseth_wrath;" wisely, therefore, do they advise him, If thou wilt be a servant to this people this 66 : day, and speak good words to them, they will be thy servants for ever." It was an easy condition, with one mouthful of breath to purchase an everlasting homage; with one gentle motion of his tongue, to bind all people's hearts to his allegiance for ever. Yet, as if the motion had been unfit, a new council-table is called. Well might this people say, "What will not Rehoboam grudge us, if he think much to give us good words for a kingdom?" There is not more wisdom in taking variety of advice, where the matter is doubtful, than folly when it is plain. The young heads are consulted; this very change argues weakness: some reason might be pleaded for passing from the younger council to the aged; none for the contrary. Age brings experience; and it is a shame, if with the ancient be not wisdom. Youth is commonly rash, heady, insolent, ungoverned, wedded to will, led by humour, a rebel to reason, a subject to passion, fitter to execute than advise. Green wood is ever shrinking and warping, whereas the well-seasoned holds a constant firmness. Many a life, many a soul, many a flourishing state, hath been ruined by undisciplined monitors such were these of Rehoboam, whose great stomach tells them, that this conditionating of subjects was no other than an affront to their new master, and suggests to them, how unfit it is for majesty to brook so saucy a treaty; how requisite and princely to crush this presumption in the egg. As scorning, therefore, to be braved by the base vulgar, they put words of greatness and terror in their new prince: "My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins; my father made your yoke heavy, I will add to your yoke. My father hath chastised you with whips, I will chastise you with scorpions." The very words have stings: now must Israel needs think, How cruel will this man's hands be, when he thus draws blood with his tongue! Men are not wont to speak out their worst: who can endure the hopes of him that promiseth tyranny? There can be no good use of an indefinite profession of rigour and severity; fear is an unsafe guardian of any state, much less of an unsettled: which was yet worse, not the sins of Israel were threatened, nor their purses, but their persons; neither had they desired a remission of justice, but of exactions and now they hear of nothing but burdens, and scourges, and scorpions. Here was a prince and people well met: I do not find them sensible of aught, save their own profit: they do not say, Religion was corrupted in the shutting up of thy father's days; idolatry found the free favour of priests, and temples, and sacrifices. Begin thy reign with God: purge the church, demolish those piles of abomination, abandon those idol-mongers, restore devotion to her purity. They are all for their penny; for their ease. He, on the other side, is all for his will; for an imperious sovereignty, without any regard, either of their reforma. tion or satisfaction: they were worthy of load that cared for nothing but their backs; and he worthy of such subjects, who professed to affect their misery and torment. Who would not but have looked any whither for the cause of this evil, rather than to heaven? yet the holy God challenges it to himself: the cause was from the Lord, that he might perform this saying by Abijah, the Shilonite, to Jeroboam. As sin is a punishment of sin, it is a part of justice: the Holy One of Israel doth not abhor to use even the grossest sin to his own just purposes. While our wills are free to our own choice, his decrees are.as necessary as just: Israel had forsaken the Lord, and worshipped Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Chemosh, and Milchom: God owes them and Solomon a whipping; the frowardness of Rehoboam shall pay it them. I see Jeroboam's plot, the people's insolence, the young men's misadvice, the prince's unreasonable austerity, meeting together through the wise Providence of the Almighty, unwittingly to accomplish his most just decree. All these might have done otherwise, for any force that was offered to their will; all would no more do otherwise than if there had been no predetermination in heaven; that God may be magnified in his wisdom and justice, while man wittingly perisheth in his folly. That three days' expectation had warmed these smoking Israelites, and made them ready for a combustion: upon so peremptory a resolution of rigour, the flame bursts out, which all the waters of the well of Bethlehem could never quench. The furious multitude flies out into a desperate revolt: "What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel; now, see to thine own house, David." How durst these seditious mouths mention David in defiance? One would have thought that very name had been able to have tempered their fury, and to have contained them within the limits of obedience. It was the father of Rehoboam, and the son of David, that had led Israel into ido. latry: Solomon hath drawn contempt upon his father, and upon his son. If Israel have cast off their God, is it marvel that they shake off his anointed? Irreligion is the way to disobedience; there can be no true subjection, but out of conscience: they cannot make conscience of civil duties who make none of divine. In vain shall Rehoboam hope to prevail by his officer, when himself is rejected. The persons of princes carry in them characters of majesty: when their presence works not, how should their message? If Adoram solicit the people too late with good words, they answer him with stones. Nothing is more untractable and violent than an enraged multitude. It was time for Rehoboam to betake himself to his chariot: he saw those stones were thrown at him in his Adoram. As the messenger suffers for the master, so the master suffers in his messenger. Had Rehoboam been in Adoram's clothes, this death had been his: only flight can deliver him from those that might have been subjects: Jerusalem must be his refuge against the conspiracy of Shechem. Blessed be God for lawful government: even a mutinous body cannot want a head. If the rebellious Israelites have cast off their true sovereign, they must choose a false Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, must be the man. He had need be skilful, and sit sure, that shall back the horse which hath cast his rider. Israel could not have anywhere met with more craft and courage than they found in this leader. Rehoboam returns to Jerusalem lighter by a crown than he went forth; Judah and Benjamin still stick fast to their loyalty; the example of a general rebellion cannot make them unfaithful to the house of David. God will ever reserve a remnant free from the common contagion. Those tribes, to approve their valour no less than their fidelity, will fight against their brethren for their prince, and will hazard their lives to reduce the crown to the son of Solomon. A hundred and fourscore thousand of them are up in arms, ready to force Israel to their denied subjection. No noise sounded on both parts but military; no man thought of any thing but blood: when suddenly God sends his prophet to forbid the battle, Shemaiah comes with a message of cessation, "Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel; return every man to his house; for this thing is from me, saith the Lord." The word of one silly prophet dismisses these mighty armies: he, that would not lay down the threats of his rigour, upon the advice of his ancient counsellors, will lay down his sword upon the word of a seer. Shall we envy, or shame, | to see how much the prophets of the Old Testament could do? how little those of the New? If our commission be no less from the same God, the difference of success can. not go away unrevenged. There was yet some grace in Rehoboam, that he would not spurn against that which God challenged as his own work. Some godless ruffian would have said, Whosoever is the author, I will be revenged on the instruments. Rehoboam hath learned this lesson of his grandfather: "I held my peace, because thou, Lord, hadst done it." If he might strive with the multitude, he knew it was no striving with his Maker: quietly therefore doth he lay down his arms, not daring, after that prohibition, to seek the recovery of his kingdom by blood. Where God's purposes are hid from us, we must take the fairest ways of all lawful remedies: but where God hath revealed his determination, we must sit down in an humble submission: our struggling may aggravate, cannot redress, our miseries. CONTEMPLATION II.—JEROBOAM. As there was no public and universal conflict betwixt the ten tribes and the two, so no peace. Either king found reason to fortify the borders of his own territories. Shechem was worthy to be dear to Jeroboam; a city, as of old, seasoned with many treasons, so, now, auspicious to his new usurpation. The civil defection was soon followed by the spiritual. As there are near respects betwixt God and his anointed, so there is great affinity betwixt treason and idolatry; there is a connexion betwixt "Fear God, and honour the king ;" and no less betwixt the neglects of both. In vain shall a man look for faith in an irreligious heart. Next to Ahithophel, I do not find that Israel yielded a craftier head than Jeroboam's: so hath he plotted this conspiracy, that, whatever fall, there is no place for a challenge; not his own intrusion, but Israel's election, hath raised him to their throne: neither is his cunning less in holding a stolen sceptre. Thus he thinks in himself, If Israel have made me their king, it is but a pang of discontentment; these violent thoughts will not last always; sudden fits have commonly sudden recoveries: their return to their loyalty shall forfeit my head, together with my crown; they cannot return to God and hold off from their lawful sovereign; they cannot return to Jerusalem, and keep off from God, from their loyalty: images, against the erecting of any rival altars to that of Jerusalem; yet now, that he sees both these may avail much to the advancing of his ambitious project, he sets up those images, those altars. Wicked men care not to make bold with God, in cases of their own commodity. If the laws of their Maker lie in the way of their profit or promotion, they either spurn them out, or tread upon them at pleasure. Aspiring minds will know no God but honour. Israel sojourned in Egypt, and brought home a golden calf; Jeroboam sojourns there, and brought home two: it is hard to dwell in Egypt untainted. Not to savour of the sins of the place we live in, is no less strange, than for wholesome liquor, tunned up in a musty vessel, not to smell of the cask. The best body may be infected in a contagious air. Let him beware of Egypt, that would be free from idolatry. thrice a-year will their devotion call them | up thither, besides the exigence of their frequent vows: how can they be mine, while that glorious temple is in their eye? while the magnificence of the royal palace of David and Solomon shall admonish them of their native allegiance? while, besides the solicitation of their brethren, the priests and Levites shall preach to them the necessity of their due obedience, and the abomination of their sacrifices in their wilful disobedience? while they shall, by their presence, put themselves upon the mercy or justice of their lawful and forsaken prince? Either, therefore, I must divert them from Jerusalem, or else I cannot live and reign: it is no diverting them by a direct restraint; such prohibition would both endanger their utter distaste, and whet their desire to more eagerness I may change religion, I may not inhibit it. So the people have a God, it sufficeth them: they shall have so much No sooner are Jeroboam's calves up, than formality as may content them: their zeal Israel is down on their knees: their woris not so sharp but they can be well pleased ship follows immediately upon the erection. with ease. I will proffer them both a more How easily is the unstable vulgar carried incompendious and more plausible worship: to whatsoever religion of authority! The Jerusalem shall be supplied within mine weathercock will look which way soever own borders. Naturally men love to see the wind blows: it is no marvel if his subthe objects of their devotion; I will there-jects be brutish, who hath made a calf his fore feed their eyes with two golden representations of their god, nearer home; and what can be more proper, than those which Aaron devised of old to humour Israel? Upon this pestilent ground, Jeroboam sets up two calves in Dan and Bethel, and persuades the people: "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt." Oh the mischief that comes of wicked infidelity! It was God's prophet that had rent Jeroboam's garment into twelve pieces, and had given ten of them to him, in token of his sharing the ten tribes; who, with the same breath also, told him, that the cause of this distraction was their idolatry. Yet now will he institute an idolatrous service for the holding together of them, whom their idolatry had rent from their true sovereign to him. He says not, God hath promised me this kingdom; God hath conferred it; God shall find means to maintain his own act; I will obey him, let him dispose of me. The God of Israel is wise and powerful enough to fetch about his own designs; but, as if the devices of men were stronger than God's providence and ordination, he will be working out his own ends by profane policies. Jeroboam, being born an Israelite, and bred in the court of a Solomon, could not but know the express charge of God against the making of god. Every accessory to sin is filthy, but the first authors of sin are abominable. How is Jeroboam branded in every of these sacred leaves! how do all ages ring of his fact, with the accent of dishonour and indignation! "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that made Israel to sin." It was a shame for Israel that it could be made to sin, by a Jeroboam: but O cursed name of Jeroboam, that would draw Israel to sin! The followers and abettors of evil are worthy of torment, but no hell is too deep for the leaders of public wickedness. Religion is clothed with many requisite circumstances. As a new king would have a new god, so that new god must have new temples, altars, services, priests, solemnities; all these hath Jeroboam instituted; all these hath he cast in the same mould with his golden calves. False devotion doth not more cross than imitate the true. Satan is no less a counterfeit than an enemy of God; he knows it is more easy to adulterate religion, than to abolish it. That which God ordained, for the avoid. ance of idolatry, is made the occasion of it: a limitation of his holy services to Jerusalem. How mischievously do wicked men pervert the wholesome institutions of God to their sin, to their bane! Jeroboam could not be ignorant how fear |