ever. It is from God that these helps can nourish his graces in us; like as every flame of our material fire hath a concourse of providence, but we may not expect new infusions: rather know, that God expects of us an improvement of those habitual graces which we have received.

While the people with fear and joy see God lighting his own fire, fire from heaven, the two sons of Aaron, in a careless presumption, will be serving him with a common flame; as if he might not have leave to choose the forms of his own worship. If this had been done some ages after, when the memory of the original of this heavenly fire had been worn out, it might have been excused with ignorance; but now, when God had newly sent his fire from above, newly commanded the continuance of it, either to let it go out, or while it still flamed to fetch profane coals to God's Altar, could savour of no less than presumption and sacrilege. When we bring zeal without knowledge, misconceits of faith, carnal affections, the devices of our will-worship, superstitious devotions, into God's service, we bring common fire to his altar: these flames were never of his kindling; he hates both altar, fire, priest, and sacrifice.

And now behold, the same fire, which consumed the sacrifice before, consumes the sacrificers. It was the sign of his acceptance, in consuming the beast; but, while it destroyed men, the fearful sign of his displeasure. By the same means can God bewray both love and hatred. We would have pleaded for Nadab and Abihu; "They are but young men, the sons of Aaron, not yet warm in their function; let both age, and blood, and inexperience excuse them as yet." No pretences, no privileges, can bear off a sin with God: men think either to patronize or mitigate evils, by their feigned reasons. That no man may hope the plea either of birth, or of youth, or of the first commission of evil, may challenge pardon; I see here young men, sons of the ruler of Israel, for the first offence struck dead.

Yea, this made God the more to stomach, and the rather to revenge this impiety, because the sons of Aaron did it.. God had both pardoned and graced their father; he had honoured them; of the thousands of Israel, culling them out for his altar: and now, as their father set up a false god, so they bring false fire unto the true God.

If the sons of infidels live godlessly, they do their kind: their punishment shall be, though just, yet less; but if the children of religious parents, after all Christian nurture, shall shame their education, God takes it more heinously, and revenges it more sharply. The more bonds of duty, the more plagues of neglect.

If from the agents we look to the act itself, set aside the original descent, and what difference was there betwixt these fires? Both looked alike, heated alike, ascended alike, consumed alike; both were fed with the same material wood, both vanished into smoke; there was no difference, but in the commandment of God,

If God had enjoined ordinary fire, they had sinned to look for celestial: now he commanded only the fire which he sent; they sinned

in sending up incense, in that fire, which he commanded not. It is a dangerous thing in the service of God to decline from his own institutions: we have to do with a power which is wise to prescribe his own worship, just to require what he hath prescribed, powerful to revenge that which he hath not required.

If God had struck them with some leprosy in their fore-head, as he did their aunt Miriam soon after, or with some palsy or lingering consumption, the punishment had been grievous; but he, whose judgments are ever just, sometimes secret, saw fire the fit. test revenge for a sin of fire; his own fire, fittest to punish strange fire; sudden judgment, fit for a present and exemplary sin: he saw, that if he had winked at this, his service had been exposed to profanation.

It is wisdom in governors to take sin at the first bound; and so to revenge it, that their punishments may be preventions. Speed of death is not always a judgment: suddenness, as it is ever justly suspicious, so then certainly argues anger, when it finds us in an act of sin. Leisure of repentance is an argument of favour: when God gives a man law, it implies that he would not have judgment surprise him.

Doubtless, Aaron looked somewhat heavily on this sad spectacle. It could not but appal him, to see his two sons dead before him, 'dead in displeasure, dead suddenly, dead by the immediate hand of God. And now he could repent him of his new honour, to see it succeed so ill with the sons of his loins; neither could he chuse but see himself stricken in them. But his brother Moses, that had learned not to know either nephews or brother, when they stood in his way to God, wisely turned his eyes from the dead carcases of his sons, to his respect of the living God; "My brother, this event is fearful, but just; these were thy sons, but they sinned; it was not for God, it is not for thee, to look so much who they were, as what they did. It was their honour and thine, that they were chosen to minister before the Lord: he, that called them, justly required their sanctification and obedience. If they have profaned God and themselves, can thy natural affection so miscarry thee, that thou couldest wish their impunity with the blemish of thy Maker? Our sons are not ours, if they disobey our Father: to pity their misery, is to partake of their sin; if thou grudge at their judgment, take heed lest the same fire of God come forth upon this strange fire of nature. Shew now whether thou more lovest God or thy sons; shew whether thou be a better father or a son." Aaron, weighing these things, holds his peace, not out of an amazement nor sullenness, but out of patient and humble submission; and seeing God's pleasure, and their desert, is content to forget that he had sons. He might have had a silent tongue, and a clamorous heart. There is no voice louder in the ears of God, than a speechless repining of the soul. Heat is more intended with keeping in; but Aaron's silence was no less inward: he knew how little he should get by brawling with God. If he breathed out discontentment, he saw God could speak fire to him again;

and therefore he quietly submits to the will of God, and holds his peace because the Lord had done it. There is no greater proof of grace, than to smart patiently, and humbly and contentedly to rest the heart in the justice and wisdom of God's proceeding, and to be so far from chiding that we dispute not. Nature is froward; and though she well knows we meddle not with our match, when we strive with our Maker, yet she pricks us forward to this idle quarrel, and bids us, with Job's wife, Curse and die. If God either chide or smite (as servants are charged to their masters) we may not answer again: when God's hand is on our back, our hand must be on our mouth; else, as mothers do their children, God shall whip us so much the more for crying.

It is hard for a stander-by, in this case, to distinguish betwixt hard-heartedness and piety. There Aaron sees his sons lie: hè may neither put his hand to them to bury them, nor shed a tear for their death. Never parent can have juster cause of mourning, than to see his sons dead in their sin; if prepared and penitent, yet who can but sorrow for their end? But to part with children to the danger of a second death, is worthy of more than tears. Yet Aaron must learn so far to deny nature, that he must more magnify the justice of God, than lament the judgment. Those, whom God hath called to his immediate service, must know, that he will not allow them the common passions and cares of others. Nothing is more natural than sorrow for the death of our own: if ever grief be seasonable, it becomes a funeral. And if Nadab and Abihu had died in their beds, this favour had been allowed them, the sorrow of their father and brethren; for when God forbids solemn mourning to his priests, over the dead, he excepts the cases of this nearness of blood. Now all Israel may mourn for these two; only the father and brethren may not. God is jealous lest their sorrow should seem to countenance the sin, which he had punished: even the fearfullest acts of God must be applauded by the heaviest hearts of the faithful.

That which the father and brother may not do, the cousins are commanded dead carcases are not for the presence of God; his justice was shown sufficiently in killing them: they are now fit for the grave, not the sanctuary: neither are they carried out naked, but in their coats. It was an unusual sight for Israel to see a linen ephod upon the bier; the judgment was so much the more remarkable, because they had the badge of their calling upon their backs.

Nothing is either more pleasing unto God, or more commodious, to men, than that when he hath executed judgment, it should be seen and wondered at; for therefore he strikes some, that he may warn all. Lev. x.

OF AARON AND MIRIAM.

THE Israelites are stayed seven days in the station o Hazeroth, for the punishment of Miriam. The sins of the governors are

a just stop to the people; all of them smart in one; all must stay the leisure of Miriam's recovery. Whosoever seeks the land of promise, shall find many lets: Amalek, Og, Sehon, and the kings of Canaan meet with Israel: these resisted, but hindered not their passage; their sins only stay them from removing. Afflictions are not crosses to us, in the way to heaven, in comparison to our sins.

What is this I see? Is not this Aaron, that was brother in nature, and by office joint commissioner with Moses? Is not this Aaron, that made his brother an intercessor for him to God, in the case of his idolatry? Is not this Aaron, that climbed up the hill of Sinai with Moses? Is not this Aaron, whom the mouth and hand of Moses consecrated a high priest unto God? Is not this Miriam, the elder sister of Moses? Is not this Miriam, that led the triumph of the women, and sung gloriously to the Lord? Is not this Miriam, which laid her brother Moses in the reeds, and fetched her mother to be his nurse? Both prophets of God; both, the flesh and blood of Moses: and doth this Aaron repine at the honour of him, which gave himself that honour, and saved his life? Doth this Miriam repine at the prosperity of him, whose life she saved? Who would not have thought this should have been their glory, to have seen the glory of their own brother? What could have been a greater comfort to Miriam, than to think, "How happily doth he now sit at the stern of Israel, whom I saved from perishing in a boat of bulrushes! It is to me, that Israel owes this commander?" but now envy hath so blinded their eyes, that they can neither see this privilege of nature, nor the honour of God's choice.

Miriam and Aaron are in mutiny against Moses. Who is so holy that sins not? What sin is so unnatural, that the best can avoid without God? But what weakness soever may plead for Miriam, who can but grieve to see Aaron at the end of so many sins? Of late I saw him carving the molten image, and consecrating an altar to a false god; now I see him seconding an unkind mutiny against his brother; both sins find him accessary; neither, principal.

It was not in the power of the legal priesthood to perform, or promise innocency to her ministers: it was necessary we should have another high priest, which could not be tainted. That King of Righteousness was of another order; he being without sin, hath fully satisfied for the sins of men. Whom can it now offend, to see the blemishes of the evangelical priesthood, when God's first high priest is thus miscarried?

Who can look for love and prosperity at once, when holy and meek Moses finds enmity in his own flesh and blood? Rather than we shall want, A man's enemies shall be those of his own house, Authority cannot fail of opposition, if it be never so mildly swayed: that common make-bait will rather raise it out of our own bosom. To do well and hear ill, is princely.

The Midianitish wife of Moses cost him dear. Before, she hazarded his life; now, the favour of his people: unequal matches

are seldom prosperous. Although now this scandal was only taken; envy was not wise enough to choose a ground of the quarrel. Whether some secret and emulatory brawls passed between Zipporah and Miriam, as many times these sparks of private brawls grow into a perilous and common flame; or whether now that Jethro and his family were joined with Israel, there were surmises of transporting the government to strangers; or whether this unfit choice of Moses is now raised up to disparage God's gifts in him; even in sight, the exceptions were frivolous: emulation is curious, and out of the best person or act will raise something to cavil at.

Seditions do not ever look the same way they move: wise men can easily distinguish betwixt the visor of actions, and the face. The wife of Moses is mentioned; his superiority is shot at. Pride is lightly the ground of all sedition. Which of their faces shined like Moses? Yea, let him but have drawn his veil, which of them durst look on his face? Which of them had fasted twice forty days? Which of them ascended up to the top of Sinai, and was hid with smoke and fire? Which of them received the law twice in two several tables, from God's own hand? And yet they dare say, Hath God spoken only by Moses? They do not deny Moses's honour, but they challenge a part with him; and as they were the elder in nature, so they would be equal in dignity, equal in administration. According to her name, Miriam would be exalted. And yet how unfit were they? One, a woman, whom her sex debarred from rule; the other, a priest, whom his office sequestered from earthly government. Self-love makes men unreasonable, and teaches them to turn the glass to see themselves bigger, others less than they are. It is a hard thing for a man, willingly and gladly to see his equals lifted over his head, in worth and opinion. Nothing will more try a man's grace, than questions of emulation. That man hath true light, which can be content to be a candle before the sun of others.

As no wrongs can escape God, so least of all those which are offered to princes: he, that made the ear, needs no intelligence of our tongues. We have to do with a God, that is light of hearing: we cannot whisper any evil so secretly, that he should not cry out of noise; and what need we any further evidence, when our judge is our witness?

Without any delation of Moses, God hears and challenges them. Because he was meek, therefore he complained not: because he was meek and complained not, therefore the Lord struck in for him the more. The less a man strives for himself, the more is God his champion. It is the honour of great persons, to undertake the patronage of their clients: how much more will God revenge his elect, which cry to him day and night! He, that said, I seek not mine own glory, adds, But there is one that seeks it, and judges. God takes his part ever, that fights not for himself.

No man could have given more proofs of his courage, than Moses. He slew the Egyptian; he confronted Pharaoh in his own