himself taught us, he hath appointed a for, on God's part, which is ever the same unchangeable; For thine is the kingdom; therefore supplications belong to thee: the power, thou openest thy hand and fillest every living thing: the glory, for thy name is glorified in thy grants. But because on our part, the occasions are variable, he hath left our for, to our religious discretion. For when it is said, You lust and have not, because you ask not3; it followeth presently, you ask and miss, because you ask amiss. It is not a fit for, for every private man, to ask much means, for he would do much good. I must not pray, Lord put into my hands the strength of Christian kings, for out of my zeal, I will employ thy benefits to thine advantage, thy soldiers against thine enemies, and be a bank against that deluge, wherewith thine enemy the Turk threatens to overflow thy people. I must not pray, Lord, fill my heart with knowledge and understanding, for I would compose the schisms in thy church, and reduce thy garment to the first continual and seemless integrity; and redress the deafnesses and oppressions of judges, and officers. But he gave us a convenient scantling for our fors, who prayed, Give me enough, for I may else despair, give me not too much, for so I may presume. Of schoolmen, some affirm prayer to be an act of our will; for we would have that which we ask. Others, of our understanding; for by it we ascend to God, and better our knowledge, which is the proper ailment and food of our understanding; so, that is a perplexed case. But all agree, that it is an act of our reason, and therefore must be reasonable. For only reasonable things can pray; for the beasts and ravens, (Psalm exlvii. 9.) are not said to pray for food, but to cry. Two things are required to make a prayer. 1. Pius affectus, which was not in the devils' request, Let us go into the swine, nor Stretch out thine hand, and touch all he hath'; and, stretch out thine hand, and touch his bones, and therefore these were not prayers. And it must be rerum decentium: for our government in that point, this may inform us. Things absolutely good, as remission of sins, we may absolutely beg and to escape things absolutely ill, as sin. But mean and indifferent things, qualified by the circumstances, we must ask 3 James iv. 1. Matt. viii. 31. 7 Job i. 11. conditionally and referringly to the Giver's will. For when Paul begged stimulum carnis to be taken from him, it was not granted, but he had this answer, My grace is sufficient for thee. Let us now (not in curiosity, but for instruction) consider the reason: They know not what they do. First, if ignorance excuse: and then, if they were ignorant. Hast thou, O God, filled all thy Scriptures, both of thy recorders and notaries, which have penned the history of thy love, to thy people; and of thy secretaries the prophets, admitted to the foreknowledge of thy purposes, and instructed in thy cabinet; hast thou filled these with praises and persuasions of wisdom and knowledge, and must these persecutors be pardoned for their ignorance? Hast thou bid Esay to say, It is a people of no understanding, therefore he that made them, shall not have compassion of them. And My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge1o; and now dost thou say, Forgive them because they know not? Shall ignorance, which is often the cause of sin, often a sin itself, often the punishment of sin, and ever an infirmity and disease contracted by the first great sin, advantage them? Who can understand his faults, saith the man according to thy heart; Lord cleanse me from my secret faults": he durst not make his ignorance the reason of his prayer, but prayed against ignorance. But thy mercy is as the sea: both before it was the sea, for it overspreads the whole world; and since it was called into limits: for it is not the less infinite for that. And as by the sea, the most remote and distant nations enjoy one another, by traffic and commerce, East and West becoming neighbours: so by mercy, the most different things are united and reconciled; sinners have heaven; traitors are in the princes' bosom; and ignorant persons are in the spring of wisdom, being forgiven, not only though they be ignorant, but because they are ignorant. But all ignorance is not excusable; nor any less excusable, than not to know, what ignorance is not to be excused. Therefore, there is an ignorance which they call nescientiam, a not knowing of things not appertaining to us. This we had had, though Adam had stood; and the angels have it, for they know not the latter day, and therefore * 2 Cor. viii. 10 Hosea iv. 6. " Isaiah xxvii. 11. 11 Psalm xix. 12. for this, we are not chargeable. They call the other privation, which if it proceed merely from our own sluggishness, in not searching the means made for our instruction, is ever inexcusable. If from God, who for his own just ends hath cast clouds over those lights which should guide us, it is often excusable. For Paul saith, I was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and an oppressor, but I was received to mercy, for I did it ignorantly, through unbelief. So, though we are all bound to believe, and therefore faults done by unbelief cannot escape the name and nature of sin, yet since belief is the immediate gift of God, faults done by unbelief, without malicious concurrences and circumstances, obtain mercy and pardon from that abundant fountain of grace, Christ Jesus. And therefore it was a just reason, Forgive them, for they know not. If they knew not, which is evident, both by this speech from truth itself, and by 2 Cor. ii. 8., Had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; and Acts iii. 17., I know that through ignorance ye did it. And though after so many powerful miracles, this ignorance were vincible, God having revealed enough to convert them, yet there seems to be enough on their parts, to make it a perplexed case, and to excuse, though not a malicious persecuting, yet a not consenting to his doctrine. For they had a law, Whosoever shall make himself the son of God, let him die. And they spoke out of their laws, when they said, We have no other king but Cæsar. There were therefore some among them reasonably, and zealously ignorant. And for those, the Son ever welcome, and well heard, begged of his Father, ever accessible, and exorable, a pardon ever ready and natural. We have now passed through all those rooms which we unlocked and opened at first. And now may that point, why this prayer is remembered only by one evangelist, and why by Luke, be modestly inquired: for we are all admitted and welcomed into the acquaintance of the Scriptures, upon such conditions as travellers are into other countries: if we come as praisers and admirers of their commodities and government, not as spies into the mysteries of their state, nor searchers, nor calumniators of their weaknesses. For though the Scriptures, like a strong recti 12 1 Tim. i. 13. fied state, be not endangered by such a curious malice of any, yet he which brings that, deserves no admittance. When those great commissioners which are called the Septuagint, sent from Jerusalem, to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, had perfected their work, it was, and is an argument of Divine assistance, that writing severally, they differed not. The same may prove even to weak and faithless men, that the Holy Ghost superintended the four evangelists, because they differ not; as they which have written their harmonies, make it evident: but to us, faith teacheth the other way. And we conclude not, because they agree, the Holy Ghost directed; for heathen writers and malefactors in examinations do so; but because the Holy Ghost directed, we know they agree, and differ not. For as an honest man, ever of the same thoughts, differs not from himself, though he do not ever say the same things, if he say not contraries; so the four evangelists observe the uniformity and sameness of their guide, though all did not say all the same things, since none contradicts any. And as, when my soul, which enables all my limbs to their functions, disposes my legs to go, my whole body is truly said to go, because none stays behind; so when the Holy Spirit, which had made himself as a common soul to their four souls, directed one of them to say anything, all are well understood to have said it. And therefore when to that place, where that evangelist cites the prophet Jeremy, for words spoken by Zachary, many medicines are applied by the fathers; as, that many copies have no name, that Jeremy might be binominous, and have both names, a thing frequent in the Bible, that it might be the error of a transcriber, that there was extant an Apocryphal Book of Jeremy, in which these words were, and sometimes things of such books were vouched, as Jannes and Jambres by Paul; St. Augustine insists upon, and teaches rather this, that it is more wonderful, that all the prophets spake by one Spirit, and so agreed, than if any one of them had spoken all those things; and therefore he adds, Singula sunt omnium, et omnia sunt singulorum, All say what any of them say; and in this sense most congruously is that of St. Hierome appliable, that 13 Matt. xxvii. 9. the four evangelists are quadriga Dirina, that as the four chariot wheels, though they look to the four corners of the world, yet they move to one end and one way, so the evangelists have both one scope, and one way. Yet not so precisely, but that they differ in words: for as their general intention, common to them all begat that consent, so a private reason peculiar to each of them, for the writing of their histories at that time, made those diversities which seem to be for Matthew, after he had preached to the Jews, and was to be transplanted into another vineyard, the Gentiles, left them written in their own tongue, for permanency, which he had preached transitorily by word. Mark, when the Gospel fructified in the West, and the church enlarged herself, and grew a great body, and therefore required more food, out of Peter's dictates, and by his approbation published his Evangile. Not an epitome of Matthew's, as St. Jerome (I know why) imagines, but a just and entire history of our blessed Saviour. And as Matthew's reason was to supply a want in the Eastern church, Mark's in the Western; so on the other side Luke's was to cut off an excess and superfluity for then many had undertaken this story, and dangerously inserted and mingled uncertainties and obnoxious improbabilities and he was more curious and more particular than the rest, both because he was more learned, and because he was so individual a companion of the most learned St. Paul, and did so much write Paul's words, that Eusebius thereupon mistaketh the words, Christ is raised according to my Gospel, to prove that Paul was author of this Gospel attributed to Luke. John the minion of Christ upon earth, and survivor of the apostles, (whose books rather seem fallen from heaven, and writ with the hand which engraved the stone tables, than a man's work) because the heresies of Ebion and Cerinthus were rooted, who upon this true ground, then evident and fresh, that Christ hath spoken many things which none of the other three evangelists had recorded, uttered many things as his, which he never spoke: John I say, more diligently than the rest handleth his divinity, and his sermons, things specially brought into question by them. So therefore all : 14 2 Tim. ii. 8. |