There can be no greater sign of unfitness, than vehement suit. It is hard to say, whether there be more pride or ignorance in ambition. I have noted this difference betwixt spiritual and earthly honour, and the clients of both; we cannot be worthy of the one without earnest prosecution, nor with earnest prosecution worthy of the other: the violent obtain heaven; only the meek are worthy to inherit the earth.

That which an aspiring heart hath projected, it will find both argument and means to effect. If either bribes or favour will carry it, the proud man will not sit out. The Shechemites are fit brokers for Abimelech that city, which once betrayed itself to utter depopulation in yielding to the suit of Hamor, now betrays itself and all Israel in yielding to the request of Abimelech. By them hath this usurper made himself a fair way to the throne.

It was an easy question, "Whether will ye admit of the sons of Gideon for your rulers, or of strangers? If of the sons of Gideon, whether of all or one? If of one, whether of your own flesh and blood, or of others unknown?" To cast off the sons of Gideon for strangers, were unthankful; to admit of seventy kings in one small country, were unreasonable; to admit of any other rather than their own kinsman, were unnatural. Gideon's sons therefore must rule amongst all Israel; one of his sons amongst those seventy; and who should be that one but Abimelech? Natural respects are the most dangerous corrupters of all elections. What hope can there be of worthy superiors in any free people, where nearness of blood carries it from fitness of disposition? Whilst they say, He is our brother, they are enemies to themselves and Israel.

Fair words have won his brethren; they, the Shechemites: the Shechemites furnish him with money; money with men: his men begin with murder; and now Abimelech reigns alone: flattery, bribes, and blood, are the usual stairs of the ambitious. The money of Baal is a fit hire for murderers: that, which idolatry hath gathered, is fitly spent upon treason: one devil is ready to help another in mischief: seldom ever are ill gotten riches better employ. ed. It is no wonder if he that hath Baal his idol, now make an idol of honour. There was never any man that worshipped but one idol.

Woc be to them that lie in the way of the aspiring: though they be brothers, they shall bleed; yea, the nearer they are, the more sure is their ruin. Who would not now think that Abimelech should find a hell in his breast, after so barbarous and unnatural a massacre? and yet behold, he is as senseless as the stone, upon which the blood of his seventy brethren was spilt. Where ambition hath possest itself thoroughly of the soul, it turns the heart into steel, and makes it incapable of a conscience: all sins will easily down with the man that is resolved to rise.

Only Jotham fell not at that fatal stone with his brethren. It is a hard battle where none escapes. He escapes, not to reign, nor to revenge; but to be a prophet, and a witness of the vengeance of God upon the usurper, upon the abettors: he lives to tell Abimelech

that he was but a bramble; a weed, rather than a tree: a right bramble indeed, that grew but out of the base hedge row of a concubine; that could not lift up his head from the earth, unless he were supported by some bush or pale of Shechem; that had laid hold of the fleece of Israel, and had drawn blood of all his brethren; and lastly, that had no substance in him, but the sap of vain-glory and the pricks of cruelty. It was better than a kingdom to him, out of his obscure bier, to see the fire out of this bramble to consume those trees: the view of God's revenge, is so much more pleasing to a good heartthan his own, by how inuch it is more just and full.

There was never such a pattern of unthankfulness, as these Israelites: they, which lately thought a kingdom too small recompence for Gideon and his sons, now think it too much for his seed to live; and take life away from the sons of him, that gave them both life and liberty. Yet if this had been some hundred of years after, when time had worn out the memory of Jerubbaal, it might have borne a better excuse. No man can hope to hold pace with time: the best names may not think scorn, to be unknown to following generations; but, ere their deliverer was cold in his coffin, to pay his benefits, which deserved to be everlasting, with the extirpation of his posterity, it was more than savage. What can be looked for from idolaters? If a man have cast off his God, he will easily cast off his friends: when religion is once gone, humanity will not stay long after.

That which the people were punished afterwards for but desiring, he enjoys. Now is Abimelech seated in the throne which his father refused, and no rival is seen to envy his peace. But how long will this glory last? Stay but three years, and ye shall see this bramble withered and burnt. The prosperity of the wicked is short and fickle. A stolen crown, though it may look fair, cannot be made of any but brittle stuff. All life is uncertain; but wicked

ness overruns nature.

The evil spirit thrust himself into the plot of Abimelech's usurpation and murder, and wrought with the Shechemites for both; and now God sends the evil spirit betwixt Abimelech and the Shechemites, to work the ruin of each other. The first could not have been without God; but in the second, God challenges a part: revenge is his, where the sin is ours. It had been pity that the Shechemites should have been plagued by any other hand than Abimelech's: they raised him unjustly to the throne; they are the first that feel the weight of his sceptre. The foolish bird limes herself with that which grew from her own excretion: who wonders to see the kind peasant stung with his own snake?

The breach begins at Shechem: his own countrymen fly off from their promised allegiance. Though all Israel should have fallen off from Abimelech, yet they of Shechem should have stuck close it was their act, they ought to have made it good. How should good princes be honoured, when even Abimelechs once setdled, cannot be opposed with safety! Now they begin to revolt to

:

the rest of Israel: yet, if this had been done out of repentance, it had been praiseworthy; but to be done out of a treacherous inconstancy, was unworthy of Israelites,

How could Abimelech hope for fidelity of them, whom he had made and found traitors to his father's blood? No man knows how to be sure of him that is unconscionable: he, that hath been unfaithful to one, knows the way to be perfidious; and is only fit for his trust, that is worthy to be deceived; whereas faithfulness, besides the present good, lays a ground of further assurance. The friendship that is begun in evil cannot stand: wickedness, both of its own nature, and through the curse of God, is ever unsteady; and though there be not a disagreement in hell (being but the place of retribution, not of action) yet on earth there is no peace among the wicked; whereas that affection which is knit in God is indissoluble.

If the men of Shechem had abandoned their false god with their false king, and, out of a serious remorse and desire of satisfaction for their idolatry and blood, had opposed this tyrant and preferred Jotham to his throne, there might have been both warrant for their quarrel and hope of success; but now, if Abimelech be a wicked usurper, yet the Shechemites are idolatrous traitors. How could they think, that God would rather revenge Abimelech's bloody intrusion by them, than their treachery and idolatry by Abimelech? When the quarrel is betwixt God and Satan, there is no doubt of the issue; but when one devil fights with another, what certainty is there of the victory? Though the cause of God had been good, yet it had been safe for them to look to themselves: the unworthiness of the agent many times curses a good enterprize.

No sooner is a secret dislike kindled in any people against their governors, than there is a Gaal ready to blow the coals. It were a wonder if ever any faction should want a head; as contrarily, never any man was so ill, as not to have some favourers. Abimelech hath a Zebul in the midst of Shechem lightly, all treasons are betrayed even with some of their own his intelligence brings the sword of Abimelech upon Shechem, who now hath demolished the city and sown it with salt. Oh the just successions of the revenges of God! Gideon's ephod is punished with the blood of his sons; the blood of his sons is shed by the procurement of the Shechemites; the blood of the Shechemites is shed by Abimelech ; the blood of Abimelech is spilt by a woman. The retaliations of God are sure and just, and make a more due pedigree than descent of nature.

The pursued Shechemites fly to the house of their god Berith: now they are safe: that place is at once a fort and a sanctuary. Whither should we fly in our distress but to our God? And now this refuge shall teach them what a God they have served. The jealous God whom they had forsaken hath them now where he would, and rejoices at once to be avenged of their god and them. Had they not made the house of Baal their shelter, they had not died so fearfully. Now, according to the prophecy of Jotham, a

fire goes out of the bramble and consumes these cedars, and their eternal flames begin in the house of their Berith: the confusion of wicked men rises out of the false deities which they have doted on.

Of all the conspirators against Gideon's sons, only Abimelech yet survives, and his day is now coming. His success against Shechem hath filled his heart with thoughts of victory. He hath caged up the inhabitants of Thebez within their tower also; and what remains for them, but the same end with their neighbours? And behold, while his hand is busy in putting fire to the door of their tower, which yet was not high (for then he could not have discerned a woman to be his executioner) a stone from a woman's hand strikes his head. His pain in dying was not so much, as his indignation to know by whom he died; and rather will he die twice, than a woman shall kill him. If God had not known his stomach so big, he had not vexed him with the impotency of his victor: God finds a time to reckon with wicked men, for all the arrearages of their sins. Our sins are not more our debts to God, than his judgments are his debts to our sins; which at last he will be sure to pay home.

There now lies the greatness of Abimelech; upon one stone had he slain his seventy brethren, and now a stone slays him; his head had stolen the crown of Israel, and now his head is smitten: and what is Abimelech better that he was a king? What difference is there between him and any of his seventy brethren whom he murdered, save only in guiltiness? They bear but their own blood; he, the weight of all theirs. How happy a thing is it to live well! that our death, as it is certain, so may be comfortable: what a vanity is it to insult in the death of them, whom we must follow the same way!

The tyrant hath his payment; and that time, which he should have bestowed in calling for mercy to God, and washing his soul with the last tears of contrition, he vainly spends in deprecating an idle reproach; Kill me, that it may not be said he died by a woman: a fit conclusion for such a life. The expectation of true and endless torment doth not so much vex him, as the frivolous report of a dishonour; neither is he so inuch troubled with "Abimelech is frying in hell," as "Abimelech is slain by a woman." So, vain fools are niggardly of their reputation, and prodigal of their souls: do we not see them run wilfully into the field, into the grave, into hell? and all, lest it should be said, "They have but as much fear as wit." Judges ix.

BOOK X.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE, MY SINGULAR GOOD LORD,
SIR HENRY DANVERS, KNT.

BARON OF DANTESEY,

A WORTHY PATTERN OF ALL TRUE NOBILITY,

ACCOMPLISHED BOTH FOR WAR AND PEACE,

A MUNIFICENT FAVOURER OF all true LEARNING AND VIRTUE;

J. H.

WITH HUMBLE APPRECATION OF ALL TRUE HAPPINESS,

DEDICATES THIS PART OF HIS POOR LABOURS.

JEPHTHAH.

ISRAEL, that had now long gone a whoring from God, hath been punished by the regiment of the concubine's son, and at last seeks protection from the son of a harlot: it is no small misery to be obliged unto the unworthy. The concubine's son made suit to them; they make suit to the son of the harlot. It was no fault of Jephthah that he had an ill mother, yet is he branded with the indignity of his bastardy; neither would God conceal this blemish of nature, which Jephthah could neither avoid nor remedy. God, to shew his detestation of whoredom, revenges it not only upon the actors, but upon their issue: hence he hath shut out the base son from the congregation of Israel to the tenth generation, that a transient evil might have a during reproach attending it; and that after the death of the adulterer, yet his shame might live. But, that God, who justly ties men to his laws, will not abide that we should tie him to our laws, or his own: he can both rectify and ennoble the blood of Jephthah. That no man should be too much discouraged with the errors of his propagation, even the base son of man may be the lawfully begotten of God; and though he be cast out from the inheritance of his brethren upon earth, may be admitted to the kingdom of Israel.

I hear no praise of the lawful issue of Gilead; only this mis-begotten son is commended for his valour, and set at the stern of Is