followers.' But children and fools (such as they accounted our Saviour's followers) do ofttimes speak the very truth: and he who was truth itself doth justify these little children as God's ambassadors for this purpose. For so he replies, Yea; have ye (who boast so much of your skill in scripture) never read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? And he left them as silent for any matter of just reply, as he had done their father the devil, when he sent him away with that item, or scriptum est, Avoid, Satan: for it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt 871 thou serve. And however the malice of these chief priests and scribes did in the next morning revive, yet the testimony alleged by him in justification of the children was so pregnantly concludent of his purpose, that Satan himself, had he been present, could not have replied unto it.

4. For that viiith psalm, as the Jews cannot deny, was composed in honour of the God of Israel: that it was also prophetical, and to be fulfilled in time, is to all Christians apparent from our apostle's allegation of another place to the like purpose, Hebrews ii. 6, 7, of whose fulfilling hereafter. The first part of the prophecy, (that, God their Lord, which, as hath been before observeda, was the peculiar title of God the Son, or of God to be manifested in the flesh,) was never punctually fulfilled, until the children cried Hosanna to the Son of David in the temple. In these congratulations they did, by Divine instinct, or disposition of the all-seeing Providence, proclaim the expected Son of David to be 2, that very God their Lord, in whose praise this psalm was con

a In the Seventh Book, vol. viii. p. 374.

ceived. The babes then did spell the prophet's meaning not amiss: but our Saviour, and the present circumstances of the time, did put their lisping syllables together more rightly, and fully answerable to the meaning of the prophetical vision: for so it followeth in the same psalm, that this God their Lord did therefore ordain his praise out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, because of his enemies, that he might still the enemy and avenger, psalm viii. 2. And so the malicious priests and scribes were put to a nonplus upon our Saviour's allegation of this prophecy in justification of himself and of these infants, whose testimonies they sought to elevate, and to impute the acceptance of it to his folly. Now albeit our Saviour left them at this nonplus for the present, yet within a day or two after he putteth the very Pharisees, the most learned of them, to a greater nonplus by another testimony, parallel to this of the viiith psalm: While the Pharisees (saith St. Matthew) were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions. chap. xxii. 41-46. All this argues a full conviction of their consciences; and that unless they had suffered their splenetic passions to conquer their consciences for the present, or had hoodwinked their intellectuals with malicious habits of their hearts, they must of necessity have confessed as much as the little children (in this expression) before had done, to wit, that he was not

only the promised Son of David, but that the promised Son of David was to be David's Lord, this whole people's God and Lord. For it is observable, that David in the beginning of the cxth psalm saith not, Jehovah said unto Jehovah, but Jehovah said unto Adonai, Sit thou on my right hand; not thereby denying that this Adonai was to be Jehovah, but that he was to be (as the author of the viiith psalm saith) both his God and his Lord. It is again (to my present apprehension) observable, that after Nehemiah had revived the solemnity of the feast of tabernacles, and moved the people to renew the covenant which their forefathers had made for faithful observance of God's 872 laws given by Moses, they nuncupate this their solemn Vow unto, to the Lord our God: And the rest of the people, (to wit, all besides those who had sealed to the covenant before with Nehemiah,) the priests, the singers, the Nethinims, and all they that had separated themselves from the people of the lands unto the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, every one having knowledge, and having understanding; they clave to their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse, and into an oath, to walk in God's law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord, and his judgments and his statutes. Nehem. x. 28, 29, &c. this solemn vow and covenant, confirmed by oath, of keeping God's laws, was more shamefully broken by this perverse and gainsaying generation, than those laws themselves had been by Antiochus or other heathen which had never sworn unto them. For the chief priests, the scribes, the elders, notwithstanding the former convictions of their consciences, hold on to persecute this God their Lord, unto whose honour

But

their forefathers had dedicated this vow, with greater cruelties and more malicious indignities than Antiochus had used towards the meanest of his people; and so at length to bring that curse annexed to the former vow upon themselves and upon their children unto this day.

5. Thus much of the prophecies or foresignifications of his triumphant ingress into Jerusalem, and of his entertainment there until the feast of the legal passover, whose mystery he did accomplish by his death: points not handled either so fully or so punctually as was requisite by any commentators, postillers, or others, whom I have read. And this hath emboldened me to enlarge my meditations upon this small part of my comments on the Creed. As for the prophecies, types, or other foresignifications of what he did or suffered from the time of his sacred supper until his resurrection from the dead, these have been so plentifully and so punctually handled by many, especially by the learned Gerard, that much cannot be added without a great deal of superfluous pains. And yet, I know, it will be expected that I say somewhat of this argument.

SECTION IV.

The Evangelical Relations of the Indignities done unto our Saviour by sinful Men, and of his Patience in suffering them, respectively prefigured and foretold by the Prophets and other sacred Writers: or, a Comment upon the Evangelical History, from the Institution of his Supper unto his Death and Burial.

CHAP. XXIII.

Of the Betraying of our Saviour, of his Apprehension, and Dismission of his Disciples: and how they were foretold or prefigured in the Old Testament.

1. Or the sweet harmony between the institution, occasion, and celebration of the legal passover, and the continuation of the Lord's supper or sacrament of his body and blood, instituted in lieu, or rather in remembrance of the accomplishing of it, I have in other meditations delivered my mind at large. And if it shall please the Lord God to grant me life and health, what I have either uttered in sermons, or otherways conceived concerning this argument, shall be communicated to this Church wherein I live, (if not to others,) in the article of the Catholic Church, which did begin to be on earth from our Saviour's resurrection, or from his ascension into heaven and descending of the Holy Ghost. At the accomplishment of the legal passover by the institution of the grand mystery or sacrament prefigured by it, our Lord and Saviour was betrayed by his unfaithful friend and servant Judas, yet by his prodition consecrated to be that Lamb of GOD which

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