of thine own vineyard! O miserable Ahab, that carest not for thine own possessions whilst thou mayest not be the lord of Naboth's vineyard!

He that caused the disease sends him a physician. Satan knew of old how to make use of such helpers. Jezebel comes to Ahab's bedside, and casts cold water in his face, and puts into him spirits of her own extracting: Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? arise, eat bread, and let thine heart be merry: I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth. Ahab wanted neither wit nor wickedness, yet is he in both a very novice to this Zidonian dame. There needs no other devil than Jezebel, whether to project evil or to work it. She chides the pusillanimity of her dejected husband, and persuades him his rule cannot be free unless it be licentious, that there should be no bounds for sovereignty but will.

Already hath she contrived to have by fraud and force what was denied to entreaty. Nothing needs but the name, but the seal of Ahab: let her alone with the rest. How present are the wits of the weaker sex for the devising of wickedness! She frames a letter in Ahab's name to the senators of Jezreel, wherein she requires them to proclaim a fast, to suborn two false witnesses against Naboth, to charge him with blasphemy against God and the king, to stone him to death. A ready payment for a rich vineyard!

Whose indignation riseth not to hear Jezebel name a fast? The great contemners of the most important laws of God yet can be content to make use of some divine both statutes and customs for their own advantage. She knew the Israelites had so much remainder of grace as to hold blasphemy worthy of death; she knew their manner was to expiate those crying sins with public humiliation; she knew that two witnesses at least must cast the offender: all these she urges to her own purpose. There is no mischief so devilish as that which is cloked with piety. Simulation of holiness doubleth a villany. This murder had not been half so foul if it had not been thus masked with a religious observation.

Besides devotion, what a fair pretence of legality is here! Blasphemy against God and his anointed may not pass unrevenged. The offender is convented before the sad and severe bench of magistracy. The justice of Israel allows not to condemn an absent, an unheard malefactor. Witnesses come forth and agree in the intentation of the crime. The judges rend their garments and strike their breasts, as grieved not more for the sin than the

punishment. Their very countenance must say, "Naboth should not die if his offence did not force our justice;" and now, he is no good subject, no true Israelite, that hath not a stone for Naboth.

Jezebel knew well to whom she wrote. Had not those letters fallen upon the times of a woful degeneration of Israel, they had received no less strong denials from the elders than Ahab had from Naboth; "God forbid that the senate of Jezreel should forge a perjury, belie truth, condemn innocency, brook corruption. Command just things; we are ready to die in the zeal of our obedience; we dare not embrue our hands in the blood of an innocent." But she knew whom she had engaged, whom she had marred by making conscious.

It were strange if they who can countenance evil with greatness should want factors for the unjustest designs. Miserable is that people whose rulers, instead of punishing, plot and encourage wickedness. When a distillation of evil falls from the head upon. the lungs of any state, there must needs follow a deadly consumption.

Yet perhaps there wanted not some colour of pretence for this proceeding. They could not but hear that some words had passed betwixt the king and Naboth. Haply it was suggested that Naboth had secretly overlashed into saucy and contemptuous terms to his sovereign, such as neither might be well borne, nor yet, by reason of their privacy, legally convinced. The bench of Jezreel should but supply a form to the just matter and desert of condemnation. What was it for them to give their hand to this obscure midwifery of justice? It is enough that their king is an accuser and witness of that wrong which only their sentence can formally revenge.

All this cannot wash their hands from the guilt of blood. If justice be blind in respect of partiality, she may not be blind in respect of the grounds of execution. Had Naboth been a blasphemer or a traitor, yet these men were no better than murderers. What difference is there betwixt the stroke of magistracy and of manslaughter but due conviction?

Wickedness never spake out of a throne and complained of the defect of instruments. Naboth was it seems strictly conscionable, his fellow-citizens loose and lawless. They are glad to have gotten such an opportunity of his despatch. No clause of Ahab's letter is not observed. A fast is warned; the city is assembled; Naboth is convented, accused, confronted, sentenced, stoned; his

vineyard is escheated to the crown; Ahab takes speedy and quiet possession.

How still doth God sit in heaven and look upon the complots of treachery and villanies, as if they did not concern him! The success so answers their desires, as if both heaven and earth were their friends. It is the plague which seems the felicity of sinners to speed well in their lewd enterprises. No reckoning is brought in the midst of the meal, the end pays for all.

While Ahab is rejoicing in his new garden-plot, and promising himself contentment in this commodious enlargement, in comes Elijah, sent from God with an errand of vengeance. Methinks I see how the king's countenance changed, with what aghast eyes and pale cheeks he looked upon that unwelcome prophet. Little pleasure took he in his prospect while it was clogged with such a guest, yet his tongue begins first; Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?

Great is the power of conscience. Upon the last meeting, for aught we know, Ahab and Elijah parted friends; the prophet had lackeyed his coach, and took a peaceable leave at this town's end: now Ahab's heart told him, neither needed any other messenger, that God and his prophet were fallen out with him. His continuing idolatry, now seconded with blood, bids him look for nothing but frowns from heaven. A guilty heart can never be at peace. Had not Ahab known how ill he had deserved of God, he had never saluted his prophet by the name of an enemy. He had never been troubled to be found by Elijah, if his own breast had not found him out for an enemy to God.

Much good may thy vineyard do thee, O thou king of Israel. Many fair flowers and savoury herbs may thy new garden yield thee. Please thyself with thy Jezebel in the triumph over the carcass of a scrupulous subject. Let me rather die with Naboth than rejoice with thee! His turn is over, thine is to come. The stones that overwhelmed innocent Naboth were nothing to those that smite thee: Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.

What meanest thou, O Elijah, to charge this murder upon Ahab? He kept his chamber; Jezebel wrote, the elders condemned, the people stoned; yet thou sayest, Hast thou killed? Well did Ahab know that Jezebel could not give this vineyard with dry hands, yet was he content to wink at what she would

do. He but sits still while Jezebel works, only his signet is suffered to walk for the sealing of this unknown purchase. Those that are trusted with authority may offend no less in connivency or neglect than others in act, in participation. Not only command, consent, countenance, but very permission feoffs public persons in those sins which they might and will not prevent.

God loves to punish by retaliation. Naboth and Ahab shall both bleed: Naboth, by the stones of the Jezreelites; Ahab, by the shafts of the Aramites: the dogs shall taste of the blood of both. What Ahab hath done in cruelty he shall suffer in justice. The case and the end make the difference; happy on Naboth's side, on Ahab's woful: Naboth bleeds as a martyr; Ahab as a murderer. Whatever is Ahab's condition, Naboth changes a vineyard on earth for a kingdom in heaven. Never any wicked man gained by the persecution of an innocent: never any innocent man was a loser by suffering from the wicked.

Neither was this judgment personal, but hereditary; I will take away thy posterity; and will make thine house like the house of Jeroboam. Him that dieth of Ahab in the city the dogs shall eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat. Ahab shall not need to take thought for the traducing of this ill-gotten inheritance; God hath taken order for his heirs, whom his sin hath made no less the heirs of his curse than of his body. Their father's cruelty to Naboth hath made them, together with their mother Jezebel, dogs' meat. The revenge of God doth at last make amends for the delay. Whether now is Naboth's vineyard paid for? The man that had sold himself to work wickedness yet rues the bargain.

I do not hear Ahab, as bad as he was, revile or threaten the prophet; but he rends his clothes, and wears and lies in sackcloth, and fasts, and walks softly. Who that had seen Ahab would not have deemed him a true penitent? All this was the visor of sorrow, not the face; or if the face, not the heart; or if the sorrow of the heart, yet not the repentance; a sorrow for the judgment, not a repentance for the sin. The very devils howl to be tormented. Grief is not ever a sign of grace. Ahab rends his clothes; he did not rend his heart: he puts on sackcloth, not amendment he lies in sackcloth, but he lies in his idolatry: he walks softly, he walks not sincerely. Worldly sorrow causeth death. Happy is that grief for which the soul is the holier.

Yet what is this I see? This very shadow of repentance carries

away mercy. It is no small mercy to defer an evil. Even Ahab's humiliation shall prorogue the judgment. Such as the penitence was, such shall be the reward; a temporary reward of a temporary penitence. As Ahab might be thus sorrowful, and never the better; so he may be thus favoured, and never the happier. O God, how graciously art thou ready to reward a sound and holy repentance, who art thus indulgent to a carnal and servile dejection!

AHAB AND MICAIAH, OR THE DEATH OF AHAB.

1 Kings xxii; 2 Chronicles xviii.

Who would have looked to have heard any more of the wars of the Syrians with Israel after so great a slaughter, after so firm a league; a league, not of peace only, but of brotherhood? The halters, the sackcloth of Benhadad's followers were worn out, as of use, so of memory; and now they are changed for iron and steel.

It is but three years that this peace lasts; and now that war begins which shall make an end of Ahab. The king of Israel rues his unjust mercy. According to the word of the prophet, that gift of a life was but an exchange. Because Ahab gave Benhadad his life, Benhadad shall take Ahab's. He must forfeit in himself what he hath given to another. There can be no better fruit of too much kindness to infidels.

It was one article of the league betwixt Ahab and his brother Benhadad, that there should be a speedy restitution of all the Israelitish cities. The rest are yielded; only Ramoth Gilead is held back, unthankfully, injuriously. He that begged but his life, receives his kingdom, and now rests not content with his own bounds. Justly doth Ahab challenge his own; justly doth he move a war to recover his own from a perfidious tributary. The lawfulness of actions may not be judged by the events, but by the grounds. The wise and holy Arbiter of the world knows why, many times, the better cause hath the worse success. Many a just business is crossed for a punishment to the agent.

Yet Israel and Judah were now pieced in friendship. Jehoshaphat, the good king of Judah, had made affinity with Ahab, the idolatrous king of Israel; and, besides a personal visitation, joins his forces with his new kinsman against an old confederate.