This difference is strange: I see the savagest of all creatures, lions, tigers, bears, by an instinct from God, come to seek the ark (as we see swine foreseeing a storm run home crying for shelter), men I see not; reason once debauched is worse than brutishness: God hath use even of these fierce and cruel beasts, and glory by them: even they being created for man, must live by him, though to his punishment: how gently do they offer and submit themselves to their preserver; renewing that obeisance to this repairer of the world, which they, before sin, yielded to him that first stored the world: he, that shut them into the ark when they were entered, shut their mouths also while they did enter. The lions fawn upon Noah and Daniel; what heart cannot the Maker of them mollify!

The unclean beasts God would have to live, the clean to multiply; and therefore he sends to Noah seven of the clean, of the unclean two: he knew the one would annoy man with their multitude, the other would enrich him; those things are worthy of most respect, which are of most use.

But why seven? Surely that God, that created seven days in the week, and made one for himself, did here preserve of seven clean beasts, one for himself, for sacrifice: he gives us six for one in earthly things, that in spiritual we should be all for him.

Now the day is come, all the guests are entered, the ark is shut, and the windows of heaven open: I doubt not but many of those scoffers, when they saw the violence of the waves descending, and ascending, according to Noah's prediction, came wading middledeep unto the ark, and importunately craved that admittance which they once denied: but now, as they formerly rejected God, so are they justly rejected of God. For ere vengeance begin, repentance is seasonable; but if judgment be once gone out, we cry too late. While the Gospel solicits us, the doors of the ark are open; if we neglect the time of grace, in vain shall we seek it with tears: God holds it no mercy to pity the obstinate. Others, more bold than they, hope to over-run the judgment, and, climbing up to the high mountains, look down upon the waters with more hope than fear and now, when they see their hills become islands, they climb up into the tallest trees; there with paleness and horror at once look for death, and study to avoid it, whom the waves overtake at last half dead with famine, and half with fear. Lo! now from the tops of the mountains they descry the ark floating upon the waters, and behold with envy that which before they beheld with scorn.

In vain doth he fly whom God pursues. There is no way to fly from his judgments, but to fly to his mercy by repenting. The faith of the righteous cannot be so much derided, as their success is magnified: how securely doth Noah ride out this uproar of heaven, earth, and waters! He hears the pouring down of the rain above his head; the shrieking of men, and roaring and bellowing of beasts, on both sides of him; the raging and threats of the waves under him; he saw the miserable shifts of the distressed unbelievers; and in the mean time sits quietly in his dry cabin, neither feeling nor fearing evil: he knew that he, which owned the waters, would steer him; that he, who shut him in, would preserve him.

How happy a thing is faith! What a quiet safety, what a heavenly peace, doth it work in the soul, in the midst of all the inundations of evil!

Now, when God hath fetched again all the life which he had given to his unworthy creatures, and reduced the world unto his first form wherein waters were over the face of the earth, it was time for a renovation of all things to succeed this destruction. To have continued the deluge long, had been to punish Noah, that was righteous. After forty days, therefore, the heavens clear up; after a hundred and fifty the waters sink down. How soon is God weary of punishing, which is never weary of blessing! yet may not the ark rest suddenly. If we did not stay somewhile under God's hand, we should not know how sweet his mercy is, and how great our thankfulness should be. The ark, though it was Noah's fort against the waters, yet it was his prison; he was safe in it, but put up; he, that gave him life by it, now thinks time to give him liberty out of it.

God doth not reveal all things to his best servants: behold, he, that told Noah a hundred and twenty years before what day he should go into the ark, yet foretels him not now in the ark what day the ark should rest upon the hills, and he should go forth. Noah therefore sends out his intelligencers, the raven and the dove; whose wings in that vaporous air might easily descry further than his sight. The raven, of quick scent, of gross feed, of tough constitution; no fowl was so fit for discovery: the likeliest things always succeed not. He neither will venture far into that solitary world for fear of want, nor yet come into the ark for love of liberty; but hovers about in uncertainties. How many carnal minds fly out of the ark of God's Church, and embrace the present world; rather choosing to feed upon the unsavoury carcasses of sinful pleasures, than to be restrained within the straight lists of Christian obedience!

The dove is sent forth, a fowl both swift and simple. She, like a true citizen of the ark, returns; and brings faithful notice of the continuance of the waters, by her restless and empty return; by her olive-leaf, of the abatement: how worthy are those messengers to be welcome, which, with innocence in their lives, bring glad tidings of peace and salvation, in their mouths!

Noah rejoices and believes; yet still he waits seven days more: it is not good to devour the favours of God too greedily; but to take them in, that we may digest them. O strong faith of Noah, that was not weary with this delay! Some man would have so longed for the open air after so long closeness, that upon the first notice of safety he would have uncovered, and voided the ark; Noah stays seven days ere he will open, and well near two months ere he will forsake the ark; and not then, unless God, that commanded to enter, had bidden him depart. There is no action good without our faith; no faith, without a word. Happy is that man, which, in all things, neglecting the counsels of flesh and blood, depends upon the commission of his Maker. Gen. vi, vii, viii.

CONTEMPLATIONS.

BOOK II.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE LORD STANHOPE,

ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL, ALL GRACE AND HAPPINESS,

I

RIGHT HONOURABLE:

DURST appeal to the judgment of a carnal reader (let him not be prejudicate) that there is no History so pleasant as the Sacred. Set aside the majesty of the inditer; none can compare with it for magnificence and antiquity of the matter, the sweetness of compiling, the strange variety of memorable occurrences: and if the delight be such, what shall the profit be esteemed of that which was written by GOD for the salvation of Men! I confess, na thoughts did ever more sweetly steal me and time away, than those which I have employed in this subject, and I hope, none can equally benefit others: for, if the mere relation of these holy things be profitable, how much more when it is reduced to use! This second part of the World repaired, I dedicate to your Lordship; wherein you shall see Noah as weak in his tent, as strong in the ark; an ungracious son reserved from the deluge to his father's curse; modest piety rewarded with blessings; the building of Babel, begun in pride, ended in confusion; Abraham's faith, fear, obedience; Isaac bound upon the altar under the hand of a father, that hath forgotten both nature and all his hopes; Sodom burning with a double fire, from hell, and from heaven; Lot rescued from that impure city, yet after finding Sodom in his cave: Every one of these passages is not more full of wonder than of edification. That Spirit, which hath penned all these things for our learning, teach us their right use; and sanctify these my unworthy meditations to the good of his church! To whose abundant grace I humbly commend your Lordship.

Your Lordship's unfeignedly devoted
in all due observance,

JOSEPH HALL.

NOAH.

No sooner is Noah come out of the ark, but he builds an altar : not a house for himself, but an altar to the Lord: our faith will ever teach us to prefer God to ourselves. Delayed thankfulness is

not worthy of acceptation. Of those few creatures that are left, God must have some; they are all his; yet his goodness will have man know that it was he, for whose sake they were preserved. It was a privilege to those very brute creatures, that they were saved from the waters, to be offered up in fire unto God: what a favour is it to men, to be reserved from common destructions, to be sacrificed to their Maker and Redeemer!

Lo this little fire of Noah, through the virtue of his faith, purged the world, and ascended up into those heavens, from which the waters fell, and caused a glorious rainbow to appear therein for his security all the sins of the former world were not so unsavoury unto God, as this smoke was pleasant. No perfume can be so sweet, as the holy obedience of the faithful. Now God, that was before annoyed with the ill-savour of sin, smells a sweet savour of rest behold here a new and second rest: first, God rested from making the world, now he rests from destroying it even while we cease not to offend, he ceases from a public revenge. His word was enough, yet withal he gives a sign, which may speak the truth of his promise to the very eyes of men: thus he doth still in his blessed sacraments, which are as real words to the soul. The rainbow is the pledge of our safety, which even naturally signifies the end of a shower: all the signs of God's institution are proper and significant.

But who would look after all this, to have found righteous Noah, the father of the new world, lying drunken in his tent? Who would think that wine should overthrow him, that was preserved from the waters? That he, who could not be tainted with the sinful examples of the former world, should begin the example of a new sin of his own? What are we men, if we be but ourselves! While God upholds us, no temptation can move us: when he leaves us, no temptation is too weak to overthrow us. What living man ever had so noble proofs of the mercy, of the justice of God! Mercy upon himself, justice upon others. What man had so gracious approbation from his Maker! Behold, he, of whom in an unclean world God said, Thee only have I found righteous, proves now unclean when the world was purged. The preacher of righteousness unto the former age, the king, priest, and prophet of the world renewed, is the first that renews the sins of that world which he had reproved, and which he saw condemned for sin: God's best children have no fence for sins of infirmity: which of the saints have not once done that, whereof they are ashamed? God, that lets us fall, knows how to make as good use of the sins of his holy ones, as of their obedience: If we had not such patterns, who could choose but despair at the sight of his sins?"

Yet we find Noah drunken but once. One act can no more make a good heart unrighteous, than a trade of sin can stand with regeneration but when I look to the effect of this sin, I cannot but blush and wonder: Lo, this sin is worse than sin; other sins move shame, but hide it; this displays it to the world. Adam had

no sooner sinned, but he saw and abhorred his own nakedness, seeking to hide it even with bushes.

Noah had no sooner sinned, but he discovers his nakedness, and hath not so much rule of himself, as to be ashamed: one hour's drunkenness bewrays that, which more than six hundred years sobriety had modestly concealed; he, that gives himself to wine, is not his own: what shall we think of this vice, which robs a man of himself, and lays a beast in his room? Noah's nakedness is seen in wine: it is no unusual quality, in this excess to disclose secrets; drunkenness doth both make imperfections, and shew those we have to others' eyes; so would God have it, that we might be doubly ashamed, both of those weaknesses which we discover, and of that weakness which moved us to discover.

Noah is uncovered; but in the midst of his own tent: it had been sinful, though no man had seen it: unknown sins have their guilt and shame, and are justly attended with known punishments.Ungracious Cham saw it and laughed; his father's shame should have been his; the deformity of those parts from which he had his being, should have begotten in him a secret horror, and dejection: how many graceless men make sport at the causes of their humiliation! Twice had Noah given him life: yet neither the name of a father, and preserver, nor age, nor virtue, could shield him from the contempt of his own. I see that even God's ark may nourish monsters: some filthy toads may lie under the stones of the temple. God preserves some men in judgment; better had it been for Cham to have perished in the waters, than to live unto his father's

curse.

Not content to be a witness of this filthy sight, he goes on to be a proclaimer of it. Sin doth ill in the eye, but worse in the tongue : as all sin is a work of darkness, so it should be buried in darkness. The report of sin is oft-times as ill, as the commission; for it can never be blazoned without uncharitableness; seldom, without infection: Oh the unnatural and more than Chammish impiety of those sons, which rejoice to publish the nakedness of their spiritual parents even to their enemies!

Yet it was well for Noah that Cham could tell it to none but his own; and those, gracious and dutiful sons. Our shame is the less, if none know our faults but our friends. Behold, how love covereth sins; these good sons are so far from going forward to see their father's shame, that they go backward to hide it. The cloke is laid on both their shoulders, they both go back with equal paces, and dare not so much as look back, lest they should unwillingly sec the cause of their shame; and will rather adventure to stumble at their father's body, than to see his nakedness: how did it grieve them to think, that they, which had so oft come to their holy father with reverence, must now in reverence turn their backs upon him; and that they must now clothe him in pity, which had so often clothed them in love! And, which adds more to their duty, they covered him, and said nothing. This modest sorrow is their praise, and our example: the sins of those we love and honour,