TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND VIRTUOUS LADY, THE LADY ALICE, COUNTESS OF CARBERY. MADAM, By the Divine Providence, which disposes all things wisely and charitably, you are, in the affections of your noblest lord, successor to a very dear and most excellent person, and designed to fill up those offices of piety to her dear pledges, which the haste which God made to glorify and secure her, would not permit her to finish. I have much ado to refrain from telling great stories of her wisdom, piety, judgment, sweetness, and religion; but that it would renew the wound, and make our sins bleed afresh, at the memory of that dear saint and we hope that much of the storm of the Divine anger is over, because he hath repaired the breach by sending you, to go on upon her account, and to give countenance and establishment to all those graces, which were warranted and derived from her example. Madam, the nobleness of your family, your education, and your excellent principles, your fair dispositions, and affable comportment, have not only made all your servants confident of your worthiness and great virtues, but have disposed you so highly and necessarily towards an active and a zealous religion, that we expect it should grow to the height of a great example; that you may draw others after you, as the eye follows the light, in all the angles of its retirement, or open stages of its publication. In order to this, I have chosen your Honour into a new relation, and have endeared you to this instrument of piety; that if you will please to do it countenance, and employ it in your counsels and pious offices, it may minister to your appetites of religion; which, as they are already fair and prosperous, so they may swell up to a vastness large enough to entertain all the secrets and pleasures of religion: that so you may add to the blessings and prosperities, which already dwell in that family where you are now fixed, new title to more, upon the stock of all those promises, which have secured and entailed felicities upon such persons who have no vanities, but very many virtues. Madam, I could not do you any service, but by doing myself this honour, to adorn my book with this fairest title and inscription of your name. You may observe, but cannot blame, my ambition; so long as it is instanced in a religious service, and means nothing but this, that I may signify how much I honour that person, who is designed to bring new blessings to that family, which is so honourable in itself, and, for so many reasons, dear to me. Madam, upon that account, besides the stock of your own worthiness, I am Your Honour's most humble And obedient Servant, JER. TAYLOR. THE HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE HOLY JESUS. PART III. BEGINNING AT THE SECOND YEAR OF HIS PREACHING UNTIL HIS SECTION XIII. Of the Second Year of the Preaching of Jesus. 1. WHEN the first year of Jesus, the year of peace and undisturbed preaching, was expired, "there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem." This feast was the second Passover he kept after he began to preach; not the feast of Pentecost, or Tabernacles, both which were past before Jesus came last from Judea: whither when he was now come, he finds an "impotent person lying at the pool of Bethesda, waiting till the angel should move the waters, after which, whosoever first stepped in was cured of his infirmity." The poor man had waited thirty-eight years, and still was prevented, by some other of the hospital that needed a physician. But Jesus, seeing him, had pity on him, cured him, and bade him " take up his bed, and walk." This cure happened to be wrought " upon the Sabbath," for which the Jews were so moved with indignation, that they "thought to slay him :" and their anger was enraged by his calling a John, v. 1, &c. b Iren, lib. ii. c. 10. himself" the Son of God," and " making himself equal with God." 2. Upon occasion of this offence, which they snatched at before it was ministered, Jesus discourses upon "his mission, and derivation of his authority from the Father; of the union between them, and the excellent communications of power, participation of dignity, delegation of judicature, reciprocations and reflections of honour from the Father to the Son, and back again to the Father. He preaches of life and salvation to them that believe in him; prophesies of the resurrection of the dead, by the efficacy of the voice of the Son of God; speaks of the day of judgment, the differing conditions after, of salvation and damnation respectively; confirms his words and mission by the testimony of John the Baptist, of Moses' and the other Scriptures, and of God himself." And still the scandal rises higher: for " in the second Sabbath after the first," that is, in the first day of unleavened bread, which happened the next day after the weekly Sabbath, the disciples of Jesus pull ripe ears of corn, rub them in their hands, and eat them, to satisfy their hunger: for which he offered satisfaction to their scruples, convincing them, that works of necessity are to be permitted, even to the breach of a positive temporary constitution; and that works of mercy are the best serving of God, upon any day whatsoever, or any part of the day, that is vacant to other offices, and proper for a religious festival. 3. But when neither reason nor religion would give them satisfaction, but that they went about to kill him, he withdrew himself from Jerusalem, and returned to Galilee; whither the Scribes and Pharisees followed him, observing his actions, and whether or not he would prosecute that which they called profanation of their Sabbath, by doing acts of mercy upon that day. He still did so: for, entering into one of the synagogues of Galilee upon the Sabbath, Jesus saw a man (whom St. Jerome reports to have been a mason) coming to Tyre, and complaining that his hand was withered, and desiring help of him, that he might again be c John, v. 19, &c. d Suidas, voc. σάββατον, e Evangel. Naz. quod S. Hieron. ex Hebr. in Græcum transtulit. Σωσίν μου, βασιλεῦ, μουσικὸν ἡμίτονον. |