for this, we are not chargeable. They call the other privation, which if it proceed merely from our own sluggishness, in not searching the means made for our instruction, is ever inexcusable. If from God, who for his own just ends hath cast clouds over those lights which should guide us, it is often excusable. For Paul saith, I was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and an oppressor, but I was received to mercy, for I did it ignorantly, through unbelief. So, though we are all bound to believe, and therefore faults done by unbelief cannot escape the name and nature of sin, yet since belief is the immediate gift of God, faults done by unbelief, without malicious concurrences and circumstances, obtain mercy and pardon from that abundant fountain of grace, Christ Jesus. And therefore it was a just reason, Forgive them, for they know not. If they knew not, which is evident, both by this speech from truth itself, and by 2 Cor. ii. 8., Had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; and Acts iii. 17., I know that through ignorance ye did it. And though after so many powerful miracles, this ignorance were vincible, God having revealed enough to convert them, yet there seems to be enough on their parts, to make it a perplexed case, and to excuse, though not a malicious persecuting, yet a not consenting to his doctrine. For they had a law, Whosoever shall make himself the son of God, let him die. And they spoke out of their laws, when they said, We have no other king but Cæsar. There were therefore some among them reasonably, and zealously ignorant. And for those, the Son ever welcome, and well heard, begged of his Father, ever accessible, and exorable, a pardon ever ready and natural.

We have now passed through all those rooms which we unlocked and opened at first. And now may that point, why this prayer is remembered only by one evangelist, and why by Luke, be modestly inquired: for we are all admitted and welcomed into the acquaintance of the Scriptures, upon such conditions as travellers are into other countries: if we come as praisers and admirers of their commodities and government, not as spies into the mysteries of their state, nor searchers, nor calumniators of their weaknesses. For though the Scriptures, like a strong recti

12 1 Tim. i. 13.

fied state, be not endangered by such a curious malice of any, yet he which brings that, deserves no admittance. When those great commissioners which are called the Septuagint, sent from Jerusalem, to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, had perfected their work, it was, and is an argument of Divine assistance, that writing severally, they differed not. The same may prove even to weak and faithless men, that the Holy Ghost superintended the four evangelists, because they differ not; as they which have written their harmonies, make it evident: but to us, faith teacheth the other way. And we conclude not, because they agree, the Holy Ghost directed; for heathen writers and malefactors in examinations do so; but because the Holy Ghost directed, we know they agree, and differ not. For as an honest man, ever of the same thoughts, differs not from himself, though he do not ever say the same things, if he say not contraries; so the four evangelists observe the uniformity and sameness of their guide, though all did not say all the same things, since none contradicts any. And as, when my soul, which enables all my limbs to their functions, disposes my legs to go, my whole body is truly said to go, because none stays behind; so when the Holy Spirit, which had made himself as a common soul to their four souls, directed one of them to say anything, all are well understood to have said it. And therefore when to that place, where that evangelist cites the prophet Jeremy, for words spoken by Zachary, many medicines are applied by the fathers; as, that many copies have no name, that Jeremy might be binominous, and have both names, a thing frequent in the Bible, that it might be the error of a transcriber, that there was extant an Apocryphal Book of Jeremy, in which these words were, and sometimes things of such books were vouched, as Jannes and Jambres by Paul; St. Augustine insists upon, and teaches rather this, that it is more wonderful, that all the prophets spake by one Spirit, and so agreed, than if any one of them had spoken all those things; and therefore he adds, Singula sunt omnium, et omnia sunt singulorum, All say what any of them say; and in this sense most congruously is that of St. Hierome appliable, that

13 Matt. xxvii. 9.

the four evangelists are quadriga Dirina, that as the four chariot wheels, though they look to the four corners of the world, yet they move to one end and one way, so the evangelists have both one scope, and one way.

Yet not so precisely, but that they differ in words: for as their general intention, common to them all begat that consent, so a private reason peculiar to each of them, for the writing of their histories at that time, made those diversities which seem to be for Matthew, after he had preached to the Jews, and was to be transplanted into another vineyard, the Gentiles, left them written in their own tongue, for permanency, which he had preached transitorily by word. Mark, when the Gospel fructified in the West, and the church enlarged herself, and grew a great body, and therefore required more food, out of Peter's dictates, and by his approbation published his Evangile. Not an epitome of Matthew's, as St. Jerome (I know why) imagines, but a just and entire history of our blessed Saviour. And as Matthew's reason was to supply a want in the Eastern church, Mark's in the Western; so on the other side Luke's was to cut off an excess and superfluity for then many had undertaken this story, and dangerously inserted and mingled uncertainties and obnoxious improbabilities and he was more curious and more particular than the rest, both because he was more learned, and because he was so individual a companion of the most learned St. Paul, and did so much write Paul's words, that Eusebius thereupon mistaketh the words, Christ is raised according to my Gospel, to prove that Paul was author of this Gospel attributed to Luke. John the minion of Christ upon earth, and survivor of the apostles, (whose books rather seem fallen from heaven, and writ with the hand which engraved the stone tables, than a man's work) because the heresies of Ebion and Cerinthus were rooted, who upon this true ground, then evident and fresh, that Christ hath spoken many things which none of the other three evangelists had recorded, uttered many things as his, which he never spoke: John I say, more diligently than the rest handleth his divinity, and his sermons, things specially brought into question by them. So therefore all

14 2 Tim. ii. 8.

writ one thing, yet all have some things particular. And Luke most, for he writ last of three, and largeliest for himself, saith", I have made the former treatise of all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day that he was taken up; which speech, lest the words in the last of John, If all were written which Jesus did, the world could not contain the books, should condemn, Ambrose and Chrysostom interpret well out of the words themselves, Scripsit de omnibus, non omnia, He writ of all, but not all: for it must have the same limitation, which Paul giveth his words, who saith, Acts xx., in one verse, I have kept nothing back, but have showed you all the counsel of God; and in another, I kept back nothing that was profitable. It is another peculiar singularity of Luke's, that he addresseth his history to one man, Theophilus. For it is but weakly surmised, that he chose that name, for all lovers of God, because the interpretation of the word suffereth it, since he addeth most noble Theophilus. But the work doth not the less belong to the whole church, for that, no more than his master's epistles do though they be directed to particulars.

It is also a singularity in him to write upon that reason, because divers have written. In human knowledge, to abridge or suck, and then suppress other authors, is not ever honest nor profitable: we see after that vast enterprise of Justinian, who distilled all the law into one vessel, and made one book of two thousand, suppressing all the rest, Alciate wisheth he had let them alone, and thinketh the doctors of our times would better have drawn useful things from those volumes, than his Trebonian and Dorothee did. And Aristotle after, by the immense liberality of Alexander, he had engrossed all authors, is said to have defaced all, that he might be instead of all: and therefore, since they cannot rise against him, he imputes to them errors which they held not: vouches only such objections from them, as he is able to answer; and propounds all good things in his own name, which he ought to them. But in this history of Luke's, it is otherwise he had no authority to suppress them, nor doth he

15 Acts i. 1.

16 Tribonian, Theophilus, and Dorotheus were the persons selected by Justinian to compile the Institutes.—See Gibbon, chap. xLiv.—Ed.

reprehend or calumniate them, but writes the truth simply, and leaves it to outwear falsehood: and so it hath: Moses's rod hath devoured the conjuror's rod, and Luke's story still retains the majesty of the maker, and theirs are not.

Other singularities in Luke, of form or matter, I omit, and end with one like this in our text. As in the apprehending of our blessed Saviour, all the evangelists record, that Peter cut off Malchus's ear, but only Luke remembers the healing of it again: (I think) because that act of curing, was most present and obvious to his consideration, who was a physician: so he was therefore most apt, to remember this prayer of Christ, which is the physic and balsamum of our soul, and must be applied to us all, (for we do all crucify him, and we know not what we do) and therefore St. Hierome gave a right character of him, in his epistle to Paulinus, Fuit medicus, et pariter omnia verba illius, Animæ languentis sunt medicinæ, As he was a physician, so all his words are physic for a languishing soul.

Now let us despatch the last consideration, of the effect of this prayer. Did Christ intend the forgiveness of the Jews, whose utter ruin God (that is, himself) had fore-decreed? And which he foresaw, and bewailed even then hanging upon the cross? For those divines which reverently forbear to interpret the words, Lord, Lord, why hast thou forsaken me? of a suffering hell in his soul, or of a departing of the Father from him; (for John xvi., it is, I am not alone, for the Father is with me) offer no exposition of those words more convenient, than that the foresight of the Jews' imminent calamities, expressed and drew those words from him: In their afflictions, were all kinds, and all degrees of misery. So that as one writer of the Roman story saith elegantly, He that considereth the acts of Rome, considereth not the acts of one people, but of mankind: I may truly of the Jews' afflictions, he that knoweth them, is ignorant of nothing that this world can threaten. For to that which the present authority of the Romans inflicted upon them, our Schools have added upon their posterities; that they are slaves to Christians, and their goods subject to spoil, if the laws of the princes where they live, did not out of indulgency defend them. Did he then ask, and was not heard?