for whom thou hadst done so great favors, and hast designed a crown and a throne to him, and he turned himself into a sooty coal, and entered into the portion of evil angels; teach us to value thee above all the joys of men, to prize thee at an estimate beyond all the wealth of nature, to buy wisdom, and not to sell it, to part with all, that we may enjoy thee; and let no temptation abuse our understandings, no loss vex us into impatience, no frustration of hope fill us with indignation, no pressure of calamitous accidents make us angry at thee, the fountain of love and blessing, no covetousness transport us into the suburbs of hell, and the regions of sin: but make us to love thee as well as ever any creature loved thee, that we may never burn in any fires but of a holy love, nor sink in any inundation but what proceeds from penitential showers, and suffer no violence but of implacable desires to live with thee, and, when thou callest us, to suffer with thee, and for thee.

III. Lord, let me never be betrayed by myself, or any violent accident and importunate temptation; let me never be sold for the vile price of temporal gain, or transient pleasure, or a pleasant dream; but, since thou hast bought me with a price, even then when thou wert sold thyself, let me never be separated from thy possession. I am thine, bought with a price; Lord, save me; and in the day when thou bindest up thy jewels, remember, Lord, that I cost thee as dear as any, and therefore cast me not into the portion of Judas: but let me walk, and dwell, and bathe in the field of thy blood, and pass from hence, pure and sanctified, into the society of the elect apostles, receiving my part with them, and my flect receiving my or thy inheritance, gracious Lord and dearest Savior, Jesus. Amen.

SECTION XIII.

Considerations upon the Washing of the Disciples' Feet by Jesus, and his Sermon of Humility.

THE holy Jesus went now to eat his last Pascha supper, and to finish the work of his legation, and to fulfil that part of the law of Moses in every of its smallest and most minute particularities, in which also the actions were significant of spiritual duties: which we may transfer from the letter to the spirit in our own instances, That as Jesus ate the Paschal lamb with a staff in his hand, with his loins girt, .with sandals on his feet, in great haste, with unleavened bread, and with bitter herbs; so we also should do all our services according to the signification of these symbols, leaning upon the cross of Jesus for a staff, and bearing the rod of his government, with loins girt with angelical chastity, with shoes on our feet, that so we may guard and have custody over our affections, and "be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace," eating in haste, as becomes persons "hungering aud thirsting after righteousness," doing the work of the Lord zealously and fervently, without the leaven of malice and secular interest, with bitter herbs of self-denial and mortification of our sensual and inordinate desires. The sense and mystery of the whole act, with all its circumstances, is, That we obey all the sanctions of the divine law, and that every part of our religion be pure and peaceable, chaste and obedient, confident in God and diffident in ourselves, frequent and zealous, humble and resigned, just and charitable; and there will not easily be wanting any just circumstance to hallow and consecrate the action.

When the holy Jesus had finished his last Mosaic

rite, he descends to give example of the first fruit of evangelical graces: "he rises from supper, lays aside his garment" like a servant, and, with all the circumstances of an humble ministry, "washes the feet of his disciples," beginning at the first, St. Peter, until he came to Judas, the traitor; that we might, in one scheme, see a rare conjunction of charity and humility, of self-denial and indifferency, represented by a person glorious and great, their Lord and Master, sad and troubled. And he chose to wash their feet rather than their head, that he might have the opportunity of a more humble posture, and a more apt signification of his charity. Thus God lays every thing aside, that he may serve his servants; heaven stoops to earth, and one abyss calls upon another, and the miseries of man, which were next to infinite, are excelled by a mercy equal to the immensity of God. And this washing of their feet, which was an accustomed civility and entertainment of honored strangers at the beginning of their meal, Christ deferred to the end of the paschal supper, that it might be the preparatory to the second, which he intended should be festival to all the world. St. Peter was troubled that the hands of his Lord should wash his servants' feet, those hands which had opened the eyes of the blind, and cured lepers, and healed all diseases, and, when lift up to heaven, were omnipotent, and could restore life to dead and buried persons; he counted it a great indecency for him to suffer it: but it was no more than was necessary, for they had but lately been earnest in dispute for precedency; and it was of itself so apt to swell into tumor and inconvenience, that it was not to be cured but by some prodigy of example and miracle of humility, which the holy Jesus offered to them in this express, calling them to learn some great lesson; a lesson which God descended from heaven to earth, from riches to poverty, from essential innocence to

the disreputation of a sinner, from a master to a servant, to learn us, that is, that we should esteem ourselves but just as we are, low, sinful, miserable, needy, and unworthy. It seems it is a great thing that man should come to have just and equal thoughts of himself, that God used such powerful arts to transmit this lesson, and engrave it in the spirits of men; and if the receipt fails, we are eternally lost in the mists of vanity, and enter into the condition of those angels, whom pride transformed and spoiled into the condition of devils: and upon consideration of this great example, Guericus, a good man, cried out, "Thou hast overcome, O Lord, thou hast overcome my pride; this example hath mastered me; I deliver myself up into thy hands, never to receive liberty or exaltation but in the condition of thy humblest servant."

And to this purpose St. Bernard hath an affectionate and devout consideration, saying, that some of the angels, as soon as they were created, had an ambition to become like God, and to aspire into the throne which God had appointed to the holy Jesus in eternal ages. When God created man, presently the devil rubbed his leprosy upon him, and he would needs be like God too, and Satan promised him that he should. As the evil angels would have been like to God in power and majesty, so man would have been like him in knowledge, and have imitated the wisdom of the eternal Father. But man had the fate of Gehazi; he would needs have the talent and garments of Lucifer, and he had also his plague; he lost paradise for his pride. And now, what might befit the Son of God to do, seeing man so lost, and God so zealous of his honor? I see (saith he) that, by occasion of me, the Father loses his creatures, for they have all aspired to be like me, and are fallen into the greatest infelicities. Behold, I will go towards man in such a form, that whosoever from P

henceforth would become like me, shall be so, and be a gainer by it. And for this cause the Son of God came from heaven, and made himself a poor humble person, and, by all the actions of his life, commented upon the present discourse: "Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart." Blessed be that mercy and bounty which moved Almighty God to condescend to that so great appetite we had of being like him; for now we may be like unto God, but it must be by humility, of which he hath given us an example powerful as miracles, and great as our own pride and misery.

And, indeed, our blessed Lord, knowing that examples are like maps and perfect schemes, in which the whole continent may at once be represented to the eye to all the purposes of art and benefit, did in the latter end of his life, draw up the dispersions and larger harvest of his precepts, binding them in the bundle of the great examples, and casting them into actions as into sums total: for so this act of washing the feet of his own ministers, and then dying for them, and for all his enemies, did preach the three great sums of evangelical perfection with an admirable energy and abbreviature; humility and charity, and sufferings, being to Christianity as the body, and the soul, and the spirit, are to the whole man. For no man brings a sad funeral into the theatre to make his spectators merry, nor can well preach chastity in the impurity of the Bordelli, or persuade temperance when himself is full of wine and luxury, and enters into the baths to boil his undigested meat, that he may return to his second supper, and hreathes forth impure belchings together with his homily: a poor Eremite, or a severely-living philosopher, into whose life his own precepts have descended, and his doctrine is mingled with his soul, mingles also effect and virtue with homilies, and incorporates his doctrines in the hearts of his disciples. And this the