The cause of God's plague is diligently to be searched. Psal. xxiv. of the earth, and all thy cattle, thy sheep and oxen shall be blessed, and increase: but if thou hear not the voice of the Lord thy God, and keep his commandments, thou shalt be cursed in the town and in the field; thy children shall be cursed, and the fruit of the earth, and the fruit of thy cattle, thy sheep and thy oxen: the Lord will send upon thee need and trouble and destruction on every thing thou goest about, until he destroy thee," &c. These plagues, when they fall in any country, are not lightly to be considered. But as the physician, seeing in a glass by the water the disease within the body, by the learning searches out the cause of the disease, and ministers good things for the same; so in looking in the glass of God's word, the diseases and sins which are in commonwealths, we shall soon perceive the cause of these plagues, and wholesomely minister some profitable and comfortable remedies for the same. God is here so good to his people, that he makes them judges themselves, and mistrusts not the cause but, if they would consider it well, it would move their hard hearts: therefore he sends them not to any strange judges, but bids them be judges themselves, weigh it well first, and then judge; for the thing of itself is so plain that, if they had not altogether been blind, they should in the midst of these plagues have perceived God's anger and their own wickedness, neither of which they had yet worthily considered. "Ye have sown much," saith the prophet, "and brought into your barns but little:" ye have wrought and toiled, ye have spared no labour, thinking to have enriched yourselves thereby and filled your barns: but all was in vain, for ye sought not first to be reconciled with God, which ye ought to have done, and fulfilled his will and not your own. "The earth is the Lord's, and all the plenty on it;" and it obeys the will of God in serving him, and giving her fruits to them that love the Lord their God, and not to them which disobey God, that made and rules both man and the whole earth. Let the greedy carle think then, that though he be the owner of the land and field by man's law, yet he is not the lord and master over him whom the earth will obey in bringing forth her fruit. Let him dig, ditch, and delve, weed, except God stone, harrow, plough, sow, mow, clot and roll, root up trees and bushes, water, hedge, and water-furrow, or what other Our labour is in vain bless us. thing soever he can devise to make the ground fruitful: yet there can no fruit grow, nor increase come, but by the gift and blessing of the living Lord. It is written of king Kaun- Kauntus. tus', king of this realm, that as he was standing by the waterside after a great rain, marking how the water did rise, by leisure so it increased that it met his foot where he stood: and he being so proud in his heart, that he thought whatsoever he said every thing would obey, straight commanded the water that it should rise no further, nor wet his master's feet any more: but when he saw that the water rose still, and would not obey him, but ran into his shoes, he perceived his foolishness, and confessed there was another God and king above him, whom the waters would obey: so shall all greedy churls well perceive, when they have wrought themselves weary, and gotten little, that all increase comes from the Lord, and not of themselves. For David saith, that pro- Psal. lxxv. motion comes neither from the east nor the west, but the Lord is judge. It is not the way to wax rich, to get much, but to get it rightly; "for it is better," saith David, "to Psal. xxxvii, have a little righteously gotten, than to have the great riches of sinners:" nor it is not the way to be filled, to gather much together, but thankfully to take and use that little which thou hast, and be content therewith. can be ruled These rich gluttons, which the prophet rebukes here, did eat and drink so well, so costly, so finely, and so much as they could devise; and yet they were never full, but the more they drank, the dryer they were, and one good feast provoked another, and their study was how to fill their greedy stomachs. A drunken man is always dry, according to the proverb; and a gluttonous appetite is never filled, but the more daintily he is fed at one meal, the more desirous is No desires he at the next. All greedy affections of man's heart are but by grace unsatiable, if they be not bridled with the fear of God. And it under. the way to rule them is not to follow their lusts and desires, but to keep them under and not let them have their full desire. The dropsy desires drink, and drink increases it: so evil desires if they be followed, they increase, and in refraining them they decay. Crescit amor nummi, quantum Ovidius. ipsa pecunia crescit: that is to say, "as thy money increases, [Kauntus: Canute. ED.] and keeping 1 Cor. x. Eat not so that it make to serve God. Luke xvi. so does the love of it." Therefore, if thou wilt have thy meat to do thee good, and thy drink to slake thy thirst, take it soberly with thanksgiving at God's hand; acknowledge it to be the good creature of God, given to nourish thy necessity, and not to fill thy beastly appetite. So St Paul saith, "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God:" as though he should appoint how much a man should eat and drink; that is to say, so much that the mind be not made sluggish by cramming in meat, or pouring in drink, that it cannot lift up himself to the praising of God. Therefore he that eateth until his belly ache, or that he thee unlusty lie down to sleep that he cannot praise God, which hath fed him; or he that drinks till his eyes water or his tongue begin to swerve, swear, stut or prate, he doeth it not to the glory of God, which is his duty, nor to the nourishing of his weak body, which is lawful and necessary: but he kindles such an unnatural heat in his body, that it stirs up his appetite to desire more than it should, and is not content with enough, (and that be called here not to be filled nor satisfied in eating and drinking;) or else it overcomes the stomach, and is undigested, and fills the body full of sluggishness, makes it unlusty and unmeet to serve God or man, not nourishing the body but hurting it, and last of all casts him into many kinds of incurable diseases and desperate deaths. Look the end of the rich glutton in the gospel, feasting every day with his brethren, and at length cast into hell fire without hope; but the poor beggar Lazarus, that was content to gather up the crumbs (if he might have had them) which fell from the glutton's table, was carried up by angels to the bosom of Abraham to joy without end. Daniel taken prisoner to Babel, being but a boy, and having a fine diet and costly meats appointed for him by Nabuchodonozor the king from his own table, because he was born of the king's stock, desired his tutor to give him coarse meat, brown bread, pottage and water: but when his tutor said he durst not, because the king had given contrary commandment; and if he through eating such coarse meat should not be so wellliking as his fellows, then the king would be angry with him : Well," said Daniel, "prove me but ten days, and if I look A thin diet with the fear of God is better than feast ing. Dan. i. 66 thy If God bless God meat, it take thee and thy skills not how coarse and the best it be: if not, cannot feed not so well and lusty as my fellows, then I will desire no Look how many of your poor neighbours eat brown bread, drink thin drink, have little flesh, live with milk, butter and cheese, lie on the straw without mattress or feather-bed; and judge yourselves whether they be not more lusty, strong, healthful, and well-liking than thou, when thou art crammed full of all dainties which thou can invent or desire. Thus we may see what it is to eat and drink, and not be filled therewith, as the prophet saith in this place. our bodies a miracle We wonder much at the great miracles of God, when he changed water into blood and plagued Egypt, when he turned Exod. vii. water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, and such John ii. other, because they were done but seldom. But surely to feed To feed our bodies with meat is as great a miracle, if it be well is as great considered, as any other such thing that God works. What as any. is more marvellous, than to see the flesh of the sheep or ox, beast, fish or fowl, which thou did see yesterday running in the fields, flying in the air, or swimming in the water, this day to be changed into thy flesh and blood, and the substance of thy body? We are not nourished only with accidents and qualities of things, as smells and tastings; but with the substance of that thing which we eat and drink. Nourishing is defined of the physicians to be a changing of Nourishing. the nourishment into the substance of the body which is nourished. All the works of God, if they be well considered in their own nature, are miracles and above all reason: but God's works our dull blindness is so great, that because we see them daily, The com monness of makes them miracles, to seem no we regard them not; and because we be cloyed with them, and plenty is no dainty, we consider them not worthily. But be wonder- surely, if we had these great miracles of God afore our eyes, which of themselves ful. as we ought to have, how by his mighty power he changes the substance of that which we eat and drink into the substance of our flesh and blood; we should eat and drink with more reverence than we do, more diligently thank him that he would vouchsafe to feed us, and wonder at his mighty power that he can, and praise his merciful goodness that he will, work such a miracle so oft, and so wonderful a work upon such vile worms, greedy gluttons, and unthankful creatures as we be, and sustain our sinful nature by feeding us so marvellously, and changing the good nature of his other creatures, which never sinned, and yet are killed for us to feed us; changing them, I say, into the substance of our 1 Kings xix. bodies, which can do nothing of themselves but sin. Elias, fleeing from Jezabel, found a therfe' cake baked in the ashes, and a dish full of water at his head, when he waked out of sleep, and was commanded by the angel to rise and eat, for he had a long journey to go. And when he had eaten, he walked in the strength of that bread forty days and forty nights, eating nothing else. So shall all they which fear the Lord, as Elias did, in their persecution be able and strong to do great things by slender meat and drink (as we this day have proved), God blessing them and their meat, be it never so coarse and simple: and they that seek to strengthen themselves by dainty meats, forgetting God, shall not be filled in eating and drinking, nor have profit of that which they receive; but the more they have the more they shall desire, and never think they have enough, as the prophet here saith. Sin reigning in a man will let Such is the stinking nature of sin, that while it lies lurking in the heart of man, ruling him, and not ruled of him he hath do by grace, but stirring him to a further forgetting of God nothing that him good. [1 Old editions therse. others for unleavened. ED.] Therf is the word used by Wickliffe and |