DAXTER'S FAREWELL SERMO,". 509 beasts do ; when one of their fellows is wounded, they all forsake him : so these stand looking with pity, or fear, or strangeness upon a man that is under sufferings and slanders, as if it must needs be a deserved thing and think it a great dishonor to a man, how in- nocent soever, when they hearthat he is used as offenders and mal- efactors are ; forgetting how by this they condemn their Savior, and all his apostles and martyrs, and the wisest, best, and happiest men that theearth bath borne. And all this is but the blind and hasty judgment of sense and unbelief, which bath neither the wit to judge oy the word of God, nor yet the patience to stay the end, and see how the sorrows of the godly will conclude, and where the triumph of the hypocrite will leave them. And yet some there be that are apt to err on the other extreme, and to think that every man is happy that is afflicted, and that such have all their sorrow in this life ; and that the suffering party is always in the right, and therefore they are ready to fall in with any deluded sect, which they see to be under reproach and suffering. But the cause must be first known, before the suffering can be well judged of. Doct. II. Christ's death and departure was the cause of his dis- ciples' sorrows. This is plain in the words "Ye now therefore have sorrow but I will see you again." And the causes of this sorrow were these three conjunct : 1. That their dear Lord, whom they loved, and whom they had heard, and followed, and put their trust in, must now be taken from them. If the parting offriends at death do turn our garments into the signs of our sad and mournful hearts, and cause us to dwell in the houses of mourning, we must -allow Christ's dis- ciples some such affections, upon their parting with their Lord. 2. And the manner of his death, no doubt, did much increase their sorrows. That the most innocent should suffer as wreputed malefactor, that he that more contemned the wealth, and pleasures, and glory of the world, than ever man did, and chose a poor, infe- rior life, and would not have a kingdom of this world, and never failed in any duty to high or low, shóuld yet be hanged ignomini- ously on a cross, as one that was about to usurp the crown ! That deluded sinners should put to death the Lord of life, and spit in the face of such a majesty, and hasten destruction to their nation and themselves and that all Christ's disciples must thus be esteem- ed the follo'wers of a crucified usurper, - judge, if we hadbeen in their case ourselves, whether this would have been matter of sor- row to us or not. Had,it not been enough for Christ to have suf- fered the pain, but he must also suffer the dishonor, even the im- putation ofsin; which no man was so far from being guilty of ? and
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