sorely entreated by the princes and rulers of the earth? It is the very condition which Christ gave us warning of; and, blessed be God, if I may judge from the spirit which is now testifying itself, even in my native land, against the most godly and faithful of his people, we are not far from proving this other evidence of our calling and election of God. It was the state of things in Jerusalem when the very " Image of God" appeared in our world to work the works of God. And who slew him? and who slew his followers? The religious world of those times, the straitest sect of the Pharisees. It hath been the experience of "God's people" in all ages, to prove the literal fulfilment of the words before us. They have been burned alive; they have been disembowelled alive; their flesh has been consumed before their face; their bones have been tortured; and every thing which cruelty could invent hath been practised upon God's people, by God's vicegerents, by the kings and the princes whom he hath armed for the punishment of evil doers and for the reward of such as do well. Jeremiah's whole experience confirmeth this truth: the tradition is that Isaiah in those days was sawn asunder: how Amos was entreated he himself relates, and many believe that he also came to a violent end; and the same also of the prophet before us. While, however, I think the passage hath its literal fulfilment in the persecution of the people of God, whom kings are set to protect, I believe that it doth likewise depict the general cruelty and oppression of the governors towards the governed that it is God's plea for casting them off and bringing them into the prison of Babylon, to which time of retribution he referreth in the next verse.

Ver. 4: "Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings."The connexion of this verse with the preceding is somewhat difficult to be discerned; no mention having been made of any visitation upon the princes and the rulers, it seems very abrupt to represent them in the condition of crying to the Lord in the day of their calamity. One unacquainted with Micah's abrupt style would be inclined to refer this to the same subject as the two verses preceding, and to understand it as spoken of the Lord's own people; and signifying, that for their backslidings and short-comings he had given them up to their enemies, and would not be entreated of them. Had it occurred in the more copious and consecutive style of Isaiah I would have been inclined so to connect it; but our Prophet is more concise and abrupt, and requires a still closer study; which having given to it, this seems to me to be the connexion and sequence of the passage: -Being about to utter the burden of these wicked princes and

governors of Judea, he breaks forth at once upon them in the most violent and direct style: "Is it not for you to know judgment?" you, who so cruelly devour my people as if they were bread, shall you not experience judgment? He supposes them already in the midst of it, seized and overwhelmed with the vengeance due to their deeds. He is like a man heartily laying it on them; he is a busy executioner of God's direful retribution; and ever as he fetches blow upon blow, he says, Are you not the fit and proper subjects of it, ye cruel men, who plucked off the skin and flesh of my people, and brake their bones? And ever as they cry aloud for mercy in the midst of their anguish, he saith, "You may cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear you :" the wrath is come upon you to the uttermost. The word "Then," with which this verse is introduced, carries our minds to the judgment inflicted, or rather inflicting. "Is it not for you to know judgment?" yea, for your cruelties know it, and prove the evil of your doings. Then, when they experience the Lord's heavy hand, they shall cry to him for mercy, but he will not give ear; "he will laugh at their calamity, and mock when their fear cometh." This gives somewhat of a new force to the last clause of the first verse, and a different turn than that which we have noticed above. Each, or both, may be intended. It would be hard to decide, where there are so few materials for deciding, and therefore we have allowed both to stand as they arose to our thoughts; but, upon the whole, we incline to prefer that which we have now suggested.

And for the substance of this threatening, it contains the notice of a crisis in the history of God's dealings with the wicked: when the cup of their iniquity is full, and the time to drink it is come, they must drink it, whether they will or will not. There is a day of visitation and a day of wrath, a day of grace and a day of judgment. Our Lord calls his own day the day of "Jerusalem's visitation," and the Apostle Peter calls his time the day of the "visitation of the Gentiles" (2 Pet. ii. 12); and the Prophet Isaiah calls the period of Messiah's hiding with the Father, "the day of salvation" (xlix. 8). But Jerusalem's day for vengeance came; and the day at length arrives when Christendom must receive the cup of the fierceness of the wrath of God; and finally the day will arrive when God will summon all the nations round about, and judge them at Jerusalem (Joel iii. 12). And here our Prophet warns these rulers and heads of the people, that a time of direful retribution would come, in the which they should cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear; he will even hide his face that he may not be found of them; because of their evil courses, from which they would not be diverted by all his admonitions and threatenings. There was a time at which the door of the ark was shut, and there is a time when the door of mercy

is barred upon a guilty world. The five foolish virgins found no entrance to the bride-chamber: they knocked, but it was not opened to them. Esau found no room for repentance, though he sought it earnestly, and with tears. There is a time at which God says to every wicked city, and to every wicked man, as he said to Ephraim, " He is joined to his idols, let him alone!"— Men please themselves with procrastination, under the false notion that they can at any time return to the paths of righteousness. But they greatly err: wickedness works on towards a consummation and a crisis, when judgment sets in with a fearful revenge. How literally it was fulfilled upon these princes in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, is declared in these words of Jeremiah (lii. 10, 11): "And the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes: he slew also all the princes of Judah in Riblah. Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death." (See also Jer. xxxix.) How truly it was fulfilled upon the whole nation of the Jews, in the days of their destruction by Titus, all history doth testify; and there is no doubt that it is a universal principle in the Divine government. How strikingly we have seen it exemplified within these few days! The king of France, who, with his princes, hath so long persecuted the people of God; who exiled and destroyed so many both of the Jansenists and Huguenots, and hath ever been the foremost to execute the barbarous decrees of the Pope of Rome, uttered alike against God and man, earning to himself the title of the Eldest-born Son of the Papacy; behold to what he is now reduced! How promptly, how awfully it fell upon him! He meditated evil against his people, and God brought the evil upon his own head. He may now present himself every hour of the day at confession, but it availeth not; the prayers of all the church avail not to reinstate him his day of grace is past. He must be held up, like our Stuarts, to the world, the example of God's judgments upon kings. It is but the beginning of the retribution, which will circulate round Christendom, and will not rest till vengeance hath come upon it to the uttermost. I question whether we shall escape, among whom the poor are ground down with exactions. If they would lighten the burdens of the poor, and deliver them from poverty and beggary; if they would exercise conscientiously the patronage of offices, and advance into the places of church and state men of righteousness and mercy; it would still go well with this kingdom: but as to the Papal states of Europe, I believe their day of grace is gone by, and that there abideth them direful judgments, at the hand of God and of the people whom they have misruled. Oh, I could almost wish and pray that God would scatter his church forth from this land, that we might go amongst

the peoples of Christendom, and warn them to flee from the wrath to come; to flee out of Babylon, nigh unto destruction, and save their souls! But God, who knows the future, and orders it in goodness, will provide witnesses for his own honour and glory.

Ver. 5. From the heads of Jacob and princes of the house of Israel, the burden passeth over to the prophets "that make the people to err," and is uttered in these words: "Thus saith the Lord, concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry Peace; and he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them." Of these false prophets we have a notable example in the eighteenth chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles, where they prophesy smooth things before Jehoshaphat king of Judah and Ahab king of Israel. With one accord they prophesied a lie, until that Micaiah the prophet of the Lord came and prophesied the truth, and for his faithfulness was alike maltreated of prince and of prophets. That same passage informs us how these prophets prophesied falsely: not through any hypocritical dissimulation at the time, but through the inspiration of a lying spirit, whom it pleased the Lord, for their iniquity, to send forth amongst them. Of the like conflict between a true and a false prophet we have another example in the twenty-eighth chapter of Jeremiah. And that the false prophets were not mere pretenders, playing a part for gain, but under the power and possession of evil spirits, is moreover declared in the fourth chapter of the First Epistle of John: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world " (1 John iv. 1). It was an office expressly preternatural, both in its use and in its abuse; to which God called by putting his word into men, and from which Satan perverted them by turning that word into delusion and falsehood, because of the unfaithfulness of those who possessed it. From one whom he had called to the office of the prophet, God is exceedingly loath to withdraw his gift of discerning future things, and of revealing truth; but, like every other gift possessed by man, it is possessed in trust for God; and, if not used aright, will turn to the very opposite of that for which it was given. The right use of it is to speak God's will, and to cause it to be done amongst those to whom we are sent: "Many shall say, have we not prophesied in thy name? Then shall I profess, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." Holiness is the end of all gifts, graces, and endowments, whether of power beyond others, as in kings and princes; whether of light beyond others, as of pro

phets and seers. To what extent, to what a fearful extent, this gift of prophecy had been abused in Jerusalem, and in all the land of Israel, is most forcibly declared in various parts of Scripture. In the account given of the causes of Jerusalem's overthrow, one is, that they would not hear the true prophets of the Lord: "And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling-place: but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy" (2 Chron. xxxvi. 15, 16). And of what kind were the prophets whom they did hear, Jeremiah thus testifieth: "And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria they prophesied in Baal, and caused my people Israel to err. I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies; they strengthen also the hands of evil doers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah" (Jer. xxiii. 13, 14). And what were the chief of those sins for which God visited Jerusalem is thus declared in the Lamentations of Jeremiah: "For the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her: they have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves with blood, so that men could not touch their garments" (Lam. iv. 13, 14). No wonder, therefore, that in this prophetical discourse, delivered by the Lord for warning against those calamities which were pressing forward, the sins of the prophets should be specially referred.

Their sin consisteth in three particulars: First, They made God's people to err, by setting forth as coming from God that which came not from him. When the Lord said, Go, they went not; when he said, Speak this, they spake it not. They feared the frowns of kings; they thought of their own safety; they sought favour of men, and desired their rewards; they loved their lives, and feared death and one who is thus minded may not be the minister of God's word to the people. It will not be long before he be led astray. He will keep back part of the truth, and that which he declareth he will smooth down discreetly to the ears of men: by degrees he will tamper with the truth itself, and in the end become a holder forth of falsehood. This is the progress of all who, being called of the Spirit to minister the word to the people, do fall away from their stedfastness and become the ministers of error. How many of these are in this land! how many of them are in the church of which I am a minister ! how many of my early friends and fellow-students in the schools of the prophets do I already see hardening into error! how