there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them, said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children: for behold the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bear, and the paps that never gave suck! His present sufferings, and approaching death, withheld him not from reflecting with concern on the calamities which were ready to overtake others on his account. And, because the women who followed him to Calvary, out of a tenderness of nature peculiar to their sex, indulged themselves in the loudest expressions of grief; therefore to these he particularly addresses the admonition of the text; directs them to turn their well-meant compassion from him upon themselves; to reserve all their tears for a time, now at hand, when the whole nation of the Jews would be called to a strict account for spilling his blood, and be made an astonishing instance of divine

vengeance.

The good prince, whose unhappy fate we commemorate, did in this, as well as other respects, follow the steps of the great Captain of his salvation, who was made perfect through sufferings, Heb. i. 10. For the last moments of his life, which his murderers allowed him, were employed in awakening a drowsy nation into a sense of its guilt, and a dread of its impending punishment. Secure of his own innocence and happiness, he seemed to have conquered all concern for himself; and like a true father of his people, was chiefly solicitous for the peace and welfare of his people. His dying words breathed nothing but pity, and tenderness towards his subjects, who were to survive his fall, and to feel the sad effects of it. And therefore to those, who with weeping eyes then beheld that bloody scene, and to us, who with like grief now look on at a distance, may we suppose. the royal sufferer (consistently with the character he then maintained) to say,-Weep not for me; but weep for yourselves, and for your children.

This I am sure, is an instruction, which the day itself seems naturally to afford us, and which I shall, therefore, pursue in both its branches; shewing you,

I. First, that we misplace our grief, if we employ it in bewailing and lamenting our martyred sovereign; And,

II. Secondly, that the true end of these annual humiliations is, to weep for ourselves and for our children; to deplore the guilt which our fore-fathers contracted by this inhuman deed, and which, we have reason to fear, is not even yet fully expiated.

I. First, in the early ages of the church, the custom was annually to observe those days, on which the martyrs were crowned (such was the language of that time), not with dejected looks, or any outward expressions of sorrow; but with the solemnities usual on birth-days (and such also they were styled), even with all possible instances of devout exultation and joy. Upon these occasions, pious Christians flocked to the places, where those faithful servants of Christ slept, or had sealed the truth of their testimony with their blood: there they held their sacred assemblies (as they afterwards built their churches). There they made their eucharistic oblations, and celebrated their feasts of love; gave thanks to God for the exemplary virtues and graces, which adorned the lives and deaths of those holy persons, and excited themselves into like degrees of Christian zeal and fervour.

Their behaviour in these cases should be the rule of ours, and teach us to observe this anniversary in such a manner, as may render it most honourable to the dead, and most useful to the living. To that end, it will become us, not vainly to indulge our grief, or our resentments, in behalf of our much-injured prince; not fruitlessly to spend our time in lamenting his misfortunes; but rather to employ it in magnifying the grace of God, which enabled him so constantly to endure them, and so heartily to forgive the authors of them; which armed

him with such a wondrous degree of meekness and patience; inspired him with such christian magnanimity and courage, as made him shine with a greater lustre in the depth of his sufferings, than he did in his most flourishing circumstances; and put off his crown after a more glorious manner, than he first wore it on the day of his coronation.

Indeed, the mind of man, filled with vain ideas of worldly pomp and greatness, is apt to admire those princes most who are most fortunate, and have filled the world with the fame of their successful achievements. But to those, who weigh things in the balance of right reason and true religion, it will, I am persuaded, appear that the character of this excellent king, even while he was in his lowest and most afflicted state, had something in it, more truly great and noble, than all the triumphs of conquerors; something, that raised him as far above the most prosperous princes, as they themselves seem raised above the rest of mankind.

Many kings there have been, as happy as all worldly felicity could make them; and some of these have distinguished themselves as much by their virtues, as their happiness. But the possessors of those virtues, being seated on a throne, displayed them from thence with all manner of advantage; their good actions appeared in the best light, by reason of the high orb in which they moved while performing them; whereas the royal virtues, which we this day celebrate, shone brightest in affliction, and when all external marks of royal state and dignity were wanting to recommend them. Others, perhaps, may have been as just, as beneficent, as merciful in the exercise of their royal power, as this good king was; but none surely did ever maintain such a majestic evenness and serenity of mind, when despoiled of that power, when stripped of every thing but a good cause, and a good conscience; when destitute of all hopes of succour from his friends, or of mercy from his enemies: then, even then, did he possess his soul in peace, and patiently expect the event, without the least outward sign

of dejection or discomposure. He remembered himself to be a king, when all the world beside seemed to have forgotten it; when his inferiors treated him with insolence, and his equals with indifference; when he was brought before that infamous tribunal, where his own subjects sat as his judges; and even when he came to die by their sentence. In all these sad circumstances, on all these trying occasions, he spake, he did nothing, which misbecame the high character he bore, and will always bear, of a great king, and one of the best of Christians. And this mixture of unaffected greatness and goodness, in the extremity of misery, was, I say, his peculiar and distinguishing excellence. Other royal qualities, that adorn prosperity, he shared in common with others of his rank; but in the decent and kingly exercise of these passive graces, he had, among the list of princes, no superior, no equal, no rival.

Indeed, the last scene of his sufferings was very dismal; and such, from which mere human nature, unsupported by extraordinary degrees of grace, must needs have shrunk back a little affrighted, and seemed desirous of declining, But those succours were not wanting to him; for he went even through this last trial unshaken; and submitted his royal head to the stroke of the executioner, with as much tranquillity and meekness, as he had borne lesser barbarities. The passage through this red sea was bloody, but short; a divine hand strengthened him in it, and conducted him through it; and he soon reached the shore of bliss and immortality.

He is now at rest in those mansions, where tears are wiped from all eyes, where there is neither death, nor pain, nor crying, and from whence sorrow and sighs do flee away. Wherefore, let us not mourn, refusing to be comforted; but let us rather (as those early Christians did on the like occasions) rejoice with exceeding joy ; rendering to God our thanks, that he hath been pleased, in these last and most degenerate times, to afford us such an illustrious pattern of virtue and goodness, as even the purest ages of Christianity would have looked up to with

reverence; that, by this means, he hath given to loose and profane men an instance of the great power of those religious principles, which did, and which only could, support the mind of this pious prince under all the indignities and miseries that befel him.

What an honour is it to that church, at whose breast he first sucked these principles, to have been instrumental in sowing the first seeds, from whence such excellent fruits afterwards sprang! How ought she to boast and triumph in this thought, that a prince, who excelled as much in the knowledge as in the practice of religion, should be so firm and unmoveable an assertor of her doctrine, and discipline, and worship! which he therefore valued highly, because he understood them thoroughly: That he should go on to maintain her cause, even long after he despaired of maintaining his own, or of being able to retrieve his lost crown and dignity! and that, after he had thus defended her faith, during his life, he should recommend it still more at his death by dying in it and for it!

But the more excellent the character of this prince was, the more barbarous and brutal was the rage by which he fell. Every consideration which heightens his matchless virtues, and endears his memory to us, serves also to enhance the wickedness of those sons of Belial, who were the instruments of his ruin, and imbrued their hands in his blood. And therefore, though we have no occasion to weep for him, yet have we great reason to weep for ourselves and for our children; for the guilt which the nation contracted, and the infamy it underwent, by reason of that inhuman deed, and for the other fatal consequences, which then did, and which (as we have just reason to fear) may still attend it. And this is the second point, upon which I proposed to enlarge.

II. Secondly, that nations, as nations, are liable to guilt, and consequently to punishment; and such punishments must be inflicted in this life, in which alone those nations and communities subsist, and cannot be extended