before Adam's fall he stood exempted by supernatural favour: and therefore although the taking away that extraordinary grace or privilege was a punishment; yet the suffering the natural death was directly none, but a condition of his creation, natural, and therefore not primarily evil; but if not good, yet at least indifferent. And the truth and purpose of this observation will extend itself, if we observe, that before any man died, Christ was promised, by whom death was to lose its sting, by whom death did cease to be an evil, and was, or might be, if we do belong to Christ, a state of advantage. So that we by occasion of Adam's sin, being returned to our natural certainty of dying, do still even in this very particular stand between the blessing and the cursing. If we follow Christ, death is our friend: If we imitate the prevarication of Adam, then death becomes an evil; the condition of our nature becomes the punishment of our own sin, not of Adam's. For although his sin brought death in, yet it is only our sin that makes death to be evil. And I desire this to be observed, because it is of great use in vindicating the Divine justice in the matter of this question. The material part of the evil came from our father upon us; but the formality of it, the sting and the curse, is only by ourselves.

2. For the fault of others many may become miserable, even all or any of those whose relation is such to the sinner, that he in any sense may by such inflictions be punished, execrable or oppressed. Indeed it were strange, if when a plague were in Aethiopia, the Athenians should be infected; or if the house of Pericles were visited, Thucydides should die for it. For although there are some evils which (as Plutarch saith) are ansis et propagationibus praedita, incredibili celeritate in longinquum penetrantia, such which can dart evil influences, as porcupines do their

quills: yet as at so great distances the knowledge of any confederate events must needs be uncertain; so it is also useless, because we neither can join their causes, nor their circumstances, nor their accidents into any neighbourhood of conjunction. Relations are seldom noted at such distances; and if they were, it is certain so many accidents will intervene, that will outweigh the efficacy of such relations, that by any so far distant events we cannot be instructed in any duty, nor understand ourselves reproved for any fault. But when the relation is nearer, and is joined under such a head and common cause, that the influence is perceived, and the parts of it do usually communicate in benefit, notices, or infelicity, (especially if they relate to each other as superiour and inferiour) then it is certain the sin is infectious I mean not only in example, but also in punishment.

And of this I shall shew. 1. In what instances usually it is so. 2. For what reasons it is so, and justly so. 3. In what degree, and in what cases it Is so. 4. What remedies there are for this evil.

1. It is so in kingdoms, in churches, in families, in political, artificial, and even in accidental societies.

When David numbered the people, God was angry with him; but he punished the people for the crime; seventy thousand men died of the plague. And when God gave to David the choice of three plagues, he chose that of the pestilence, in which the meanest of the people, and such which have the least society with the acts and crimes of kings, are most commonly devoured; whilst the powerful and sinning persons, by arts of physick, and flight, by provisions of nature, and accidents, are more commonly secured. But the story of the kings of Israel hath furnished us with an example fitted with all the stranger circumstances in this question. Joshua had sworn

to the Gibeonites (who had craftily secured their lives by exchanging it for their liberties :) almost five hundred years after, Saul, in zeal to the men of Israel and Judah, slew many of them. After this, Saul dies, and no question was made of it. But in the days of David, there was a famine in the land three years together; and God being inquired of, said, it was because of Saul his killing the Gibeonites.* What had the people to do with their king's fault? or, at least, the people of David with the fault of Saul? That we shall see anon. But see the way that was appointed to expiate the crime and the calamity. David took seven of Saul's sons, and hanged them up against the sun; and after that God was intreated for the land. The story observes one circumstance more that for the kindness of Jonathan, David spared Mephibo.heth. Now this story doth not only instance in kingdoms, but in families too. The father's fault is punished upon the sons of the family, and the king's fault upon the people of his land; even after the death of the king, after the death of the father. Thus God visited the sin of Ahab partly upon himself, partly upon his sons. I will not bring the evil in his days, but in his son's days will I bring the evil upon his house. Thus did God slay the child of Bathsheba for the sin of his father David: and the whole family of Eli, all his kindred of the nearer lines, were thrust from the priesthood, and a curse made to descend upon his children for many ages, that all the males should die young, and in the flower of their youth. The boldness and impiety of Cham made his posterity to be accursed, and brought slavery into the world. Because Amalek fought with the sons of Israel at Rephidim, God took up a quarrel against the nation for ever. And above all examples

is that of the Jews, who put to death the Lord of life, and made their nation to be an anathema for ever, until the day of restitution: His blood be upon us, and upon our children. If we shed innocent blood, if we provoke God to wrath, if we oppress the poor, if we crucify the Lord of life again, and put him to an open shame, the wrath of God will be upon us and upon our children, to make us a cursed family; and we are the sinners, to be the stock and original of the curse; the pedigree of the misery shall derive from

us.

This last instance went farther than the other of families and kingdoms. For not only the single families of the Jews were made miserable for their fathers' murthering the Lord of life, nor also was the nation alone extinguished for the sins of their rulers, but the religion was removed; it ceased to be God's people; the synagogue was rejected, and her veil rent, and her privacies dismantled, and the Gentiles were made to be God's people, when the Jews' inclosure was disparked. I need not farther to instance this proposition in the case of national churches; though it is a sad calamity that is fallen upon all the seven churches of Asia, (to whom the spirit of God wrote seven epistles by Saint John) and almost all the churches of Africa, where Christ was worshipped, and now Mahomet is thrust in substitution, and the people are servants, and the religion is extinguished, or where it remains it shines like the moon in an eclipse, or like the least spark of the Pleiades, seen but seldom, and that rather shining like a glow-worm than a taper enkindled with a beam of the sun of righteousness. I shall add no more instances to verify the truth of this, save only I shall observe to you, that even there is danger in being in evil company, in suspected places, in the civil societies and fellowship of wicked men.

-Vetabo, qui Cereris sacrum

Vulgarit arcanae, sub iisdem

Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum
Solvat phaselum. Saepe Diespiter

Neglectus, incesto addidit integrum.*

And it happened to the mariners who carried Jonah, to be in danger with a horrid storm, because Jonah was there who had sinned against the Lord. Many times the sin of one man is punished by the failing of a house or a wall upon him, and then all the family are like to be crushed with the same ruin: so dangerous, so pestilential, so infectious a thing is sin, that it scatters the poison of its breath to all the neighbourhood, and makes that the man ought to be avoided like a person infected with the plague.

Next I am to consider, Why this is so, and why it is justly so. To this I answer, 1. Between kings and their people, parents and their children, there is so great a necessitude, propriety, and intercourse of nature, dominion, right and possession, that they are by God and the laws of nations reckoned as their goods and their blessings. The honour of a king is in the multitude of his people; and, children are a gift that cometh of the Lord, and, happy is that man that hath his quiver full of them: and, Lo thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord; his wife shall be like the fruitful vine by the walls of his house, his children like olive"branches round about his table. Now if children be a blessing, then to take them away in anger, is a curse :

*Hor. Lib. III. Od. ii. 26.

To silence due rewards we give,
And they, who mysteries reveal,
Beneath my roof shall never live,

Shall never hoist with me the doubtful sail,

When Jove in anger strikes the blow,

Oft with the bad the righteous bleed,

FRANCIS.