Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel — John Shaqi
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's DuelDonne, John
Religion
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel
Donne, John
Meditations
My God, my God, thy blessed servant Augustine begged of thee that Moses
might come and tell him what he meant by some places of Genesis: may I
have leave to ask of that Spirit that writ that book, why, when David
expected news from Joab's army,[99] and that the watchman told him that
he saw a man running alone, David concluded out of that circumstance,
that if he came alone, he brought good news?[100] I see the grammar, the
word signifies so, and is so ever accepted, _good news_; but I see not
the logic nor the rhetoric, how David would prove or persuade that his
news was good because he was alone, except a greater company might have
made great impressions of danger, by imploring and importuning present
supplies. Howsoever that be, I am sure that that which thy apostle says
to Timothy, _Only Luke is with me_,[101] Luke, and nobody but Luke, hath
a taste of complaint and sorrow in it: though Luke want no testimony of
ability, of forwardness, of constancy, and perseverance, in assisting
that great building which St. Paul laboured in, yet St. Paul is affected
with that, that there was none but Luke to assist. We take St. Luke to
have been a physician, and it admits the application the better that in
the presence of one good physician we may be glad of more. It was not
only a civil spirit of policy, or order, that moved Moses's
father-in-law to persuade him to divide the burden of government and
judicature with others, and take others to his assistance,[102] but it
was also thy immediate Spirit, O my God, that moved Moses to present
unto thee seventy of the elders of Israel,[103] to receive of that
Spirit, which was upon Moses only before, such a portion as might ease
him in the government of that people; though Moses alone had endowments
above all, thou gavest him other assistants. I consider thy plentiful
goodness, O my God, in employing angels more than one in so many of thy
remarkable works. Of thy Son, thou sayest, _Let all the angels of God
worship him_;[104] if that be in heaven, upon earth he says, _that he
could command twelve legions of angels_;[105] and when heaven and earth
shall be all one, at the last day, thy Son, O God, _the Son of man,
shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him_.[106] The
angels that celebrated his birth to the shepherds,[107] the angels that
celebrated his second birth, his resurrection, to the Maries,[108] were
in the plural, angels associated with angels. In Jacob's ladder,[109]
they who ascended and descended, and maintained the trade between heaven
and earth, between thee and us, they who have the commission, and charge
to guide us in all our ways,[110] they who hastened Lot,[111] and in
him, us, from places of danger and temptation, they who are appointed to
instruct and govern us in the church here,[112] they who are sent to
punish the disobedient and refractory,[113] that they are to be mowers
and harvestmen[114] after we are grown up in one field, the church, at
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