I come to the third strange condition of the birth; it was without travel, or the pangs of woman, as I will shew you out of these words; 'fasciis involvit', that 'she wrapt him in swaddling clouts, and laid him in a manger. Ipsa genitrix fuit obstetrix', says St. Cyprian. Mary was both the mother and the midwife of the child; far be it from us to think that the weak hand of the woman could facilitate the work which was guided only by the miraculous hand of God. The Virgin conceived our Lord without the lusts of the flesh, and therefore she had not the pangs and travel of woman upon her, she brought him forth without the curse of the flesh. These be the Fathers' comparisons. As bees draw honey from the flower without offending it, as Eve was taken out of Adam's side without any grief to him, as a sprig issues out of the bark of a tree, as the sparkling light from the brightness of the star, such ease was it to Mary to bring forth her first born son; and therefore having no weakness in her body, feeling no want of vigor, she did not deliver him to any profane hand to be drest, but by a special ability, above all that are newly delivered, she wrapt him in swaddling clouts. 'Gravida, sed non gravabatur'; she had a burden in her womb, before she was delivered, and yet she was not burdened for her journey which she took so instantly before the time of the child's birth. From Nazareth to Bethlem was above forty miles, and yet she suffered it without weariness or complaint, for such was the power of the Babe, that rather he did support the Mother's weakness than was supported; and as he lighted his Mother's travel by the way from Nazareth to Bethlem that it was not tedious to her tender age, so he took away all her dolour and imbecility from her travel in child-birth, and therefore 'she wrapt him in swaddling clouts'. A very different paragraph indeed, and quite on the cross road to Rome! It really makes me melancholy; but it is one of a thousand instances of the influence of Patristic learning, by which the Reformers of the Latin Church were distinguished from the renovators of the Christian religion. Can we wonder that the strict Protestants were jealous of the backsliding of the Arminian prelatical clergy and of Laud their leader, when so strict a Calvinist as Bishop Hacket could trick himself up in such fantastic rags and lappets of Popish monkery!--could skewer such frippery patches, cribbed from the tyring room of Romish Parthenolatry, on the sober gown and cassock of a Reformed and Scriptural Church! Ib. p. 7.