64 THE ART OF MOURNING.
for sins is a carriage not unbeseeming for a king. Therefore it is a desperate madness not to humble ourselves and be abased, now we have to deal with God. Your desperate atheists of the world will not tremble at threatenings, nor humble themselves till death comes, which humbles them and makes them tremble ; whereas, on the contrary, that soul which, feeling the wrath of God, humbles itself betimes, and trembles at threatenings, that soul, I say, — when the great judgment of death comes, and appearance before God, — looks death in the face with comfort ; whereas your desperate atheists, that can now scorn God, swear at ever}' word, and blaspheme God to his face ; let God but shew his displeasure, they tremble and quake upon an}' noise of fear. Therefore when we have to deal with God, it is wisdom, and the ground of all courage, to humble and abase ourselves with fear, as Josiah did although he were a king.
' And thou didst weep before me.'
His tender heart did melt itself into tears. In the first clause of the verse you have his tender heart set down, and here we have tJic melling of the tender heart. There we have the cloud, here we have the shower. Therefore I will speak something of the original of tears. We know that tears are strained from the inward parts, through the eyes ; for the under- standing first conceivcth cause of grief upon the heart, after which the heart sends up matter of grief to the brain, and the brain being of a cold nature, doth distil it down into tears ; so that if the grief be sharp and piercing, there will follow tears after from most. But to come to the particulars ; ■we see the provoking cause of tears, from without, in Josiah, was the danger of his kingdom, hearing the judgment of God threatened against his country and place. Whence, for the instruction of magistrates, I will enforce this point.
Doct. 4. That it concerns magistrates above all others, to take to heart any danger whatsoever, that is upon their people ; for as kings are set above all other people in place, so they should be above them in goodness and grace. They ought, above all others, to take to heart any judgment, either upon them already, or feared ; as good Josiah did, whom, while he looked not so much to himself and his own good, as to that state whereof he was king, the very threatenings of judgment against it, made to express his grief with tears. The bond that knits the king to the people, and the people to the king, requires this ; for kings are heads, and shepherds over the people. Now the shepherd watcheth over his flock ; the head is quickly sensible of any hurt of the body ; all the senses are provident for the body. So it should be with all great persons in authority. They should cherish the good estate of the subjects as their own ; for they are committed to their care. And even as the head doth care for the body, and forecast for it, so those that are in authority should forecast for any good to the body of the commonwealth. An excellent example of this we have in holy David ; who, when there was a judgment coming upon his people. Lord, saith he, let the judgment come upon me and my father's house ; what have these sheep done ? ' 2 Sam. xxiv. 17. And surely such magistrates as are tenderly afliected with the case of those under them, shall lose nothing by it ; for the people likewise will carry a tender afl'ection towards them again. As we see, when the people went to fight against Absalom, they would not let David go with them, but they said to him, ' Thou ai't worth ten thousand of us,' 2 Sam. xviii. 3 ; that is, they had rather that ten thousand of them should die in the battle, than that David should have any hurt come to
THE ART OF MOURNING. 65
him ; so he lost nothing for his love and affection towards the people, for they she\yed the like love to him in his distress. So likewise when Josiab was dead, the people wept largely for him (for with him perished all the glory of that flourishing kingdom), as we may read in the story, 2 Chron. XXXV. 24, 25, compared with Zech. xii. 11. They mourned for him with an exceeding great mourning, in Hadadrimmon, in the valley of Megiddo. So that there is no love lost between the magistrate and the people ; for if the magistrate be tenderly affected to them, the people will likewise ■weep for him again, and lament his case in his distress. But now to come to a more general instruction, we v/ill leave speaking of Josiah as king, and take him into considei'ation as an holy man, and make him a pa 'tern unto us all, of whatsoever civil condition we be ; and so we learn this point,