PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS

UPON

OUR SAVIOUR'S MIRACLES, &c.

I.

Our Saviour's miraculous fast and temptation in the wilderness.

MATT. iv. 1, 2.

Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.

WHEN the blessed Jesus began to be about thirty years of agea, in his full vigour both of body and mind, having spent the intermediate time of his life in obscure privacy, known to nobody but those of his near neighbourhood, employed, probably, in the mean calling of Joseph his reputed father, (for idle to be sure he was not, and the scripture intimates that he was not brought up to learning,) but withal, in great esteem for his extraordinary piety and holiness of life, his sweetness of temper, and innocent prudent behaviour, growing in wisdom as he did in stature, which rendered him the favourite both of God and man, (as it will do any of us now, be our circumstances otherwise never so poor and low,) his forerunner, John the Baptist, was moved by the Spirit of God to leave a Luke iii. 23. b John vii. 15. c Luke ii. 52.

his retirement in the mountainous woody part of Judæa, where he was born, and had hitherto lived, and come down to the more frequented places about Jordan, and prepare the way of the Lord by preaching the baptism of repentance for remission of sins, and warning the people that the kingdom of heaven, or of the Messias, was at hand. And in a short time great multitudes of all conditions flocked thither to him, and were baptized of him, confessing their sins. And while they were full of thought concerning him, whether he were the Christ or note, which he plainly told them all he was not, but so much below him as not to be worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes, and whose baptism and preaching should be far superior to his, Jesus himself came to him to be baptized of him; and though the Baptist, at his first offering himself, did not know him, (and publicly declared he did not, that the people might not think they combined together to deceive the world 8,) the manner of John's life in the lonely solitudes of the hill country, secluding him from the acquaintance even of his near relations that lived at any considerable distance off, as Jesus did, who was brought up at Nazareth, yet the Spirit of God immediately revealed to him who he was, and then, as struck with a sacred awe and veneration, he desired to be excused from doing that to him which he knew he had no need of, and would look like assuming some degree of superiority over one who was so infinitely to be preferred before him: and then, with great humility, said to him, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to meh?

d Matt. iii. 5, 6. g John i. 31-33.

f Luke iii. 16, 17.

e Luke iii. 15.

h Matt. iii. 14.

But upon Jesus pressing him to do it, to whom he knew he ought to be obedient, and withal telling him the reason, that thus it became them to fulfil all righteousness; that is, as I suppose, to pay obedience to that part of the law of Moses as well as the rest, which commanded that the priests at their consecration should be washed with water, (and he was the high-priest of the Christian church,) and then enter upon their office, he complied; and, according to the prevailing custom among the Jews, of being initiated by baptism into any new institution, and when they gave themselves up to the discipline of any famous master, Jesus was baptized by John. Thus our Lord shewed that he approved of the baptism of John, and likewise adopted that ceremony into his own religion, which he came to teach the world, and recommended and hallowed it by his own example, Suffer it to be so now, &c. As if he had said, "As "it is your office to prepare the way before me,

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by proclaiming the near approach of my king"dom, and by teaching the necessity of repentance "in order to men's admission into it, to render "them more apt to receive my doctrine, and more "ready to believe in me as the promised Messias, "and to fix them the firmer in such faith, solemnly "to admit them as your disciples by the rite of

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baptism, in order to their being mine hereafter, "so it becomes me to shew my approbation of all "this, by doing as others do in this matter, and

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encourage every man by my example, to do for "the future as I have done before him, and make no scruple of being initiated by this ceremony

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"into that new religion which I am come to plant "in the world. Thus it becomes us not to destroy any part of, but to fulfil all righteousness; and

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by your baptizing me, and my submitting to that "ancient rite, to bring it to its due and designed perfection, and make it the standing initiatory "sacrament of the Christian church for ever."

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Now when Jesus, for these reasons, was baptized in Jordan, for being perfectly spotless and without guilt, there was no other occasion for it, he went up straightway out of the water; and while he was praying, as baptism is an especial act of religious worship, and the most vigorous devotion never more requisite than then, in the person baptized, (if capable of it,) and in every body else that is assisting at that sacred office, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw, and so did the Baptist, and others probably that stood by, the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him, in some very remarkable visible appearance, and lo, a voice from heaven; and which no doubt was loud enough for every one present to hear, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Thus gloriously was our great High Priest, our Prophet, and our King, proclaimed from heaven. Thus was he consecrated to be the unchangeable, eternal Priest of the Christian church; thus was he solemnly anointed to be our Prophet and our King by the unction that is from above, whereby he was declared to be holy, harmless, separate from sinners, and enabled to save to the utmost, or most effectually, all such as should come to God by him.

k Matt. iii. 16, 17. Luke iii. 21, 22. John i. 33, 34.