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doubtless, where she was known, the law forced her to live apart: now, she conceals both her grief, and her desire, and her faith; and only speaks, where she may be bold, within herself, If I may but touch the hem of his garment, I shall be whole.

I seek not mysteries in the virtue of the hem, rather than of the garment. Indeed, it was God's command to Israel, that they should be marked, not only in their skin, but in their clothes too. Those fringes and ribands upon the borders of their garments were for holy memorials of their duty, and God's law. But that hence she supposed to find more virtue and sanctity in the touch of the hem than of the coat, I neither dispute nor believe. It was the site, not the signification, that she intimated; not as of the best part, but the utmost. In all likelihood, if there could have been virtue in the garment, the nearer to the body, the more. Here was then the praise of this woman's faith, that she promiseth herself cure, by the touch of the utmost hem. Whosoever would look to receive any benefit from Christ must come in faith it is that only, which makes us capable of any favour. Satan, the common ape of the Almighty, imitates him also in this point: all his charms and spells are ineffectual, without the faith of the user, of the receiver,

Yea, the endeavour and issue of all, both human and spiritual things, depends upon our faith. Who would commit a plant or seed to the earth, if he did not believe to have it nursed in that kindly bosom? What merchant would put himself upon the guard of an inch-board in a furious sea, if he did not trust to the faithful custody of that plank? Who would trade, or travel, or war, or marry, if he did not therein surely trust he should speed well? What benefit can we look to carry from a Divine exhortation, if we do not believe it will edify us? from a sacramental banquet, the food of angels, if we do not believe it will nourish our souls? from our best devotions, if we do not persuade ourselves they will fetch down blessings? Oh our vain and heartless services! if we do not say, "May I drink but one drop of that heavenly nectar, may I taste but one crumb of that bread of life, may I hear but one word from the mouth of Christ, may I send up but one hearty sigh or ejaculation of a holy desire to my God, I shall be whole."

According to her resolution, is her practice. She touched, but she came behind to touch; whether for humility, or her secresy rather, as desiring to steal a cure unseen, unnoted.

She was a Jewess, and therefore well knew that her touch was, in this case, no better than a pollution; as hers, perhaps, but not of him: for, on the one side, necessity is under no positive law; on the other, the Son of God was not capable of impurity. Those may be defiled with a touch, that cannot heal with a touch; he, that was above law, is not comprised in the law. Be we never so unclean, he may heal us; we cannot infect him. O Saviour, my soul is sick and foul enough with the spiritual impurities of sin: let me, by the hand of faith, lay hold but upon the hem of thy gar

ment, (thy righteousness is thy garment,) it shall be both clean and whole.

Who would not think, but a man might lade up a dish of water out of the sea, unmissed? Yet that water, though much, is finite; those drops are within number: that art, which hath reckoned how many corns of sand would make up a world, could more easily compute how many drops of water would make up an ocean; whereas, the mercies of God are absolutely infinite, and beyond all possibility of proportion: and yet this bashful soul cannot steal one drop of mercy from this endless, boundless, bottomless sea of Divine bounty, but it is felt and questioned; and Jesus said, Who touched me?

Who can now say, that he is a poor man, that reckons his store; when that God, who is rich in mercy, doth so? He knows all his own blessings, and keeps just tallies of our receipts; “Delivered so much honour, to this man; to that, so much wealth: so much knowledge, to one; to another, so much strength." How carefully frugal should we be in the notice, account, usage of God's several favours, since his bounty sets all his gifts upon the file! Even the worst servant in the Gospel confessed his talents, though he employed them not. We are worse than the worst, if either we misknow, or dissemble, or forget them.

Who now can forbear the disciples' reply?" Who touched thee, O Lord? the multitude. Dost thou ask of one, when thou art pressed by many? In the midst of a throng, dost thou ask, Who touched me?"

"Yea, but yet some one touched me: all thronged me; but one touched me. How riddle-like soever it may seem to sound, they, that thronged me, touched me not; she only touched me, that thronged me not, yea that touched me not." Even so, O Saviour, others touched thy body with theirs; she touched thy hem with her hand, thy Divine power with her soul.

Those two parts, whereof we consist, (the bodily, the spiritual,) do, in a sort, partake of each other. The soul is the man; and hath those parts, senses, actions, which are challenged as proper to the body. This spiritual part hath both a hand and a touch; it is by the hand of faith, that the soul toucheth: yea this alone both is, and acts all the spiritual senses of that immaterial and divine part; this sees, hears, tasteth, toucheth God; and without this the soul doth none of these. All the multitude then pressed Christ: he took not that for a touch, since faith was away; only she touched him, that believed to receive virtue by his touch. Outward fashionableness comes into no account with God; that is only done, which the soul doth. It is no hoping, that virtue should go forth from Christ to us, when no hearty desires go forth from us to him. He, that is a Spirit, looks to the deportment of that part, which resembleth himself: as without it, the body is dead; so, without the actions thereof, bodily devotions are but carcases. What reason had our Saviour to challenge this touch? Some

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body touched me. The multitude, in one extreme, denied any touch at all; Peter, in another extreme, affirmed an over-touching of the multitude: betwixt both, he, who felt it, can say, Somebody touched me. Not all, as Peter; not none, as the multitude; but somebody. How, then, O Saviour, how doth it appear, that somebody touched thee? For I perceive virtue is gone out from me. The effect proves the act; virtue gone out evinces the touch. These two are in thee convertible: virtue cannot go out of thee, but by a touch; and no touch can be of thee, without virtue going out from thee. That, which is a rule in nature, that every agent works by a contact," holds spiritually too. Then dost thou, O God, work upon our souls, when thou touchest our hearts by thy Spirit; then do we react upon thee, when we touch thee by the hand of our faith and confidence in thee: and in both these virtue goes out from thee to us; yet goes not so out, as that there is less in thee. In all bodily emanations, whose powers are but finite, it must needs follow, that the more is sent forth, the less is reserved; but, as it is in the sun, which gives us light, yet loseth none ever the more, the luminosity of it being no whit impaired by that perpetual emission of lightsome beams; so much more is it in thee, the Father of Lights.

Virtue could not go out of thee, without thy knowledge, with out thy sending. Neither was it in a dislike, or in a grudging exprobration, that thou saidst, Virtue is gone out from me. Nothing could please thee better, than to feel virtue fetched out from thee by the faith of the receiver. It is the nature and praise of good, to be communicative. None of us would be other than liberal of our little, if we did not fear it would be lessened by imparting. Thou, that knowest thy store so infinite, that participation doth only glorify and not diminish it, canst not but be more willing to give, than we to receive. If we take but one drop of water from the sea, or one corn of sand from the shore, there is so much, though insensibly, less; but were we capable of. worlds of virtue and benediction from that munificent hand, our enriching could no whit impoverish thee. Thou, which wert wont to hold it much better to give than to receive, canst not but give gladly. Fear not, O my soul, to lade plentifully at this well, this Ocean of Mercy; which, the more thou takest, overflows the

more.

But why then, O Saviour, why didst thou thus inquire, thus expostulate? Was it for thy own sake; that the glory of the miracle might thus come to light, which otherwise had been smothered in silence? Was it for Jairus his sake; that his depressed heart might be raised to a confidence in thee, whose mighty power he saw proved by this cure, whose omniscience he saw proved by the knowledge of the cure? Or, was it chiefly for the woman's sake; for the praise of her faith, for the securing of her conscience?

It was within herself, that she said, If I may but touch: none could hear this voice of the heart, but he that made it. It was

within herself, that the cure was wrought: none of the beholders knew her complaint, much less her recovery; none noted her touch, none knew the occasion of her touch. What a pattern of powerful faith had we lost, if our Saviour had not called this act to trial! As her modesty hid her disease, so it would have hid her virtue. Christ will not suffer this secresy.

Oh the marvellous, but free dispensation of Christ! One while, he enjoins a silence to his re-cured patients, and is troubled with their divulgation of his favour; another while, as here, he will not lose the honour of a secret mercy, but fetches it out by his inquisition, by his profession; Who hath touched me? for I perceive virtue is gone out from me. As we see in the great work of his creation, he hath placed some stars in the midst of heaven, where they may be most conspicuous; others he hath set in the southern obscurity, obvious to but few eyes: in the earth, he hath planted some flowers and trees in the famous gardens of the world; others, no less beautiful, in untracked woods or wild deserts, where they are either not seen, or not regarded.

O God, if thou have intended to glorify thyself by thy graces in us, thou wilt find means to fetch them forth into the notice of the world; otherwise, our very privacy shall content us, and praise thee.

Yet even this great faith wanted not some weakness. It was a poor conceit in this woman, that she thought she might receive so sovereign a remedy from Christ, without his heed, without his knowledge. Now, that she might see she had trusted to a power, which was not more bountiful than sensible, and whose goodness did not exceed his apprehension, but one, that knew what he parted with, and willingly parted with that which he knew beneficial to so faithful a receiver, he can say, Somebody hath touched me, for I perceive virtue is gone out from me. As there was an error in her thought, so in our Saviour's words there was a correction. His mercy will not let her run away with that secret of fence. It is a great favour of God, to take us in the manner, and to shame our closeness. We scour off the rust from a weapon, that we esteem; and prune the vine, we care for. O God, do thou ever find me out in my sin; and do not pass over my least infirmi ties, without a feeling controlment.

Neither doubt I, but that herein, O Saviour, thou didst graciously forecast the securing of the conscience of this faithful, though overseen, patient; which might well have afterwards raised some just scruples, for the filching of a cure, for unthankfulness to the Author of her cure; the continuance whereof she might have good reason to misdoubt, being surreptitiously gotten, ungratefully concealed. For prevention of all these dangers, and the full quieting of her troubled heart, how. fitly, how mercifully didst thou bring forth this close business to the light, and clear it to the bottom! It is thy great mercy, to foresee our perils; and to remove them, ere we can apprehend the fear of them as some skilful physician, who, perceiving a fever or phrensy coming,

which the distempered patient little misdoubts, by seasonable applications anticipates that grievous malady; so as the sick man knows his safety, ere he can suspect his danger.

Well might the woman think, "He, who can thus cure, and thus know his cure, can as well know my name, and descry my person, and shame and punish my ingratitude:" with a pale face, therefore, and a trembling foot, she comes, and falls down before him, and humbly acknowledges what she had done, what she had obtained; But the woman, finding she was not hid, &c. Could she have perceived, that she might have slyly gone away with the cure, she had not confessed it: so had she made God a loser of glory, and herself an unthankful receiver of so great a benefit.

Might we have our own wills, we should be injurious, both to God and ourselves. Nature lays such plots, as would be sure to befool us; and is witty in nothing, but deceiving herself. The only way to bring us home is, to find we are found, and to be convinced of the discovery of all our evasions; as some unskilful thief, that finds the owner's eye was upon him in his pilfering, lays down his stolen commodity with shame: contrarily, when a man is possessed with a conceit of secresy and cleanly escape, he is emboldened in his lewdness. The adulterer chooses the twilight, and says, No eye shall see me; and joys in the sweetness of his stolen waters. Ο God, in the deepest darkness, in my most inward retiredness, when none sees me, when I see not myself, yet let me then see thine allseeing eye upon me; and, if ever mine eyes shall be shut, or held with a prevailing temptation, check me with a speedy reproof, that with this abashed patient, I may come in, and confess my er. ror, and implore thy mercy.

It is no unusual thing, for kindness to look sternly, for the time; that it may endear itself more, when it lists to be discovered. With a severe countenance did our Saviour look about him, and ask, Who touched me? When the woman comes in, trembling, and confessing both her act and success, he clears up his brows, and speaks comfortably to her; Daughter, be of good cheer, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace. O sweet and seasonable word, fit for those merciful and Divine lips; able to secure any heart, to dispel any fears! Still, O Saviour, thou doest thus to us: when we fall down before thee in an awful dejectedness, thou rearest us up with a cheerful and compassionate encouragement: when thou findest us bold and presumptuous, thou lovest to take us down; when humbled, it is enough to have prostrated us: like as that lion of Bethel worries the disobedient prophet, guards the poor ass that stood quaking before him; or, like some mighty wind, that bears over a tall elm or cedar with the same breath, that it raiseth a stooping reed; or, like some good physician, who finding the body obstructed and surcharged with ill humours, evacuates it, and when it is sufficiently pulled down, raises it up with sovereign cordials. And still do thou so to my soul. If, at any time, thou perceivest me stiff and rebellious, ready to face out my sin against thee, spare me not; let me smart, till I relent. But

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