s born king of the
Jews?_ And does not their conduct teach us, under all difficulties of
the spiritual kind, to have recourse to those God has appointed to be
our spiritual guides, for their advice and direction? To _obey and be
subject to them_,[18] that so God may lead us to himself, as he guided
the wise men to Bethlehem by the directions of the priests of the Jewish
church.

The whole nation of the Jews, on account of Jacob's and Daniel's
prophecies, were then in the highest expectation of the Messiah's
appearance among them; the place of whose birth having been also
foretold, the wise men, by the interposition of Herod's authority,
quickly learned, from the unanimous voice of the Sanhedrim, or great
council of the Jews,[19] that Bethlehem was the place which was to be
honored with his birth; as having been pointed out by the prophet
Micheas,[20] several ages before. How sweet and adorable is the conduct
of divine providence! He teaches saints his will by the mouths of
impious ministers, and furnishes Gentiles with the means of admonishing
and confounding the blindness of the Jews. But graces are lost on carnal
and hardened souls. Herod had then reigned upwards of thirty years; a
monster of cruelty, ambition, craft, and dissimulation; old age and
sickness had at that time exasperated his jealous mind in an unusual
manner. He dreaded nothing so much as the appearance of the Messiah,
whom the generality then expected under the notion of a temporal prince,
and whom he could consider in no other light than that of a rival and
pretender to his crown; so no wonder that he was startled at the news of
his birth. All Jerusalem, likewise, instead of rejoicing at such happy
tidings, were alarmed and disturbed together with him. We {098} abhor
their baseness; but do not we, at a distance from courts, betray several
symptoms of the baneful influence of human respects running counter to
our duty? Likewise in Herod we see how extravagantly blind and foolish
ambition is. The divine infant came not to deprive Herod of his earthly
kingdom, but to offer him one that is eternal; and to teach him a holy
contempt of all worldly pomp and grandeur. Again, how senseless and
extravagant a folly was it to form designs against those of God himself!
who confounds the wisdom of the world, baffles the vain projects of men,
and laughs their policy to scorn. Are there no Herods now-a-days;
persons who are enemies to the spiritual kingdom of Christ