“665. GOD’S RETRIBUTIONS—MATTHEW 2:8”

God’s Retributions—Mat_2:8

There are many points profitably observable in the circumstances which have just passed under our notice.

The pretence of a kind of religious zeal on the part of Herod, to honor One whom God had honored, while there was nothing but hatred and destruction in his heart, forcibly arrests attention. Misapprehending the character and functions of the Messiah, as he and most others did, it is not to be supposed that the “worship” he affected to be ready to offer was religious homage. It had, however, a professedly religious foundation, seeing that it was only because this Messiah had been appointed in the predeterminate counsels of God, and had been the subject of great and glorious prophecies, that the king proposed to pay Him this attention. It is thus that wicked men often cloak their most atrocious designs under the pretence of zeal for religion and for the honor of God. And, indeed, some of the most horrible deeds and designs which history has recorded, have had either the reality of a mistaken zeal for a false religion, or the pretence of zeal for a true religion. And it is observable, that, whether the zeal be true or assumed for the occasion, the concomitants of treachery—of luring the innocent to their ruin, and of surprising the unwary to their destruction—are as apparent as in the plot of Herod against the life of the new-born Messiah, and are as remorseless and sanguinary as the massacre in which that plot resulted. Who can help thinking of the St. Bartholomew massacre, of the Gunpowder Plot, of the persecutions of the Waldenses, and other dark doings of the like nature, which had the interests of religion for their motive or their pretence? And let us not think that the Herodian spirit in which such deeds originated, is to be counted among the darknesses of a past age, and finds no response in our own. It is far otherwise. That spirit still lives; and, although it reigns not, yet it is sleepless, and watches but for occasion to rush forth and rend God’s flock as of old; and even now so far is it, as some fondly believe, from hanging its head in shame and grief at these old dishonors, it lifts its head on high, and vaunts of them as things to glory in, and to uphold for imitation. In proof of this, we need but point to a pamphlet which has just, as we write this, made its appearance. Note: An Appeal for the Erection of Catholic Churches in the Rural Districts of England. By the Catholic; Bishop of Bantry, for Behalf of the Society “De Propaganda Fide.” London, 1852. In the postscript, the author appeals to the facts of history, “which show how greatly the true faith has been indebted for its prosperity and purity to the civil power. Thus has been witnessed, not only in the Papal States themselves, but in many other Catholic countries. How eminently (for instance) was the church preserved from corruption, as well as the best interests of France promoted, by that notable act of Charles IX, when he almost annihilated heresy in his dominions by the celebrated massacre of the Huguenots, on the feast of St. Bartholomew, and for which signal overthrow of the church’s enemies, a solemn mass, and general thanksgiving, were ordered by the Pope!

“Who can estimate all the benefits, spiritual and temporal, that resulted to the same country from the zeal of Louis XIV, when he extirpated the Protestants by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, passed by that impolitic monarch Henry IV?

“What special tokens, too, of the Divine favor has Spain enjoyed by the same means! This has been triumphantly brought forward by Francisco do Pisa. Our Lord God (says he) has been pleased to preserve these kingdoms in the purity of the faith, like a terrestial paradise, by means of the cherubim of the holy office [the inquisition]; which, with its sword of fire, has defended the entrance, through the merits and patronage of the serenest Virgin Mary, the mother of God.”

There is, however, One who views these things differently, and takes a different account of the Herods of the world and their deeds; and who seldom fails, even in this life, to make manifest, by signal retributions, his judgment of signal wickedness and wrong-doing. Men, under the influence of their interests, their passions, and their prejudices, may, and often do, call evil good, and good evil. But there is but one judgment with that God, who views all that men do or think, in the nakedness of their motives and their aims; and those who narrowly observe the final results of great acts of atrocity, or of an atrocious course of conduct or character—especially where religious zeal has been the pretence or motive—cannot fail to discern the marks of his indignation burnt deep into them. And the reason, with regard to the latter class of crimes, is plain—because his great name is dishonored by the pretence of zeal for his glory as a cover for heinous deeds; and it becomes Him, for his honor, to disavow all complicity with those who dare to smite with the fist of wickedness in his name. How God set that mark upon the career of Herod, and especially on this part of it, in his death, we shall soon have occasion to show; and it cannot fail to be noticed, that the hero of the Bartholomew massacre went howling to his grave under the tortures and dishonors of a like death—a death which will appear, in many signal instances, to have been much used by the Lord for the punishment of the sanguinary and blasphemous tyrants of the earth—of those who, by afflicting his people on account of their religion, by arrogating divine Honors to themselves, or by using his name as a cloak for deeds of blood, have marked themselves out for such marked retributions as might let the world know, that verily there is “a God that judgeth in the earth”—in the earth, for all judgment is not left for the world to come. Charles IX was consumed by a slow malignant fever, and the disease from day to day manifested new and unknown symptoms of pain and horror—till at length, in his last agonies, his blood was brought into such a state that it exuded freely from all the pores of his skin, rendering him an object most awful to look upon. It is said that a new star was seen soon after the massacre; and whatever be thought of the nature of the fact, it was certainly a matter of contemporary belief; for the speculations excited as to the purport of the omen—speculations various according to the humors of the times—still remain. Beza boldly asserted, that it portended the speedy death of “the bloody Herod” by whom that massacre had been ordered, and was freely censured for that opinion; but when it was soon after verified by the extraordinary manner in which the king was smitten down in the vigor and prime of life, men changed their minds, and said that Beza was a prophet.

It is well also to observe, from this procedure of Herod, that all wickedness is useless. No permanent good, no solid advantage, was ever secured but by good and righteous means. All the trouble, all the crime, that Herod chose to incur, and for which he brought upon himself most grievous retributions in mind, body, and estate, were utterly abortive with regard to the object he had in view. And it was abortive doubly. His object was not only frustrated by the eventual escape of the child at whose life his shaft was directed; but had he indeed, instead of pursuing that life, gone and rendered to the Divine child the homage he professed to be ready to offer, this would in no wise have endangered those temporal interests of his own which engaged all his solicitude. “The child Jesus was indeed born a king. But it was a king of all the world, not confined within the limits of a province, like the weaker beauties of a torch, to shine in one room, but, like the sun, his empire was over all the world; and if Herod would have become but his tributary, and paid Him the acknowledgments of his Lord, he would have had better conditions than under Caesar, and yet have been as absolute in his own Jewry as he was before. His kingdom was not of this world; and He that gives heavenly kingdoms to all his servants would not have stooped to pick up Herod’s petty coronet; but as it is a very vanity which ambition seeks, so it is a shadow that disturbs and discomposes all its motions and apprehensions.” Note: Jeremy Taylor. Great Exemplar, p. 105.

Christ came to die, and not to reign, or but to reign by dying. Herod’s wrath did, therefore, but subserve the real purposes of God, which could not have been advanced by the patronage or homage of a Herod, or of any other king.

Autor: JOHN KITTO