only, were slain by wild beasts, by fire and sword in the deserts
of Arabia, though God had so loved them that he had made a way
for them through the Red Sea, had fed them with bread from heaven,
and water from the rock, and by the lifting up of a hand merely
had made their armies invincible; and then, when they had crossed
the Jordan and entered the unknown land, and the walls of the
city had fallen down flat at the sound only of a trumpet, the
taking of a cloak and a little gold from the accursed things caused
the deaths of many: and again the breach of their treaty with the
Gibeonites, though that treaty had been obtained by fraud, brought
destruction upon many; and I took warning from the sins of the
people which called down upon them the reprehensions of the prophets
and also of Jeremiah, with his fourfold Lamentations written in
alphabetical order. I saw moreover in my own time, as that prophet
also had complained, that the city had sat down lone and widowed,
which before was full of people; that the queen of nations and
the princess of provinces (i.e. the church), had been made
tributary; that the gold was obscured, and the most excellent
colour (which is the brightness of God's word) changed; that the
sons of Sion (i.e. of holy mother church), once famous and clothed
in the finest gold, grovelled in dung; and what added intolerably
to the weight of grief of that illustrious man, and to mine,
though but an abject, whilst he had thus mourned them in their
happy and prosperous condition, "Her Nazarites were fairer than
snow, more ruddy than old ivory, more beautiful than the saphire."
These and many other passages in the ancient Scriptures I regarded
as a kind of mirror of human life, and I turned also to the New,
wherein I read more clearly what perhaps to me before was dark,
for the darkness fled, and truth shed her steady light-I read
therein that the Lord had said, "I came not but to the lost sheep