And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.
Ver. 2. And said unto his servants] So seeking a diversion of his inward terrors and torments. Perplexed he was and could find no way out, as St Luke's word Luk 9:7 importeth. (Διηπορει, de iis dicitur qui ita perplexi, et impediti quasi in luto tenentur, ut πορον μη ευρισκουσι, exitum non inveniant, Beza.) Conscience will hamper a guilty person, and fill him often with unquestionable conviction and horror. As those that were condemned to be crucified, bare their cross, that should soon after bear them: so God hath laid upon evildoers the cross of their own consciences, that thereon they may suffer afore they suffer; and their greatest enemies need not wish them a greater mischief. For assuredly, a body is not so torn with stripes, as a mind with the remembrance of wicked actions. And here Cain runs to building of cities, Saul to the delight of music, Belshazzar to quaffing and carousing, Herod to his minions and catamites; a so to put by, if possible, that melancholy dumps and heartqualms, as they count and call inward terrors. But conscience will not be pacified by these sorry anodynes of the devil. Wicked men may skip and leap up and down for a while, as the wounded deer doth; sed haeret lateri lethalis arundo, the deadly dart sticks fast in their sides, and will do without true repentance, till it hath brought them, as it did Herod, to desperation and destruction, so that he laid violent hands upon himself at Lyons in France, whither he and his courtezan were banished by Augustus. b
This is John the Baptist] Herod had thought to have hugged his Herodias without control when once the Baptist was beheaded; but it proved somewhat otherwise. Indeed so long as he played alone, he was sure to win all. But now conscience came in to play her part, Herod is in a worse case than ever; for he imagined still that he saw and heard that holy head shouting and crying out against him, staring him also in the face at every turn; as that tyrant thought he saw the head of Symmachus, whom he had basely slain, in the mouth of the fish that was set before him on the table. And as Judge Morgan, who gave the sentence of condenmation against the Lady Jane Grey, shortly after he had condemned her, fell mad, and in his raving cried out continually to have the Lady Jane taken away from him, and so ended his life.
a τοις παισιν αυτου, to his boys, which haply were his serious loves.
b Nam non multo post haec, secutum est tyranni exilium et exitium. Joseph. lib. 18, cap. 9.