And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
Ver. 28. Consider the lilies of the field] Contemplate them, saith Luther: understand them well, saith Erasmus: learn how they grow, saith Beza: hang upon these fair flowers, with the busy bee, till you have sucked some sweet meditation out of them. God is to be seen and admired in all his wondrous works. A skilful artificer takes it ill that he sets forth a curious piece, and no man looks at it. There is not a flower in the whole field (the word here rendered lilies signifieth all sorts of flowers) but sets forth God to us in lively colours. a Not to see him, is to incur the curse he hath denounced against such as regard not the work of the Lord, that is, the first making, neither consider the operation of his hands, Isaiah 5:12, that is, the wise disposing of his creatures, for our behoof and benefit. A godly ancient being asked by a profane philosopher, b how he could contemplate high things, since he had no books? wisely answered, that he had the whole world for his book, ready open at all times and in all places, and that therein he could read things divine and heavenly. A bee can suck honey out of a flower, that a fly cannot do. Our Saviour could have pointed us to our first parents clothed, and Elijah fed, the Israelites both fed and clothed extraordinarily by God in the wilderness. Never prince was so served in his greatest pomp, nor Solomon in all his royalty, as they. But because all men have not faith to believe that miracles shall be wrought for them, he sendeth us to these more ordinary and more easy instances of God's bountiful and providential care of birds and lilies, that in them (as in so many optic glasses) we may see God's infinite goodness and be confident.
They toil not, neither do they spin] Neque laborant, neque nent. This is the sluggard's posy. How much better that emperor (Severus) who took for his motto, Laboremus: Let us be doing. God made not man to play, as he hath done Leviathan, but commandeth him to sweat out his living. This was at first God's ordinance in Paradise, that his storehouse should be his workhouse, his pleasure his task, Genesis 2:15. After the fall, it was enjoined as a punishment, Genesis 3:19. So that new man is born to travail, and must labour with his own hands, neither eating the bread of idleness nor drinking the wine of violence, Job 5:7; Ephesians 4:28. That monk that laboureth not with his hands is a thief, saith an ancient: is a body louse, sucking the blood of others, saith a Neoterick: he shall die in his iniquity, saith God, because he hath not done good among his people, Ezekiel 18:18. He buried himself alive, as that Vacia in Seneca; "he shall be buried with the burial of an ass" when he is dead, Jeremiah 22:19. He shall hear, "O thou wicked and slothful servant," when he riseth again at the last day, Matthew 25:26. God puts no difference between nequam the wicked and nequaquam, by no means an idle and an evil servant. This made Mr Calvin answer his friends with some indignation, when they admonished him, for his health's sake, to forbear studying so hard, Quid? Vultis ut Dominus veniens me otiosum inveniret? "What! would you that Christ when he cometh should find me idle?"
a Contemplamini. Cognoscite lilia agri. Discite quomodo, &c. Generatim flores campi denotat.
b Anton. Erem. apud August. de doct. Christ. lib. 1, et Nicop. lib. 8, c. 40.