Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
Ver. 2. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings] For whom God hath filled two bottles of milk against they come into the world; and in whose birth sustenance, and wonderful protection (for Puerilitas est periculorum pelagus), but especially in their holy and religious education, much of God's providence, power, and goodness is clearly seen and set forth to the conviction of the vilest atheists. So that, besides the earth and the heavens, we have very infants preachers of God's praises, and more effectual orators than ever were Isocrates, Demosthenes, Pericles, &c.; so our Saviour understands it, Matthew 21:9, where the children sang hosanna when the Pharisees were silent. It is sometimes seen, that
Ipsa Deo blandos fundant cunabula flores.
John Baptist sprang in the womb for joy of Jesus. Jerome writeth of Paula, that noble matron, that she rejoiced in nothing more than this, That she heard her niece Paula sing Hallelujah in her cradle, In cunis balbutienti lingua Halleluiah cantare (Hier.). Bellarmine tells us, out of Theodoret, that the children of Samosatena, playing with at tennis in the midst of the market, did solemnly cast it into the fire, because it had but touched the foot of the ass whereon Lucius the heretical bishop rode. The children of Merindal so posed and answered one another, in matters of religion, before the persecuting bishop of Cavaillon, that a religious man that stood by said unto the bishop, I must needs confess that I have often been at the disputation of the doctors in Sorbon, but yet I never learned so much as I have done by hearing these young children (Acts and Mon. fol. 865). When Mr Blecter, the bishop's chaplain, told Mr Wiseheart, the Scotch martyr, that he had a devil in him, and the spirit of error; a child that stood by answered him, saying, A devil cannot speak such words as yonder man speaketh. At the burning of John Laurence at Colchester, as he was sitting in the fire (for stand he could not, he had been so hardly used in the prison), the young children came about the fire, and cried, Lord, strengthen thy servant, and keep thy promise. Here was strength out of the mouths of little ones, taught early to speak the language of Canaan. Sed vae, vae parentibus illis (saith Polanus on the text), But woe, woe to those parents who make their children (whom God would have to be witnesses of his majesty) witnesses of their impiety, pride, and vanity.
That thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger] i.e. Silence atheists and persecutors.