But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.
Ver. 18. Yes verily; their sound, &c.] Sonus tonus, οο φθογγος. David saith only, "their line," Psalms 19:2. That accurate and artificial frame of the heaven preacheth, as it were, the infinite wisdom and power of the Creator. All God's works are his Regii professores, regal preachers, his Catholic preachers, or real expositors (as one calleth them) of his Divinity. The world (saith Clem. Alex.) is Dei Scriptura, writing of God, God's great Bible with three great leaves-heaven, earth, and hell. David's words are here very fitly applied to the sound of the gospel; the circle whereof is like that of the sun, universal to the whole world; and the motion not unlike: for it arose in the east of Judea, went thence to the south of Greece, and then to the west of Italy and the Latins; from whence it is come to these northern parts of the world (the very utmost angle of the universe), where that it may continue, let us pray,
" Vespera nunc venit, nobiscum Christe maneto:
Extingui lucem nec patiare tuam. "
"All that I fear," saith Mr Baxter, "is, lest Mr Herbert be a true prophet, and the gospel be in its solar motion travelling for the American parts, and is quitting its present place of residence and unworthy professors and possessors: and then farewell England." Contempt drove Christ from Nazareth, his own country, which he came purposely to heal. ConferJeremiah 51:9; Ezekiel 24:13 .