I am come into my garden, my sister, [my] spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
Ver. 1. I am come into my garden.] So ready is the Lord Christ to fulfil the desires of them that fear him. Psa 145:19 Sometimes he not only grants their prayer, but fulfils their counsel, Psa 20:4 fits his mercy ad cardinero desiderii, as Augustine a hath it, lets it be to his, even as they will. Or if he cross them in the very thing they crave, they are sure of a better; their prayers they shall have out either in money or money's worth. Christ, though he be a God that hideth himself, yet he scorns to say unto the seed of Jacob, "Seek ye me in vain"; Isaiah 45:15 ; Isa 45:19 that is enough for the heathen idols. Isaiah 45:16 ; Isa 45:18 He is not like Baal, who, pursuing his enemies, couId not hear his friends; or as Diana, that being present at Alexander's birth, could not at the same time rescue her Ephesian temple from the fire. He is not like Jupiter, whom the Cretans painted without ears, as not being at leisure to attend small matters; b and whom Lucian the atheist feigneth to look down from heaven through certain crevices or chinks at certain times; at which time, if petitioners chance to pray unto him, they may have audience, otherwise not. No, no; "the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are always open to their prayers." Psa 34:15 Flectitur iratus voce rogante Deus. Basil compares prayer to a chain, the one end whereof is linked to God's ear, and the other to man's tongue. Sozomen saith of Apollonius, that he never asked anything of God in all his life that he obtained not. And another saith of Luther, Iste vir potuit apud Deum quod voluit. That man could do what he would with God; it was but ask and have with him.
I have gathered my myrrh with my spice,] i.e., I have highly accepted thy graces and good works: these are to be gathered only in Christ's garden. Hedge fruits and wild herbs, or rather weeds, are everywhere almost to be had. Moral virtues may be found in a Cato, who was homo virtuti similimus, a man as like virtue as may be, saith Velleius. c And he adds, but I am not bound to believe him, Qui nunquam recte fecit, ut facere videretur, sed quia aliter facere non poterat, that Cato never did well that he might seem to do so, but because he could not do otherwise than well. But why then, might a man have asked the historian, did your so highly extolled Cato take up the trade of griping usury? Why did he so shamefully prostitute his wife, so cowardly kill himself? Was it not because he lived in the wild world's waste, and grew not in the Church's garden, hence his fruits were not genuine? His moral virtues are but shining sins, beautiful abominations, a smoother way to hell. Civil honest men are but wolves chained up, tame devils, swine in a fair meadow, &c. Operam praestant, natura fera est, as the civil law saith of those mixed beasts, elephants and camels, they do the work of tame beasts, yet have the nature of wild ones. They are cried up for singularly honest as ever lived by such as are strangers to the power of godliness, and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel; like as in Samaria's famine, a cab of doves' dung was sold at a great rate, and an ass's head at four pound. But Christ, and such as have the mind of Christ, are otherwise minded: they look upon an unregenerate man, though sober, just, chaste, liberal, &c., as a "vile person," and upon all their specious works as "dead works"; whenas contrarily they "honour them that fear the Lord," Psa 15:4 and set a high price, as Christ here doth, upon their good parts and practices. Myrrh and spices, or aromatic fruits, are but dark shadows and representations of them.
I have eaten mine honeycomb with mine honey.] As it were crust and crumb together: not rejecting my people's services for the infirmities I find cleaving unto them, but accepting what is good therein, and bearing with the rest, I take all well aworth, and am as much delighted therewith as any man is in eating of honey, whereof he is so greedy that withal he devours the comb too sometimes. Christ feedeth, saith an expositor d here, upon all the fruits of his garden; he so much delighteth in it as he eateth not only the honey, as it were the most excellent duties or works of the Church, Hebrews 13:15,16 ; Heb 13:21 but also the "honeycomb," as it were the baser services and fruits of his Spirit, of least account: that he receiveth of all sorts most sweetly mingled together, both the common and daily fruits of godliness, understood in "milk," and the more rare of greater price, as solemn fasts and feasts, signified by "wine"; both which he drinketh together, that is, accepteth of them all.
Eat, O friends.] That is, O you holy angels (saith the former interpreter), which as my nobles, accompany me, the King of glory, in heaven, and have some communion with me in the gifts I bestow on you. Mr Diodate also thinks the same: but I rather incline to those that by Christ's friends here understand those earthly angels, the saints, Joh 15:14 Isaiah 41:8 Jam 2:23 whom he cheereth up and encourageth to fall to it lustily, and by a sancta crapula, as Luther calls a holy gluttony, to lay on, to feed hard, and to fetch hearty draughts, till they be even drunk with loves, as the Hebrew here hath it, being ravished in the love of God, where they are sure to find it, as in honey pots, the deeper, the sweeter. Such as so eat, are called Christ's friends, by a specialty, and such as so drink, his beloved, as Gregory here well observeth; and they only do thus that hear the Word with delight, turn it in succum et sanguinem, concoct it, incorporate it, as it were, into their souls, and are so deeply affected with it, that like drunken men, they forget and let go all things else, that they may retain and practise it. These are "not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but filled with the Holy Ghost." Eph 5:18
a Confess., lib. v. c. 1,
b Non vacat exiguis, &c.
c Lib. ii.
d Mr Dudley Fenner.