though he had said, “To thine own injury hast thou done this, that thou hast thrust in so far those that could deliver thee from the danger.” However they imitated not the treatment they had received at his hands; though, had he died, all would have escaped. Thou seest that they chose rather to remain in bonds, than to suffer him to perish. Hence too might he 89 reason within himself, “Had they been sorcerers, doubtless they would have set the others at liberty, and have released themselves from their bonds:” (for it is likely that many such had also been imprisoned.) He was the more amazed, in that having often received sorcerers in charge, he had yet witnessed nothing done like this. A sorcerer never would have shaken the foundations, so as to startle the jailer from sleep, and thus render his own escape more difficult. Now, however, let us proceed to look at the jailor’s faith. “And,” saith the Scripture, “he called for lights and sprang in, and trembling for fear fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” He grasped fire and sword, and cried, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” “And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house.” (Acts xvi. 29–31.) “This is not the act of sorcerers,” he would say, “to deliver a doctrine like this. No mention any where here of an evil spirit.” Thou seest how worthy he was to be saved: for when he beheld the miracle, and was relieved from his terror, he did not forget what most concerned him, but even in the midst of so great peril, he was solicitous about that salvation which concerned his soul: and came before them in such a manner as it was meet to come before teachers: he fell down at their feet. “And they spake,” it continues, “the word of the Lord, unto him with all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, immediately.” (Acts xvi. 32, 33.) Observe the fervency of the man! He did not delay; he did not say, “Let day come, let us see, let us look about us;” but with great fervency, he was both himself baptized, and all his house. Yes, not like most men now-a-days, who suffer both servants and wives and children to go unbaptized.262 Be ye, I beseech you, like the jailor. I say not, in authority, but in purpose; for what is the benefit of authority, where purpose is weak? The savage one, the inhuman one, who lived in the practice of unnumbered wrongs and made this his constant study, has become all at once so humane, so tenderly attentive. “He washed,” it is said, “their stripes.” And mark, on the other hand, the fervency of Paul also. Bound, scourged, thus he preached the Gospel. Oh, that blessed chain, with how great travail did it travail that night, what children did it bring forth! Yea of them too may he say, “Whom I have begotten in my bonds.” (Philem. x.) Mark thou, how he glories, and will have the children thus begotten, to be on that account the more illustrious! Mark thou, how transcendant is the glory of those bonds, in that they give lustre not only to him that wore them, but also to them who 262 ἀμυήτους. 168 Ephesians 4:1,2