A Study by John King (c. 1560-1621)   The Book of Jonah - Introduction   [This study is taken from a series of lectures given in 1594 by John King, who later became the Bishop of London from 1611 to 1621.] 1  The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2  “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me” (Jonah 1:1-2, KJV). Comparisons betwixt scripture and scripture are both odious and dangerous. In other sorts of things, whatsoever is commendable may either be matched or preferred according to the worth of them. I will not make myself so skillful in the orders of heaven, as to advance angel above angel, but I am sure “one star differeth from another in glory” (I Cor. 15:41); and God has given the rule of the day to the sun, of the night to the moon, because they differ in beauty. The captains of the sons of Gad, without offense, might bear an unequal report: “One of the least could resist an hundred, and the greatest a thousand” (1 Chron. 12:14), because their prowess and acts were not equal. There was no wrong done in the anthem which the women sung from all the cities of Israel, “Saul hath slain his thousand, and David his ten thousand” (1 Sam. 18:7). The unlike deserts of these two princes might justly admit an unlike commendation. One Cato may be of more price than hundred thousands of vulgar men, and Plato may stand for all. Our Saviour, in the Gospel, in Luke 5:39, prefers old wine before new. But “the whole scripture is given by inspiration of God” (II Tim. 3:16), neither in his great house of written counsels is there any vessel more or less in honour than the rest are. Moses is no better than Samuel; Samuel than David; David a king than Amos a herdsman; John the Baptist more than a prophet, not more than a prophet in his authority; Peter or Andrew, the first that was chosen, not better than Paul, who was born out of due time. The four beasts in Revelation, chap 4, have eyes alike, “before and behind”; and the apostles’ names are evenly placed in the writings of the holy foundation (see Rev. 21:12). Solomon, the wisest king that ever was in Jerusalem, perceived right well that wheresoever the uncreated wisdom of God spoke, it spoke of “excellent things, even things seemly for princes” (Prov. 8); David, his princely father before him, had so high a conceit of these ordinances of the Most High, that where he defines anything, he esteems them, for value, above great spoils, and thousands of gold and silver, yea, all manner of riches; and for sweetness, above the honey, and the honeycomb (Ps. 19); and where he leaves to define, he breaks off with admiration: “Wonderful are thy testimonies”; I have seen an end of all perfection, but the commandment is exceeding broad, meaning thereby, not less than infinite. The Jews acknowledge the Old Testament, abhor the New; the Turks disclaim; Julian, atheists, and scorners deride; Grecians have stumbled at both Old and New; papists enlarge the Old with apocryphal writings; some of the ancient heretics renounce some prophets, others added to the number of evangelists; but, as the disciples of Christ had but “one Master,” or teacher in heaven, “and they were all brethren” (Matt. 23), so one was the author of these holy writs in heaven, and they are all sisters and companions; and with an impartial respect have the children of Christ’s family from time to time received, reverenced, and embraced the whole and entire volume of them. They know that one Lord was the original fountain of them all, who being supremely good, wrought and spake perfect goodness. One word and wisdom of God revealed these words to the sons of men, himself the subject and scope of them; one Holy Ghost composed them; one blood of the Lamb sealed and confirmed the contents of them; one measure of inspiration was given to the penmen and actuaries that set them down; one spouse and beloved of Christ, as gages of his eternal love, has received them all in keeping. And surely, she has kept them as the apple of her eye; and rather than any maim or rent should be made in their sacred body, she has sent her children into heaven maimed in their own bodies, and spoiled of their dearest blood they had, thinking it a crown of joy unto them to lay down their lives in the cause of truth. And therefore, as branches of the same vine that bore our predecessors, to whom by devolution these sacred statutes are come, we esteem them all for God’s most royal and celestial testament, the oracles of his heavenly sanctuary, the only key unto us of his revealed counsels, milk from his sacred breasts, the earnest and pledge of his favour to his church, the light of our feet, joy of our hearts, breath of our nostrils, pillar of our faith, anchor of our hope, ground of our love, evidences and deeds of our future blessedness; pronouncing of the whole book, with every schedule and scroll therein contained, as he did of a book that Sextius wrote, but upon far better grounds, “It is a book of life, a book of livelihood, a book indeed, savouring of more than the wit of man.” Notwithstanding, as the parcels of this book were published and delivered by divers notaries, the instruments of God’s own lips, in divers ages, divers places, upon divers occasions, and neither the argument nor the style, nor the end and purpose the same in them all; some recounting things in the past; some foreseeing things to come; some singing of mercy; some of judgment; some shallow for the lamb to wade in; some deep enough to bear and drown the elephant; some meat that must be broken and chewed with painful exposition; some drink that at the first sight may be supped and swallowed down; somewhat in some or other part that may please all humours, as the Jews imagine of their manna, that it relished not to all alike, but to every man seemed to taste accordingly as his heart lusted; so, though they were all written for our learning and comfort, yet some may accord at times, and lend application unto us for their matter and use, more than others. Of all the fowls of the air, I mean the prophets of the Lord, flying from heaven with the wings of divine inspiration, I have chosen the dove (for so the name of Jonah imports, and Jerome so renders it to Paulinus) to be the subject of my labour and travel undertaken amongst you; who, under the type of his shipwreck and escape, figuring the passion and resurrection of the Son of God, and coming from the sea of Tarshish, as that dove of Noah’s ark came from the waters of the flood, with an olive branch in his lips in a sign of peace, preaches to Nineveh, to the Gentiles, to the whole world, the unreserved goodness of God towards repentant sinners. For if you will know in brief what the argument of this prophet is, it is abridged in that sentence of the psalm: “The Lord is merciful and gracious, of longsuffering, and of great goodness” (Ps. 145). He is merciful, in the first part of the prophecy, to the mariners; gracious, in the second, to Jonah; longsuffering, in the third, to the Ninevites; and of great goodness, in the fourth, in pleading the rightfulness of his mercy, and yielding a reason of his fact to him which had no reason to demand it. So, from the four chapters of Jonah, as from the four winds, is sent a comfortable breath and gale of most abundant mercies. And as the four streams in paradise, flowing from one head, were the same water in four divisions, so the four chapters or sections of this treatise are but quadruple mercy, or mercy in four parts; and so much the rather to be hearkened unto, as an action of mercy is more grateful unto us than the contemplation, the use than the knowledge, the example than the promise; and it is sweeter to our taste, being experienced by proof, than when it is but taught and discoursed. You hear the principal matter of the prophecy; but if you would know besides what riches it offers  to you, it is a spiritual library, as Cassiodore noted of the psalms, of most kinds of doctrine fit for meditation; or as Isidore spoke of the Lord’s prayer and the creed, the whole breadth of Scripture may hither be reduced. Here you have Genesis, in the sudden and miraculous creation of a gourd, Moses and the Law in denunciation of judgment, Chronicles in the relation of a history, prophecy in prefiguring the resurrection of Christ, psalmody in the song that Jonah composed, and finally, gospel in the remission of sin mightily and effectually demonstrated.     This article is taken from:  King, John (Bishop of London). Lectures Upon Jonah. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1864 (originally published c. 1600). A PDF file of this book can be downloaded, free of charge, at: http://www.ClassicChristianLibrary.com.