Looking unto Jesus a view of the everlasting gospel, or, the souls eying of…

• She laid u•to him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master. As she was ravished with his voice, so impatient of delay she takes his talk out of his mouth, and to his first and only word, she answered but one other, Rabboni, which is to say, Master. A wonder that in this verse but two words should pass betwixt them two; but some give this reason, that a sudden joy rousing all her passions, she could neither proceed in her own, nor give him leave to go forward in his speech. Love would have spoken, but fear enfor•ed silence; hope framed words, but doubt melts them in the passage; her inward conceits served them to come out, but then her voice trembled, her tongue faltered, her breath ••iled; why such is the estate of them that are sick with a surfeit of sudden joy• her joy was so sudden, that not a word more could be spoken, but Rabboni, which is to say, Master. Sudden joys are not without some doubts or tremblings; when Jacob heard that his son Joseph was alive,¹ his heart fainted, he was even astonished at so good a news; when God restored the Jews out of captivity, they could think of it no otherwise then as a dream; when Peter was by an Angel delivered out of prison, he took it only for a vision or apparition, and not for truth; when Christ manifested his resurrection to his Disciples,² it is said, that for very joy, they believed not; their fears (as it were) kept back, and questioned the truth of their joys. As in the Sea when a storm is over, there remains still an inward working and volutation; even so in the mind of man, when its fears are blown over and there is a calm upon it, there is still a motus trepidationis, a motion of trembling, or a kind of solicitous jealousy o what it enjoys. And this might be Mary Magdalens case; though she suddenly answered Christ, upon the first notice of his voice, yet because the novelty was so strange, his Person so changed, his presence so unexpected, and so many miracles were laid at once before her amazed eyes, she found (as it were) a sedition in her thoughts; her hope presumed best but her fear suspected it to be too good to be true; and while these interchange objections and answers, she views him better; but for the present cannot speak a word more save this Rabbony, which is to say, Master.