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LIBRARY .

THE UNIVERSITY OE CALIFORNIA

SANTA BARBARA

PRESENTED BY

Mr. Robert E. Easton

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SELECTIONS

FROM THE

WORKS OF JEREMY TAYLOR.

SELECTIONS

FROM THE

WORKS OF JEREMY TAYLOR.

WITH

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR AND HIS WRITINGS.

BOSTON:

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. 1863.

RIVERSIDE, Cambridge:

9TERE0TYPBD AND PRINTED BY H. 0. HOUGHTON.

CONTENTS.

— f—

PAGE

Life of Jeremy Taylor 7

The Day of Judgment 31

Prayer 55

Pardon of Sin 70

Godly Fear 72

Human Weakness 78

Faith 79

Lukewarmness and Zeal 81

The Epicure's Feast 87

Intemperance 98

Marriage 107

The Atheist 131

The Tongue 133

Idle Talk 135

Jesting 138

Common Swearing 140

Flattery 142

Consolation 143

The Spirit of Grace 146

The Decline of Christendom 150

The Glory of God 150

Death-bed Repentance 152

Deceitfulness of the Heart 154

Faith and Patience 162

The Humiliation of Christ 165

Triumphs of Christianity 168

Afflictions of the Church 172

The Righteous Oppressed 174

Real and Apparent Happiness 178

MartjTdom 180

The Progress of Souls 183

vi CONTENTS.

PAGE

The Inexperienced Christian 184

The Sorrows of the Godly 185

The Goodness of God 186

The Danger of Prosperity 189

Mercy and Judgment 190

Primitive Piety 1 94

Growth in Grace 196

Growth in Sin 199

Worldly Possessions 205

Excellence of the Soul 214

The Rewards of Virtue 216

Religion aud Government 218

Hj^pocrisj' 220

Christ's Disciples 222

The Miracles of the Divine Mercy 223

National Adversity 232

Evangelical Righteousness 234

Watchfulness 236

Pity 238

The Hope of Man 239

The Resurrection 240

Resurrection of Sinners 244

The Divine Bounty 245

Sympathy 250

Restraint of the Passions 250

The Soul's Memory 252

Female Piety 253

The Shortness of Life 257

The Miseries of Life 271

Reason and Discretion 277

Charity 280

Time 282

Immoderate Grief. 282

The Ephesian Matron 284

Education 288

Advantages of Sickness 290

Daily Prayer 293

Toleration 294

The Presence of God 296

Quiet Religion 302

The Imitation of Christ 304

SOME ACCOUNT

OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF

JEREMY TAYLOR*

Jeremy Taylor was the son of a barber, and was born at Cambridfre in the year 1613. He was brought up in the free-school there, and was ripe for the university before custom would allow of his admittance ; but by the time he was thirteen years old he was entered into Caius College. Had he lived among the ancient pagans, he had been ush- ered into the world with a miracle, and swans must have danced and sung at his birth ; and he must have been a great hero, and no less than the son of Apollo, the god of wisdom and eloquence.t

He was a man long before he was of age, and knew little more of the state of childhood than its innocency and pleasantness. From the university, by that time he was Master of Arts, he removed to

* This account consists chiefly of Dr. Rust's Sermon, preached at Taylor's funeral. For the minuter details the reader is refer- red to Heber's Life of Taylor.

t Anthony Wood, spcakinjj of his birth, says, " Jeremj' Tay- lor tumbled into the lap of the muses at Cambridge."

8 LIFE AND WRITINGS

London, and became public lecturer in the church of St. Paul's, where he preached to the admiration and astonishment of his auditory, and by his florid and youthful beauty, and sweet and pleasant air, and sublime and raised discourses, he made his hearers take him for some young angel, newly descended from the visions of glory. The fame of this new star, that outshone all the rest of the firmament, quickly came to the notice of the great Archbishop of Canterbury,* who would needs have him preach before him, which he performed not less to his won- der than satisfaction ; his discourse was beyond ex- ception and beyond imitation : yet the wise prelate thought him too young ; but the great youth hum- bly begged his Grace to pardon that fault, and prom- ised, if he lived, he would mend it. However, the grand patron of learning and ingeniiity thought it for the advantage of the world, that such mighty parts should be afforded better opportunities of study and improvement than a course of constant preach- ing would allow of ; and to that purpose he placed him in All-Souls College, in Oxford ; where love and admiration still waited upon him : which, so long as there is any spark of ingenuity in the breasts of men, must needs be the inseparable attendants of so extraordinary a worth and sweetness. He had not been long here, before my Lord of Canterbury bestowed upon him the rectory of Uppingham in Rutlandshire, and soon after preferred him to be chaplain to King Charles the Martyr, of blessed and immortal memory. Thus were preferments heaped

* Laud.

OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 9

upon him, but still less than his deserts ; and that not through the fault of his great masters, but be- cause the amplest honors and rewards were poor and inconsiderable compared with the greatness of his worth and merit.

This great man had no sooner launched into the world, but a fearful tempest arose, and a barbarous and uimatural war disturbed a long and uninter- rupted peace and tranquillity, and brought all things into disorder and confusion. But his religion taught him to be loyal, and engaged him on his prince's side, whose cause and quarrel he always owned and maintained with a great courage and constancy: till at last he and his little fortune were shipwrecked in that great hurricane that overturned both Church and State. This fatal storm cast him ashore in a private corner of the world, and a tender Providence shrouded him under her wings, and the prophet was fed in the wilderness ; and his great worthiness pro- cured him friends, that supplied him with bread and necessaries. In this solitude he began to write those excellent Discourses, which are enough of them- selves to furnish a library, and will be famous to all succeeding generations for their greatness of wit, and profoundness of judgment, and richness of fimcy, and clearness of expression, and copiousness of invention, and general usefulness to all the pur- poses of a Ciiristian. And by these he soon got a great reputation among all persons of judgment and indifferency, and his name will grow greater still as the world grows better and viaser.

When he had spent some years in this retirement,

10 LIFE AND WRITINGS

it pleased God to visit his family with sickness, and to take to himself the dear pledges of his favor, — three sons of great hopes and expectations, — within the space of two or three months : and though he had learned a quiet submission unto the divine will, yet the affliction touched him so sensibly, that it made him desirous to leave the country ; and going to London, he there met my Lord Conway, a person of great honor and generosity, who making him a kind proffer, the good man embraced it; and that brought him over into Ireland, and settled him at Portmore, a place made for study and contemplation, which he, therefore, dearly loved ; and here he wrote his " Cases of Conscience," a book that is able alone to give its author immortality.

By this time the wheel of Providence brought about the king's happy restoration, and there began a new world, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and out of a confused chaos brought forth beauty and order, and all the three nations were inspired with a new life, and became drunk with an excess of joy : among the rest this loyal subject went over to congratulate the prince and people's happiness, and bear a part in the uni- versal triumph.

It was not long ere his sacred Majesty began the settlement of the Church, and the great Doctor Jer- emy Taylor was resolved upon for the bishopric of Down and Connor ; and not long after, Dromore was added to it ; and it was but reasonable that the king and Church should consider their champion, and re- ward the pains and sufferings he underwent in the

OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 11

defence of their cause and honor. With what care and faithfukiess he discharged his office, we are all his witnesses ; what good rules and directions he gave his clergy, and how he taught us the practice of them by his own example. Upon his coming over bishop, he was made a privy-counsellor ; and the University of Dublin gave him their testimony by recommending him for their vice-chancellor : which honorable office he kept to his dying day.

During his being in this see, he wrote several ex- cellent discourses, particularly his " Dissuasive from Popery," which was received by a general approba- tion ; and a " Vindication " of it from some imper- tinent cavillers, that pretend to answer books when there is nothing towards it more than the very title- page. This great prelate improved his talent with a mighty industry, and managed his stewardship rarely well ; and his Master, when he called for his accounts, found him busy and at his work, and em- ployed upon an excellent subject, "A Discourse upon the Beatitudes " ; which, if finished, would have been of great use to the world, and solve most of the cases of conscience that occur to a Christian in all the varieties of states and conditions. But the all-wise God hath ordained it otherwise, and hath called home his good servant, to give him a portion in that blessedness that Jesus Christ hath promised to all his faithful disciples and followers.

Thus having given you a brief account of his life, I know you will now expect a character of his per- son ; but, I foresee, it will befall him as it does all glorious subjects that are but disparaged by a com-

12 LIFE AND WRITINGS

mendation. One thing I am secure of, that I shall not be thought to speak hyperboles ; for the subject can hardly be reached by any expressions ; for he was none of God's ordinary works, but his endow- ments were so many, and so great, as really made him a miracle.

Nature had befriended him much in his constitu- tion ; for he was a person of most sweet and oblig- ing humor, of great candor and ingenuity ; and there was so much of salt and fineness of wit, and pretti- ness of address, in his familiar discourses, as made his conversation have all the pleasantness of a com- edy, and all the usefulness of a sermon. His soul was made up of harmony ; and he never spake but he charmed his heai'er, not only with the clearness of his reason, but all his words, and his very tone and cadences, were strangely musical.

But that which did most of all captivate and en- ravish, was, the gayety and richness of fancy ; for he had much in him of that natural enthusiasm that inspires all gi'eat poets and orators ; and there was a generous ferment in his blood and spirits that set his fancy bravely a-work, and made it swell and teem and become pregnant to such degrees of luxuriancy as nothing but the greatness of his wit and judg- ment could have kept it within due bovmds and measures.

And, indeed, it was a rare mixture, and a single instance, hardly to be found in an age : for the great trier of wits has told us, that there is a peculiar and several complexion required for wit, and judgment, and fancy ; and yet you might have found all these

OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 13

in this great personage in their eminency and per- fection. But that which made his wit and judgment so considerable, was the largeness and freedom of his spirit ; for truth is plain and easy to a mind dis- entangled from superstition and prejudice. He was one of the Eclectics, a sort of brave philosophers that Laertius speaks of, that did not addict them- selves to any particular sect, but ingenuously sought for truth among all the wrangling schools ; and they found her miserably torn and rent to pieces, and parcelled into rags, by the several contending parties, and so disfigured and misshapen that it was hard to know her ; but they made a shift to gather up her scattered limbs, Avhich, as soon as they came to- gether, by a strange sympathy and connaturalness, presently united into a lovely and beautiful body. This was the spirit of this great man ; he weighed men's reasons and not their names, and was not scared with the ugly visors men usually put upon persons they hate and opinions they dislike, — not affrighted with the anathemas and execrations of an infallible chair, which he looked upon only as bug- bears to terrify weak and childish minds. He con- sidered that it is not likely any one party should wholly engross truth to themselves ; that obedience is the only way to true knowledge ; which is an ar- gument that he has managed rarely well in that excellent sermon of his, which he calls " Via Intel- ligentiaj " ; that God always, and only, teaches do- cible and ingenuous minds, that are willing to hear and ready to obey according to their light ; that it is impossible a pure, humble, resigned, God-like

14 LIFE AND WRITINGS

soul should be kept out of heaven, whatever mis- takes it might be subject to in this state of mortality ; that the design of heaven is not to fill men's heads and feed their curiosities, but to better their hearts and mend their lives. Such considerations as these made him impartial in his disquisitions, and give a due allowance to the reasons of his adversary, and contend for truth, and not for victory.

And now you will easily believe that an ordinary diligence would be able to make great improvements upon such a stock of parts and endowments ; but to these advantages of nature and excellency of his spirit he added an indefatigable industry, and God gave a plentiful benediction : for there were very few kinds of learning but he was a " Mystes," and a great master in them ; he was a rare humanist, and hugely versed in all the polite arts of learning; and had thoroughly concocted all the ancient moralists, Greek and Roman, poets and orators ; and was not unacquainted with the refined wits of later ages, whether French or Italian.

But he had not only the accomplishments of a gentleman, but so universal were his parts, that they were proportioned to everything; and though his spirit and humor were made up of smoothness and gentleness, yet he could bear with the harshness and roughness of the schools; and was not unseen in their subtilties and spinosities, and, upon occasion, could make them serve his purpose ; and yet, I be- lieve, he thought many of them very near akin to the famous Knight de la Mancha, and would make sport sometimes with the romantic sophistry and

OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 15

fantastic adventures of school-errantry. His skill was great, both in the civil and canon law, and casu- istical divinity ; and he was a rare conductor of souls, and knew how to counsel and to advise, — to solve difficulties, and determine cases, and quiet consciences. And he was no novice in Mr. I. S.'s new science of controversy ; but could manage an argument and repartees with a strange dexterity ; he understood what the several parties in Christen- dom have to say for themselves, and could plead their cause to better adv^antage than any advocate of their tribe : and when he had done, he could con- fute them too, and show that better arguments than ever they could produce for themselves would afford no sufficient ground for their fond opinions.

It would be too great a task to pursue his accom- plishments through the various kinds of literature. I shall content myself to add only his great acquaint- ance with the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers, and the doctors of the first and purest ages both of the Greek and Latin Church ; which he has made use of against the Romanists, to vindicate the Church of England from the challenge of innovation, and prove her to be truly ancient, catholic, and apostolical.

But religion and virtue is the crown of all other accomplishments ; and it was the glory of this great man to be thought a Christian, and whatever you added to it, he looked upon as a term of diminution ; and he was a zealous son of the Church of Eng- land ; but that was because he judged her (and with great reason) a Church the most purely Chris- tian of any in the world. In his younger years ho

16 LIFE AND WRITINGS

met with some assaults from popery ; and the high pretensions of their religious orders were very ac- commodate to his devotional temper : but he was always so much master of himself, that he would never be governed by anything but reason, and the evidence of truth, which engaged him in the study of those controversies ; and to how good purpose, the world is by this time a sufficient M'itness : but the longer and the more he considered, the worse he liked the Roman cause, and became at last to cen- sure them with some severity ; but I confess I have so great an opinion of his judgment, and the chari- tableness of his spu'it, that I am afraid he did not think worse of them than they deserve.

But religion is not a matter of theory and ortho- dox notions ; and it is not enough to believe aright, but we must practise accordingly ; and to master our passions, and to make a right use of that power that God has given us over our own actions, is a greater glory than all other accomplishments that can adorn the mind of man ; and, therefore, I shall close my character of this great personage with a touch upon some of those virtues for wliich his memory will be precious to all posterity. He was a person of great humility ; and notwithstanding his stupendous parts, and learning, and eminency of place, he had nothing in him of pride and humor, but was courteous and affable, and of easy access, and would lend a ready ear to the complaints, yea, to the impertinencies of the meanest persons. His humility was coupled with an extraordinary piety ; and, I believe, he spent the greatest part of his time

OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 17

in heaven ; his solemn hours of prayer took up a considerable portion of his life ; and we are not to doubt but he had learned of St. Paul to pray con- tinually ; and that occasional ejaculations, and fre- quent aspirations and emigrations of his soul after God, made up the best part of his devotions. But he was not only a good man Godward, but he was come to the top of St. Peter's gradation, and to all his other virtues added a large and diffusive charity : and whoever compares his plentiful incomes with the inconsiderable estate he left at his death, will be easily convinced that charity was steward for a great proportion of his revenue. But the hungry that he fed, and the naked that he clothed, and the dis- tressed that he supplied, and the fatherless that he provided for, — the poor children that he put to ap- prentice, and brought up at school, and maintained at the university, — will now sound a trumpet to that charity which he dispersed with his right hand, but would not suffer his left hand to have any knowl- edge of it.

To sum up all in a few words : this great prelate had the good-humor of a gentleman, the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the acuteness of a schoolman, the profoundness of a philosopher, the wisdom of a chancellor, the sagacity of a prophet, the reason of an angel, and the piety of a saint ; he had devotion enough for a cloister, learning enough for a university, and wit enough for a college of virtuosi ; and had his parts and endowments been parcelled out among his poor clergy that he left be- hind him, it would, perhaps, have made one of the 2

18 LIFE AND WRITINGS

best dioceses in the world. But, alas ! " Our father ! our father ! the horses of our Israel, and the chariot thereof! " he is gone, and has carried his mantle and his spirit along with liim up to heaven ; and the sons of the prophets have lost all their beauty and lustre, which they enjoyed only from the reflection of his excellencies, which were bright and radiant enough to cast a glory upon a whole order of men. But the sun of this our world, after many attempts to break through the crust of an earthly body, is at last swallowed up in the great vortex of eternity, and there all his maculce are scattered and dis- solved, and he is fixed in an orb of glory, and shines among his brethren stars, that, in their several ages, gave light to the world, and turned many souls unto righteousness ; and we that are left behind, though we can never reach his perfections, must study to imitate his virtues, that we may at last come to sit at his feet in the mansions of glory.

After a short illness of ten days, this man of ex- traordinary gifts and attainments finished his earthly course, on the 13th of August, 1667, at the age of fifty-five years.

The critical remarks that follow are from the pen of Bishop Heber.

The comeliness of Taylor's person has been often noticed, and he himself appears to have been not insensible of it. Few authors have so frequently introduced their own portraits, in different characters

OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 19

and attitudes, as ornaments to their printed works. So far as we may judge from these, he appears to have been above the middle size, strongly and hand- somely proportioned, with his hair long and grace- fully curling on his cheeks, large dark eyes, full of sweetness, an aquiline nose, and an open and intel- ligent countenance.

Of Taylor's domestic habits and private character much is not known, but all which is known is ami- able. " Love," as well as " admiration," is said to have " waited on him " in Oxford. In Wales, and amid the mutual irritation and violence of civil and religious hostility, we find him conciliating, when a prisoner, the favor of his keepers, at the same time that he preserved, imdiminished, the confidence and esteem of his OAvn party. Laud, in the height of his power and full-blown dignity ; Charles, in his deepest reverses ; Hatton, Vaughan, and Conway, amid the tumults of civil war ; and Evelyn, in the tranquillity of his elegant retirement ; seem alike to have cherished his friendship, and coveted his soci- ety. The same genius which extorted the com- mendation of Jeanes, for the variety of its research and the vigor of its argument, was also an object of interest and affection with the young and rich and beautiful Katharine Philips ; and few writers, who have expressed their opinions so strongly, and, sometimes, so unguardedly as he has done, have lived and died with so much praise and so little cen- sure. Much of this felicity may be probably re- ferred to an engaging appearance and a pleasing manner ; but its cause must be sought, in a still

20 LIFE AND WRITINGS

greater degree, in the evident kindliness of heart, which, if the uniform tenor of a man's writings is any index to his character, must have distinguished him from most men living ; in a temper, to all ap- pearance warm, but easily conciliated ; and in that which, as it is one of the least common, is of all dispositions the most attractive, not merely a neglect, but a total forgetfulness of all selfish feeling. It is this, indeed, which seems to have constituted the most striking feature of his character. Other men have been, to judge from their writings and their lives, to all appearance, as religious, as regular in their devotions, as diligent in the performance of all which the laws of God or man require from us ; but with Taylor his duty seems to have been a de- light, his piety a passion. His faith was the more vivid in proportion as his fancy was more intensely vigorous ; with him the objects of his hope and rev- erence were scarcely unseen or future ; his imagi- nation daily conducted him to " diet with gods," and elevated him to the same height above the world, and the same nearness to ineffable things, which Milton ascribes to his allegorical " cherub Contem- plation."

Of the broader and more general lines of Taylor's literary character a very few observations may be sufficient. The greatness of his attainments, and the powers of his mind, are evident in all his writ- ings, and to the least attentive of his readers. It is hard to point out a branch of learning, or of scien- tific pursuit, to which he does not occasionally al- lude ; or any author of eminence, either ancient or

OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 21

modern, with whom he does not evince himself ac- quainted. And it is certain, that, as very few other writers have equal riches to display, so he is apt to display his stores with a lavish exuberance which the severer taste of Hooker or of Barrow would have condemned as ostentatious, or rejected as cum- bersome. Yet he is far from a mere reporter of other men's arguments, — a textuary of fathers and schoolmen, — who resigns his reason into the hands of his predecessors, and who employs no other in- strument for convincing his readers than a length- ened string of authorities. His familiarity with the stores of ancient and modem literature is employed to illustrate more frequently than to establish his positions ; and may be traced, not so much in direct citation, (though of this, too, there is, perhaps, more than sufficient,) as in the abundance of his allusions, the character of his imagery, and the occurrence of terms of foreign derivation, or employed in a foreign and unusual meaning.

It is thus that he more than once refers to obscure stories in ancient writers, as if they were, of neces- sity, as familiar to all his readers as himself ; that he talks of " poor Attilius Aviola," or " the Lybian lion," that " brake loose into his wilderness and killed two Roman boys " ; as if the accidents of which he is speaking had occurred in London a few weeks before. It is thus that, in warning an Eng- lish (or a Welsh) auditory against the brief term of mortal luxury, he enumerates a long list of ancient dainties, and talks of " the condited bellies of the scarus," and " drinking of healths by the numeral

22 LIFE AND WRITINGS

letters of Philenium's name." It is thus that one of his strangest and harshest similes, where he com- pares an ill-sorted marriage to " going to bed with a dragon," is the suggestion of a mind familiar with those lamiee with female faces and extremities like a serpent, of wliose enticements strange stories are told, in the old demonologies. And thus that he speaks of the "justice," instead of the "juice" of fishes ; of an " excellent " pain ; of the gospel being preached, not " to the common people," but to " idiots " ; and of " serpents," (meaning " creeping things,") devouring our bodies in the grave. It is this which gives to many of his most striking passages the air of translations, and which, in fact, may well lead us to believe, that some of them are indeed the selected members of different and disjointed classics. On the other hand, few circumstances can be named, which so greatly contribute to the richness of his matter, the vivacity of his style, and the har- mony of his language, as those copious drafts on all which is wise, or beautiful, or extraordinary, in an- cient writers or in foreign tongues ; and the very singularity and hazard of his plirases has not unfre- quently a peculiar charm, which the observers of a tamer and more ordinary diction can never hope to inspire. One of these archaisms, and a very grace- ful one, is the introduction of the comparative de- gree, simply and witliout its contrasted quantity, of which he has made a very frequent use, but which he has never employed without producing aa effect of striking beauty. Thus, he tells us " of a more healthy sorrow " ; of " the air's looser garment," or

OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 23

" the wilder fringes of the fire " ; which, though in a style purely English they would be probably re- placed by positive or superlative epithets, could hardly suffer this change without a considerable detraction from the spirit and raciness of the sen- tence. The same observation may apply to the use of " prevaricate," in an active sense ; to " the tem- eration of ruder handling " ; and to many sin)ilai' expressions, which, if unusual, are at least expres- sive and sonorous, and which could hardly be re- placed by the corresponding vernacular phrases without a loss of brevity or beauty. Of such ex- pressions as these it is only necessary to observe that their use, to be effectual or allowable, should be more discreet, perhaps, and infrequent, than is the case in the works of Taylor.

I have already noticed the familiarity which he himself displays, — and which he apparently expected to find, in an almost equal degree, in his readers or hearers, — with the facts of history, the opinions of philosophy, the productions of distant climates, and the customs of distant nations. Nor, in the allusions or examples which he extracts from such sources, is he always attentive to the weight of authority, or the probability of the fact alleged. The age, in- deed, in which he lived was, in many respects, a credulous one. The discoveries Avhich had been made by the enterprise of travellers, and the un- skilful and as yet immature efforts of the new phi- losophy, had extended the knowledge of mankind just far enough to make them know that much yet remained uncertain, and that many things were true

24 LIFE AND WRITINGS

which their fathers had held for impossible. Such absence of skepticism is, of all states of the human mind, most favorable to the increase of knowledge ; but for the preservation of truths already acquired, and the needful separation of truth from falsehood, it is necessary to receive the testimony of men, how- ever positive, with more of doubt than Boyle, Wil- kins, or even Bacon, appear to have been accus- tomed to exercise.

But Taylor was anything rather than a critical inquirer into facts (however strange) of history or philosophy. If such alleged facts suited his pur- pose, he received them without examination, and retailed them without scruple ; and we therefore read in his works of such doubtful or incredible examples as that of a single city containing fifteen millions of inhabitants ; of the Neapolitan manna, which failed as soon as it was subjected to a tax ; and of the monument " nine furlongs high," which was erected by Ninus, the Assyrian. Nor in his illustrations, even where they refer to matters of daily observation or of undoubted truth, is he al- ways attentive to accuracy.

" When men sell a mule," he tells us, " they speak of the horse that begat him, not of the ass that bore him." It is singular that he should forget that, of mules, the ass is always the fatlier. What follows is still more extraordinary, inasmuch as it shows a forgetfulness of the circumstances of two of the most illustrious events in the Old Testament. " We sliould fight," says he, " as Gideon did, with three hundred hardy brave fellows that would stand

OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 25

against all violence, rather than to make a noise with rams' horns and broken pitchers, like the men at the siege of Jericho." Had he thought twice, he must have recollected that " making a noise " was at least one principal part of the service required from Gideon's troops, and that the " broken pitch- ers " were their property alone, and a circumstance of which the narrative of the siege of Jericho affords not the least mention. An occasional occuiTence of such errors is indeed unavoidable ; and, irrelevant as some of his iUusti-ations are, and uncertain as may be the truth of others, there is none, perhaps, of his readers who would wish those illustrations fewer, to which his woi'ks owe so much of theu' force, theu' impressiveness, and their entertainment. As a reasoner, I do not think him matchless. He is, indeed, always acute, and, in practical questions, almost always sensible. His knowledge was so vast, that on every pomt of discussion he set out with great advantage, as being familiar with all the neces- sary preliminaries of the question, and with every ground or argument which had been elicited on either side by former controversies. But his own understanding was rather inventive than critical. He never failed to find a plausible argument for any opinion which he himself entertained ; he was as ready with plausible objections to every argument which might be advanced by his adversaries ; and he was completely acquainted with the whole detail of controversial attack and defence, and of every weapon of eloquence, irony, or sarcasm, which was most proper to persuade or to silence. But his own

26 LIFE AND WRITINGS

views were sometimes indistinct, and often hasty. His opinions, therefore, though always honest and ardent, he had sometimes occasion, in the course of his life, to change ; and instances have been already pointed out, not only where his reasoning is incon- clusive, but Avhere positions ardently maintained in some of his Avritings are doubted or denied in others. But it should be remembered how much he wrote during a life in itself not long, and in its circum- stances by no means favorable to accurate research or calm reasoning. Nor can it be a subject of sur- prise that a poor and oppressed man should be sometimes hurried too far in opposition to his per- secutors, or that one who had so little leisure for the correction of his works should occasionally be found to contradict or repeat himself.

I have already had occasion to point out the ver- satility of his talents, which, though uniformly ex- erted on subjects appropriate to his profession, are distinguished, where such weapons are needed, by irony and caustic humor, as well as by those milder and sublimer beauties of style and sentiment which are his more famiHar and distinguishing character- istics. Yet to such weapons he has never recourse wantonly or rashly. Nor do I recollect any instance in which he has employed them in the cause of pri- vate or personal, or even polemical hostility, or any occasion where their fullest severity was not justi- fied and called for by crimes, by cruelty, by inter- ested superstition, or base and sordid hypocrisy. His satire was always kept in check by the depth and fervor of his religious feelings, his charity, and

OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 27

his humility. It is on devotional and moral subjects, however, that the peculiar character of his mind is most, and most successfully, developed. To this service he devotes his most glowing language ; to this his aptest illustrations ; his thoughts, and his words at once burst into a flame, when touched by the coals of this altar ; and whether he describes the duties, or dangers, or hopes of man, or the mercy, power, and justice of the Most High, — whether he exhorts or instructs his brethren, or oifers up his supplications in their behalf to the common Father of all, — his conceptions and his expressions belong to the loftiest and most sacred description of poetry, of which they only want, what they cannot be said to need, the name and the metrical arrangement.

It is this distinctive excellence, still more than the other qualifications of learning and logical acute- ness, which has placed him, even in that age of gigantic talent, on an eminence superior to any of his immediate contemporaries ; which has exempted him from the comparative neglect into which the dry and repulsive learning of Andrews and Sander- son has fallen ; which has left behind the acute- ness of Hales, and the imaginative and copious elo- quence of Bishop Hall, at a distance hardly less than the cold elegance of Clarke, and the dull good sense of Tillotson ; and has seated him, by the almost unanimous estimate of posterity, on the same lofty elevation with Hooker and with Barrow.

Of such a triumvirate, who shall settle the prece- dence ? Yet it may, perhaps, be not far from the truth, to observe, that Hooker claims the foremost

28 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF JEREMY TAYLOR.

rank in sustained and classic dignity of style, in political and pragmatical wisdom ; that to Barrow the praise must be assigned of the closest and the clearest views, and of a taste the most controlled and chastened ; but that in imagination, in interest, in that which more properly and exclusively deserves the name of genius, Taylor is to be placed before either. The first awes most, the second convinces most, the third persuades and delights most ; and (according to the decision of one * whose own rank among the ornaments of English literature yet re- mains to be determined by posterity) Hooker is the object of our reverence, Barrow of our admiration, and Jeremy Taylor of our love.

* Dr. Parr.

SELECTIONS

FROM

JEREMY TAYLOR.

SELECTIONS.

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

"YT'IRTUE and vice are so essentially distin- ^ guished, and the distinction is so necessary to be observed in order to the well-being of men in private and in societies, that, to divide them in themselves, and to separate them by sufficient notices, and to distinmiish them bv rewards, hath been designed by all laws, by the sayings of wise men, by the order of things, by their proportions to good or evil. And the expectations of men have been framed accordingly ; that \artue may have a proper seat in the will and in the affections, and may become amiable by its own excellency and its appendant blessing ; and that vice may be as natural an enemy to a man, as a wolf to the lamb, and as darkness to light, — destrvictive of its being, and a contradiction of its nature. But it is not enough that all the world hath armed itself against vice, and, by all that is wise and sober among men, hath taken the

32 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

part of virtue, adorning it with glorious appel- latives, encouraging it by rewards, entertaining it by sweetness, and commanding it by edicts, fortifying it with defensatives, and twining with it in all artificial compliances. All this is short of man's necessity ; for this will, in all modest men, secure their actions in theatres and high- ways, in markets and churches, before the eye of judges, and in the society of witnesses : but the actions of closets and chambers, the desio-ns and thoughts of men, their discourses in dark places, and the actions of retirements and of the night, are left indifferent to Aartue or to vice : and of these, as man can take no cocf- nizance, so he can make no coercitive ; and therefore above one half of human actions is by the laws of man left unregarded and un- provided for. And besides this, there are some men who are bigger than laws, and some are bigger than judges ; and some judges have lessened themselves by fear and cowardice, by bribery and flattery, by iniquity and compli- ance; and where they have not, yet they have notices but of few causes. And there are some sins so popular and universal, that to punish them is either impossible or intolerable ; and to question such, would betray the weak- ness of the public rods and axes, and represent the sinner to be stronger than the power that is appointed to be his bridle. And after all

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 83

this, we find sinners so prosperous that they escape, so potent that they fear not ; and sin is made safe when it grows great,

Facere omnia ssev^

Non impun6 licet, nisi dum facis

and innocence is oppressed, and the poor cries, and he hath no helper, and he is oppressed, and he wants a patron. And for these and many other concurrent causes, if you reckon all the causes that come before all the judica- tories of the world, though the litigious are too many, and the matters of instance are intricate and numerous, yet the personal and criminal are so few, that of two thousand sins that cry aloiid to God for vengeance, scarce two are noted by the public eye, and chastised by the hand of justice. It must follow from hence, that it is but reasonable, for the interest of virtue and the necessities of the world, that the private should be judged, and virtue should be tied upon the spirit, and the poor should be relieved, and tlie oppressed should appeal, and the noise of widows should be heard, and the saints should stand upright, and the cause that was ill-judged should be judged over again, and t^Tants should be called to account, and our thoughts should be examined, and our secret actions ^^iewed on all sides, and the infinite number of sins which escape here should not escape finally. And therefore God hath so 3

34 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

ordained it, that there shall be a day of doom, wherein all that are let alone by men shall be questioned by God, and every word and every action shall receive its just recompense of re- ward. " For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

" The things done in the body," so we com- monly read it ; the things proper or due to the body, so the expression is more apt and proper ; for not only what is done by the body, but even the acts of abstracted understanding and volition, the acts of reflection and choice, acts of self-love and admiration, and whatever else can be supposed the proper and peculiar act of the soul or of the spirit, is to be ac- counted for at the day of judgment : and even these may be called " the things done in the body," because these are the acts of the man in the state of conjunction with the body. The words have in them no other diflFiculty or variety, but contain a great truth of the big- gest interest, and one of the most material constitutive articles of the whole religion, and the greatest endearment of our duty in the whole world. Things are so ordered by the great Lord of all the creatures', that what- soever we do or suffer shall be called to.ac-

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 35

count, and this account shall be exact, and the sentence shall be just, and the rewai'd shall be great ; all the e^als of the world shall be amended, and the injustices shall be repaid, and the divine Providence shall be vindicated, and virtue and vice shall forever be remarked by their separate dwellings and reAvards.

We will consider the persons that are to be judged, with the circumstances of our advan- tages or our sorrows. " We must all appear," even you, and I, and all the world ; kings and priests, nobles and learned, the crafty and the easy, the wise and the foolish, the rich and the poor, the prevailing tyrant and the oppressed party, shall all appear to receive their symbol. And this is so far from abating anything of its terror and our dear concernment, that it much increases it : for, although concerning precepts and discourses we are apt to neglect in par- ticular what is recommended in general, and in incidencies of mortality and sad events, the singularity of the chance heightens the appre- hension of the evil : yet it is so by accident, and only in regard of our imperfection ; it be- ing an effect of self-love, or some little creep- ing envy which adheres too often to the un- fortunate and miserable ; or else because the sorrow is apt to increase, by being apprehended to be a rare case, and a singular unworthiness in him who is afflicted, otherwise than is com-

36 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

mon to the sons of men, companions of his sin, and brethren of his nature, and partners of his usual accidents. Yet in final and extreme events, the multitude of sufferers does not les- sen, but increase the sufferings ; and when the first day of judgment happened, that, I mean, of the universal deluge of waters upoii the old world, the calamity swelled like the flood, and every man saw his friend perish, and the neigh- bors of his dwelling, and the relatives of his house, and the sharers of his joys, and yester- day's bride, and the new-born heir, the priest of the family, and the honor of the kindred, all dying or dead, drenched in water and the divine vengeance ; and then they had no place to flee unto, no man cared for their souls ; they had none to go unto for counsel, no sanctuary high enough to keep them from the vengeance that rained down from heaven. And so it shall be at the day of judgment, when that world and this, and all that shall be born here- after, shall pass through the same Red Sea, and be all baptized with the same fire, and be involved in the same cloud, in which shall be thunderings and terrors infinite. Every man's fear shall be increased by his neigh- bor's shrieks ; and the amazement that all the world shall be in, shall unite as the sparks of a raging furnace into a globe of fire, and roll upon its own principle, and increase by direct

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 37

appearances, and intolerable reflections. He that stands in a churchyard in the time of a great plague, and hears the passing-bell perpet- ually tellino; the sad stories of death, and sees crowds of infected bodies pressing to their graves, and others sick and tremulous, and death dressed up in all the images of sorrow round about him, is not supported in his spirit by the variety of his sorrow. And at dooms- day, when the terrors are universal, besides that it is in itself so much greater, because it can aftright the whole world, it is also made greater by communication and a sorrowful in- fluence ; grief being then strongly infectious when there is no variety of state, but an entire kingdom of fear ; and amazement is the king of all our passions, and all the world its sub- jects. And that shriek must needs be terrible, when millions of men and women at the same instant shall fearfully cry out, and the noise shall mingle with the trumpet of the archangel, Avith the thunders of the dying and groaning heavens, and the crack of the dissolving world ; when the whole fabric of nature shall shake into dissolution and eternal ashes. But this general consideration may be heightened with four or five circumstances.

1. Consider what an infinite multitude of angels and men and women shall then appear. It is a huge assembly, when the men of one

38 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

kingdom, the men of one age in a single prov- ince, are gathered together into heaps and confusion of disorder. But then all kingdoms of all ages, all the armies that ever mustered, all the world that Augustus Caesar taxed, all those hundreds of millions that were slain in all the Roman wars from Numa's time till Italy was broken into principalities and small exar- chates ; all these, and all that can come into numbers, and that did descend from the loins of Adam, shall at once be represented. To which account if we add the armies of heaven, the nine orders of blessed spirits, and the in- finite numbers in every order, we may sup- pose the numbers fit to express the majesty of that God, and terror of that Judge, who is the Lord and Father of all that unimaginable mul- titude. Erit terror ingens tot simul tantorumque populoriim*

2. In this great multitude we shall meet all those who by their example and their holy precepts have, like tapers, enkindled with a beam of the sun of righteousness, enlightened us, and taught us to walk in the paths of jus- tice. There we shall see all those good men whom God sent to preach to us, and recall us from human follies and inhuman practices ; and when we espy the good man, that chid us for our last drunkenness or adulteries, it shall then

* Florus.

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 39

also be remembered, how we mocked at coun- sel, and were civilly modest at the repi^oof, but laughed when the man was gone, and accepted it for a religious compliment, and took our leaves, and went and did the same again. But then things shall put on another face, and that we smiled at here, and slighted fondly, shall then be the greatest terror in the world ; men shall feel that they once laughed at their own destruction, and rejected health, when it was offered by a man of God upon no other condi- tion but that they would be wise, and not be in loA^e with death. Then they shall perceive, that, if they had obeyed an easy and a sober counsel, they had been partners of the same felicity which they see so illustrious upon the heads of those preachers whose work is with the Lord, and who by their life and doctrine endeavored to snatch the soul of their friend or relative from an intolerable misery. But he that sees a crown put upon their heads that give good counsel, and preach holy and severe sermons with designs of charity and piety, will also then perceive that God did not send preachers for nothing, on trifling errands and without regard ; but that work, which he crowns in them, he purposed should be effec- tive to us, persuasive to the understanding, and active upon our consciences. Good preach- ers by their doctrine, and all good men by

40 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

their lives, are the accusers of the disobedient ; and they shall rise up from their seats, and judge and condemn the follies of those who thought their piety to be want of courage, and their discourses pedantical, r.nd their reproofs the priest's trade, but of no signification, be- cause they preferred moments before eternity. 3. There in that great assembly shall be seen all those converts, who, upon easier terms, and fewer miracles, and a less experience, and a younger grace, and a seldomer preaching, and more unlikely circumstances, have suffered the work of God to prosper upon their spirits, and have been obedient to the heavenly call- ing. There shall stand the men of NincA'-eh, and they shall stand upright in judgment, for they at the preaching of one man in a less space than forty days returned unto the Lord their God ; but we have heard him call all our lives, and like the deaf adder stopped our ears against the voice of God's servants, charm they never so wisely. There shall appear the men of Caperiiaum, and the Queen of the South, and the men of Berea, and the first fruits of the Christian Church, and the holy martyrs, and shall proclaim to all the world, that it was not impossible to do the work of grace in the midst of all our weaknesses, and accidental disadvantages ; and that the obedience of faith, and the labor of love, and the contentions of

TEE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 41

chastity, and the severities of temperance and self-denial, are not such insuperable mountains, but that an honest and sober person may per- form them in acceptable degrees, if he have but a ready ear, and a willing mind, and an honest heart. And this scene of honest per- sons shall make the divine judgment upon sinners more reasonably and apparently just, in passing upon them the horrible sentence ; for why cannot we as well serve God in peace, as others served him in war ? Why cannot we love him as well, when he treats us sweetly, and gives us health and plenty, honors our fair fortunes, reputation, or contentedness, quietness and peace, as others did upon gibbets and un- der axes, in the hands of tormentors and in hard wildernesses, in nakedness and poverty, in the midst of all evil things and all sad discomforts ? Concerning this no answer can be made.

4. But there is a worse sight than this yet, which, in that great assembly, shall distract our sight and amaze owe spmts. There men shall meet the partners of their sins, and them that drank the round, when they crowned their heads with folly and forgetfulness, and their cups with wine and noises. There shall ye see that poor, perishmg soul, whom thou didst tempt to adultery and wantonness, to dnmken- ness or peijury, to rebellion or an evil interest, by power or craft, by witty discourses or deep

42 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

dissembling, by scandal or a snare, by evil example or pernicious counsel, by malice or unwariness ; and when all tins is summed up, and from the variety of its particulars is drawn into an uneasy load and a formidable sum, pos- sibly we may find sights enough to scare all our confidences, and arguments enough to press our evil souls into the sorrows of a most in- tolerable death. For, however we make now but light accounts and evil proportions concern- ing it, yet it will be a feai-fiil circumstance of appearing, to see one, or two, or ten, or twenty accursed souls, despairing, miserable, infinitely miserable, roaring and blaspheming, and fear- fiiUy cursing thee as the cause of its eternal sorrows. Thy lust betrayed and rifled her weak, unguarded innocence ; thy example made thy servant confident to lie, or to be perjured ; thy society brought a third into intemperance and the disguises of a beast : and when thou seest that soul, with whom thou didst sin, dragged into hell, well mayest thou fear to drink the dregs of thy intolerable potion. And most certainly, it is the greatest of evils to destroy a soul, for whom the Lord Jesus died, and to undo that grace which our Lord pur- chased with so much sweat and blood, pains, and a mighty charity. And because very many sins are sins of society and confederation, — such are fornication, drunkenness, bribery, sim-

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 43

onj, rebellion, schism, and many others, — it is a hard and a weighty consideration, what shall become of any one of us, who have tempted our brother or sister to sin and death. For though God hath spared our life, and they are dead, and their debt-books are sealed up till the day of account ; yet the mischief of our sin is gone before us, and it is like a murder, but more execrable : the soul is dead in tres- passes and sins, and sealed up to an eternal sorrow ; and thou shalt see, at doomsday, what damnable uncharitableness thou hast done. That soul that cries to those rocks to cover her, if it had not been for thy perpetual temptations, might have followed the Lamb in a white robe ; and that poor man, that is clothed with shame and flames of fire, would have shined in gloiy, but that thou didst force him to be partner of the baseness. And who shall pay for this loss ? A soul is lost by thy means ; thou hast defeated the holy purposes of the Lord's bitter passion by thy impurities ; and what shall happen to thee, by whom thy brother dies eternally ?

Of all the considerations that concern this part of the horrors of doomsday, nothing can be more formidable than this, to svich whom it does concern : and truly it concerns so many, and amongst so many perhaps some persons are so tender, that it might affright their hopes, and discompose their industries and spiritual

44 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

labors of repentance ; but that oiu* most merci- ful Lord hath, in the midst of all the fearful circumstances of his second coming, interwo- ven this one comfort relating to this, which to my sense seems the most fearful and killing cir- cumstance : " Two shall be crrindins; at one mill ; the one shall be taken, and the other left : two shall be in a bed ; the one shall be taken, and the other left " ; that is, those who are con- federate in the same fortunes, and interests, and actions, may yet have a different sentence ; for an early and an active repentance will wash off this account, and put it upon the tables of the cross : and though it ouo;ht to make us diligent and careful, charitable and penitent, hugely penitent, even so long as we live ; yet when we shall appear together, there is a mercy that shall there separate us, who sometimes had blended each other in a common crime. Blessed be the mercies of God, who hath so carefully provided a fruitful shower of grace, to refresh the miseries and dangers of the greatest part of mankind. Thomas Aquinas was used to beg of God, that he might never be tempted from his low fortune to prelacies and dignities ecclesiastical ; and that his mind might never be discomposed or polluted with the love of any creature ; and that he might, by some instrument or other, understand the state of his deceased brother : and the story

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 45

says, that he was heard in all. In him it was a great curiosity, or the passion and imperti- nencies of a useless charity to search after him, unless he had some other personal concernment than his relation of kindred. But truly, it would concern very many to be solicitous con- cerning; the event of those souls, with whom we have mingled death and sin ; for many of those sentences, which have passed and decreed concerning our departed relatives, will concern us dearly, and we are bound in the same bundles, and shall be thrown into the same fires, unless we repent for our own sms, and double our sorrows for their damnation.

5. We may consider that this mfinite mul- titude of men and women, angels and devils, is not ineffective as a number in Pythagoras's tables, but must needs have mfluence upon every spirit that shall there appear : for the transactions of that court are not like orations spoken by a Grecian orator in the circles of his people, heard by them that crowd nearest him, or that sound limited by the circles of air, or the enclosure of a wall ; but everything is represented to every person. And then let it be considered, when thy shame and secret turpitude, thy midnight revels and secret hy- pocrisies, thy lustful thoughts and treacherous designs, thy falsehood to God and startings from thy holy promises, thy follies and mipicties,

46 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

shall bo laid open before all tlie world, and that then shall bo spoken by the trumpet of an archangel vipon the house-top, the highest bat- tlements of heaven, all those filthy words and lewd circumstances which thou didst act se- cretly, thou wilt find that thou wilt have rea- son strangely to be ashamed. All the wise men in the world shall know how vile thou hast been ; and then consider with what con- fusion of face wouldst thou stand in the pres- ence of a good man and a severe, if peradven- ture he should suddenly draw thy curtain, and find thee in the sins of shame and lust ; it must be infinitely more, when God and all the angels of heaven and earth, all his holy myriads, and all his redeemed saints, shall stare and wonder at thy impurities and follies.

I have read a story, that a young gentleman, being passionately by his mother dissuaded from entering into the severe courses of a religious and single life, broke from her importunity by saying, " Volo servare animam meam " ; I am resolved by all means to save my soul. But when he had undertaken a rule with passion, he performed it carelessly and remissly, and was but lukewarm in his religion, and quickly proceeded to a melancholy and wearied spirit, and from thence to a sickness and the neigh- borhood of death : but, falling into an agony and a fantastic vision, dreamed that he saw

TEE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 47

himself summoned before God's angry tlirone, and from thence hurried into a place of tor- ments, where espying his mother, full of scorn she upbraided him with his former answer, and asked him, " Why he did not save his soul bv all means, according as he undertook ? " But when the sick man awakened and recovered, he made his words good indeed, and prayed frequently, and fasted severely, and labored humbly, and conversed charitably, and morti- fied himself severely, and refused such secular solaces which other good men received to re- fresh and sustain their infirmities ; and gave no other account to them that asked him but this : " If I could not, in my ecstasy or dream, en- dure my mother's upbraiding my follies and weak religion, how shall I be able to suffer, that God should redargue me at doomsday, and the angels reproach my lukewarmness, and the devils aggravate my sins, and all the saints of God deride my foUies and hypocrisies ? "

The effect of that man's consideration may serve to actuate a meditation in every one of us : for we shall all be at that pass, that unless our shame and sorrows be cleansed by a timely repentance, and covered by the robe of Christ, we shall suffer the anger of God, the scorn of saints and angels, and our own shame in the general assembly of all manldnd. This argu- ment is most considerable to them who are

48 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

tender of their precious name, and sensible of honor ; if they rather would choose death than a disgrace, poverty rather than shame, let them remember that a sinful life will brino; them to an intolerable shame at that day, when all that is excellent in heaven and earth shall be sum- moned as witnesses and parties m a fearful scrutiny.

The sum is this : all that are bom of Adam shall appear before God and his Christ ; and all the innumerable companies of angels and devils shall be there : and the wicked shall be affrighted with everything they see ; and there they shall see those good men, that taught them the ways of life, and all those evU persons, whom themselves have tempted into the ways of death, and those who were converted upon easier terms ; and some of these shall shame the wicked, and some shall curse them, and some shall upbraid them, and all shall amaze them.

The majesty of the Judge, and the terrors of the judgment, shall be spoken aloud by the immediate forerunning accidents, which shall be so great violences to the old constitutions of nature, that it shall break her very bones, and disorder her till she be destroyed. Saint Jerome relates out of the Jews' books, that their Doctors use to account fifteen days of prodigy immediately before Christ's coming.

THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 49

and to every day assign a wonder, any one of wliich, if we sliould cliance to see in the days of our flesh, it would afli'ight us into the like thoughts which the old world had when they saw the comiti'ies round about them cov- ered with water and the divine vengeance ; or as those poor people near Adria, and the Medi- terranean Sea, when their houses and cities are entermg uito graves, and the bowels of the earth rent with convulsions and horrid tremblings. The sea, they say, shall rise fif- teen cubits above the highest mountains, and thence descend mto hollowness, and a pro- digious drought ; and when they are reduced again to their usual proportions, then aU the beasts and creeping things, the monsters and the usual inhabitants of the sea, shall be gath- ered together, and make fearful noises to dis- tract mankind. The bh'ds shall mourn and change their songs into threnes and sad ac- cents. Rivers of fire shall rise from east to west, and the stars shall be rent into threads of light, and scatter like the beards of comets. Then shall be fearful earthquakes, and the rocks shall rend in pieces, the trees shall dis- til blood, and the mountains and fairest struc- tvu-es shall return into their primitive dust. The wild beasts shall leave their dens, and come into the companies of men, so that you shall hardly tell how to call them, herds of

50 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

men, or congregations of beasts. Then shall the graves open and give up their dead ; and those which are alive in nature and dead in fear, shall be forced fi'om the rocks whither they went to hide them, and fi'om caverns of the earth, where they would fain have been concealed ; because their retirements are dis- mantled, and their rocks are broken into wider ruptures, and admit a strange light into their secret bowels ; and the men being forced abroad into the theatre of mighty horrors, shall nm up and down distracted and at their wits' end ; and then some shall die, and some shall be changed.

We may guess at the severity of the Judge by the lesser strokes of that judgment, which he is pleased to send upon sinners in this world, to make them afraid of the horrible pains of doomsday : I mean the torments of an unquiet conscience, the amazement and confusions of some sins and some persons. For I have sometimes seen persons surprised in a base action, and taken in the circum- stances of a crafty theft, and secret injustices, before their excuse was ready ; they have changed their color, their speech hath fal- tered, their tongue stammered, their eyes did wander and fix nowhere, till shame made them sink into their hollow eyepits, to retreat from the images and circumstances of discov-

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 51

ery ; their "wdts are lost, their reason useless, the whole order of the soul is discomposed, and they neither see, nor feel, nor tliink, as they used to do, but they are broken into disorder by a stroke of damnation and a lesser stripe of hell. But then if you come to observe a guilty and a base murderer, a condemned traitor, and see him harassed first by an evil conscience, and then pulled in pieces by the hangman's hooks, or broken upon sorrows and the wheel, we may then guess (as well as we can in this life) what the pains of that day shall be to accui'sed souls. But those we shall consider afterwards in their proper scene ; now only we are to estimate the severity of our Judge by the mtolerableness of an evil conscience. If guilt will make a man despair, and despair will make a man mad, confounded and dissolved in all the regions of his senses and more noble faculties, that he shall neither feel, nor hear, nor see anything but spectres and illusions, devils and frightful dreams, and hear noises, and shriek fearfully, and look pale and distracted, like a hopeless man from the horrors and confusions of a lost battle upon which all his hopes did stand, then the wicked must at the day of judgment expect strange things and fearful, and such now which no language can express, and then no patience can endure.

62 THE DAT OF JUDGMENT.

The Lord shall judge concernmg those judg- ments which men here make of things below ; and the fighting men shall perceive the noise of drmikards and fools, that cried him up for daring to kill his brother, to have been evil principles ; and then it will be declared by- strange effects, that wealth is not the greatest fortune ; and ambition was but an ill counsel- lor ; and to lie for a good cause was no piety ; and to do evil for the glory of God was but an ill worshipping him ; and that good-nature was not well employed, when it spent itself in vi- cious company and evil compliances ; and that piety was not softness and want of courage ; and that poverty ought not to have been con- temptible ; and the cause that is unsuccessful is not therefore evil ; and what is folly here shall be wisdom there. Then shall men curse their evil guides, and their accursed superinduced necessities, and the evil guises of the world ; and then when silence shall be found inno- cence, and eloquence in many instances con- demned as criminal ; when the poor shall reign, and generals and tyrants shall lie low in hor- rible regions ; when he that lost all shall find a treasure, and he that spoiled him shall be found naked and spoiled by the destroyer ; then we shall find it true that we ought here to have done what oxxx: Judge, our blessed Lord, shall do there ; that is, take our meas-

THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 58

Tires of good and evil by the severities of the word of God, by the sermons of Christ, and the four Gospels, and by the Epistles of St. Paul, by justice and charity, by the laws of God and the laws of wise princes and repub- lics, by the rules of nature and the just pro- portions of reason, by the examples of good men and the proverbs of wise men, by sever- ity and the rules of discipline ; for then it shall be, that truth shall I'ide in triumph, and the holiness of Christ's sermons shall be mani- fest to all the world ; that the word of God shall be advanced over all the discourse of men, and " wisdom shall be justified by aU her children."

The devil shall accuse " the brethren," that is, the saints and servants of God, and shall tell concerning their foUies and infirmities, the sins of their youth and the weakness of their age, the imperfect grace and the long schedule of omissions of duty, their scruples and their fears, their diffidences and pusillanimity, and all those things wdiich themselves by strict ex- amination find themselves guilty of and have confessed, aU their shame and the matter of their sorrows, their evil intentions and their little plots, their carnal confidences and too fond adherences to the things of this world, their indulgence and easiness of government, their wilder joys and fi'eer meals, their loss of

54 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

time and their too forward and apt compliances, their trifling arrests and httle peevishnesses, the mixtures of tlie world with the things of the spirit, and all the incidences of humanity he will bring forth, and aggravate them by the circumstance of ingratitude, and the breach of promise, and the evacuating of their holy pur- poses, and breaking their resolutions, and rifling their vows. And all these things being drawn into an entire representment, and the bills clog- ged by numbers, will make the best men in the world seem foul and unhandsome, and stained with the characters of death and evil dishonor. But for these there is appointed a defender ; the Holy Spirit, that maketh intercession for us, shall then also interpose, and against all these things shall oppose the passion of our blessed Lord, and upon all their defects shall cast " the robe of his righteousness " ; and the sins of their youth shall not prevail so much as the repentance of their age ; and their omissions be excused by probable intervening causes ; and their little escapes shall appear single and in disunion, because they were always kept asunder by penitential prayers and sighings, and their seldom returns of sin by their daily watchfulness, and their often infirmities by the sincerity of their souls, and their scruples by their zeal, and their passions by their love, and all by the mercies of God and the sacrifice

PR A YER. 55

wliich their Judge offered, and the Holy Spirit made effective by daily graces and assistances.

PRAYER.

T KNOW not which is the greater wonder, -*- either that prayer, which is a duty so easy and facile, so ready and adapted to the powers and skill and opportunities of every man, should have so great effects, and be productive of such mighty blessings ; or, that we should be so un- willing to use so easy an instrument of procur- ing so much good. The first declares God's goodness, but this publishes man's folly and weakness, who finds in himself so much diffi- culty to perform a condition so easy and full of advantage. But the order of this felicity is knotted like the foldings of a serpent ; all those parts of easmess which invite us to do the duty are become like the joints of a bulrush, not bendings, but consolidations and stiffenings ; the very facility becomes its objection, and in every of its stages we make or find a huge uneasiness. At first we do not know what to ask ; and when we do, then we find difficulty to bring our will to desire it ; and when that is instructed and kept in awe, it mingles interest, and confounds the purposes ; and when it is

56 PRA YER.

forced to ask honestly and severely, then it wills so coldly, that God hates the prayer ; and if it desires fervently, it sometimes tm-ns that into passion, and that passion breaks into mur- murs or unquietness ; or if that be avoided, the indifferency cools into death, or the fire bui'ns violently and is quickly spent ; our desires are duU as a rock, or fugitive as lightning : either we ask ill things earnestly, or good things re- missly ; we either court oiu' own danger, or are not zealous for our real safety ; or if we be right in our matter, or earnest in our affections, and lasting in our abode, yet we miss in the manner ; and either we ask for evil ends, or without religious and awful apprehensions ; or we rest in the words and signification of the prayer, and never take care to pass on to ac- tion ; or else we sacrifice in the company of Corah, being partners of a schism, or a rebel- lion in religion ; or we bring unhallowed cen- sers, our hearts send up to God an unholy smoke, a cloud fi-om the fires of lust, and either the flames of lust or rage, of wine or revenge, kindle the beast that is laid upon the altar ; or we bring swine's flesh, or a dog's neck ; where- as God never accepts, or delights in a prayer, unless it be for a holy thing, to a lawful end, presented unto him upon the wings of zeal and love, of religious sorrow, or religious joy, by sanctified lips, and piu'e hands, and a sincere

PRAYER. 57

heart. It must be the prayer of a graciotis man ; and he is only gracious before God, and acceptable, and effective in his prayer, whose life is holy, and whose prayer is holy ; for both these are necessary ingredients to the constitu- tion of a prevailing prayer ; there is a hohness peculiar to the man, and a holiness peculiar to the prayer, that must adorn the prayer before it can be united to the intercession of the holy Jesus, in which union alone our prayers can be prevailing.

Lust and uncleanness are a direct enemy to the prapng man, an obstruction to his prayers ; for this is not only a profanation, but a direct sacrilege ; it defiles a temple to the ground ; it takes fi'om a man all affection to spiritual things, and mingles his very soul with the thuigs of the world ; it makes his understand- ing low, and his reasonings cheap and foohsh, and it destroys his confidence, and all his man- ly hopes ; it makes his spirit light, effeminate, and fantastic, and dissolves his attention ; and makes his mind so to disaffect all the objects of his desires, that when he prays he is as uneasy as an impaled person, or a condemned criminal upon the hook or wheel : and it hath in it this evU quality, that a lustfid person cannot pray heartUy against his sin ; he cannot desire his cure, for his will is contradictory to his collect, and he would not that God should hear the

58 PBA YER.

words of liis prayer, wlr'ch he, poor man, never intended. For no crime so seizes upon the will as that ; some sins steal an aftection, or obey a temptation, or secure an interest, or work by the way of understanding, but lust seizes di- rectly upon the will, for the devil knows Avell that the lusts of the body, are soon cured ; the uneasiness that dwells there is a disease very tolerable, and every degree of patience can pass under it. But therefore the devil seizes upon the will, and that is it that makes advilteries and all the species of uncleanness ; and lust grows so hard a cure, because the formality of it is, that it will not be cured ; the will loves it, and, so long as it does, God cannot love the man ; for God is the prince of purities, and the Son of God is the kmg of virgms, and the Holy Spuit is all love, and that is all purity, and all spu-ituality : and therefore the prayer of an adulterer, or an unclean person, is like the sac- rifices to Moloch, or the rites of Flora, " ubi Cato spectator esse non potuit.''^ A good man will not endure them ; much less will God entertain such reekings of the Dead Sea and clouds of Sodom. For so an impure vapor, begotten of the slime of the earth by the fevers and adulterous heats of an intemperate summer- sun, striving by the ladder of a mountain to chmb up to heaven, and rolling into various figures by an uneasy, unfixed revolution, and

PEA TER. 59

stopped at the middle region of the air, being thrown fi'om his pride and attempt of jaassing towards the seat of the stars, tiu'ns into an un- wholesome flame, and, like the breath of hell, is confined into a prison of darkness, and a cloud, till it breaks into diseases, plagues, and niU- dews, stink and blastings : so is the prayer of an unchaste person ; it strives to chmb the bat- tlements of heaven, but because it is a flame of sulphur, salt, and bitumen, and was kindled m the dishonorable regions below, derived from hell, and contrary to God, it cannot pass forth to the element of love, but ends in barrenness and murmiu', fantastic expectations, and trifling unaginative confidences ; and they at last end in sorrows and despair. Every state of sin is against the possibility of a man's being ac- cepted ; but these have a proper venom against the graciovisness of the person, and the power of the prayer. God can never accept an lui- holy prayer, and a wicked man can never send forth any other ; the waters pass through im- pure aqueducts and channels of brimstone, and therefore may end in brimstone and fire, but never in forgiveness and the blessings of an etenial charity.

Henceforth, therefore, never any more w^on- der that men pray so seldom ; there are few that feel the relish, and are enticed with the deliciousness, and refi-eshed with the comforts,

60 PR A YER.

and instmcted with the sanctity, and acquainted with the secrets of a holy prayer : but cease also to wonder, that of those few that say many prayers, so few find any return of any at all. To make up a good and a lawful prayer, there must be charity, with all its daughters, alms, forgiveness, not judging i uncharitably ; there must be purity of spirit, that is, purity of inten- tion ; and there must be purity of the body and soul, that is, the cleanness of chastity ; and there must be no vice remaining, no affection to sin : for he that brings his body to God, and hath left his will in the power of any sin, offers to God the calves of his hps, but not a whole burnt-offering ; a lame oblation, but not a " rea- sonable sacrifice "; and therefore their portion shall be amongst them whose prayers were never recorded in the book of life, whose tears God never put into his bottle, whose desires shall remain ineffectual to eternal ages.

Plutarch reports, that the Tyrians tied their gods with chains, because certain persons did dream that Apollo said he would leave their city and go to the party of Alexander, who then besieged the town : and Apollodorus tells of some, that tied the image of Saturn with bands of wool upon his feet. So some Cliris- tians ; they think God is tied to their sect, and bound to be of their side, and the interest of their opinion ; and they think, he can never go

PR A TER. 61

to the enemy's party, so long as they charm hhn Avith certain forms of words or disguises of their own ; and then all the success they have, and all the evils that are prosperous, all the mischiefs they do, and all the ambitious designs that do succeed, they reckon upon the account of their prayers ; and^well they may : for their prayers are sins, and their desires are evil ; they wish mischief, and they act iniquity, and they enjoy their sin : and if this be a blessing or a cursing, themselves shall then judge, and all the world shall perceive, when the accounts of all the world are truly stated ; then, when prosperity shall be called to accounts, and ad- versity shall receive its comforts, when virtue shall have a crown, and the satisfaction of all sinful desires shall be recompensed with an in- tolerable sorrow, and the despau' of a perishing soul. Nero's mother prayed passionately, that her son might be emperor ; and many persons, of whom St. James speaks, "pray to spend vipon their lusts," and they are heard too : some were not, and very many are : and some, that fight against a just possessor of a country, pray, that their wars may be prosperous ; and some- times they have been heard too : and Julian the Apostate prayed, and sacrificed, and in- quired of demons, and burned man's flesh, and operated with secret rites, and all that he might craftily and powerfully oppose the relig-

62 PRAYER.

ion of Christ ; and he was heard too, and did mischief beyond the maUce and the effect of his predecessors, that did swim in Christian blood. But when we sum up the accounts at the foot of their hves, or so soon as the thing was understood, we find that the effect of Ag- grippina's prayer was, that her son murdered her ; and of those lustful petitioners, in St. James, that they were given over to the tyr- anny and possession of their passions and baser appetites ; and the effect of Julian the Apostate's prayer was, that he lived and died a professed enemy, of Christ ; and the effect of the prayers of usurpers is, that they do mis- chief, and reap curses, and undo mankind, and provoke God, and live hated, and die miser- able, and shall possess the fruit of their sin to eternal ages.

The first thing that hinders the prayer of a good man from obtaining its effects is a violent anger, and a violent storm in the spirit of him that prays. . For anger sets the house on fire, and all the spirits are busy upon trouble, and intend propulsion, defence, displeasure, or re- venge ; it is a short madness, and an eternal enemy to discourse, and sober counsels, and fair conversation ; it intends its own object with all the earnestness of perception, or activity of design, and a quicker motion of a too warm and distempered blood ; it is a fever in the

PRAYER. 63

heart, and a calenture in the head, and a fire in the face, and a sword in the hand, and a fury all over ; and therefore can never suffer a man to be in a disposition to pray. For prayer is an action, and a state of intercourse and desire, exactly contrary to this character of anger. Prayer is an action of likeness to the Holy Ghost, the spirit of gentleness and dove- like simplicity ; an imitation of the holy Jesus, whose spirit is meek, up to the greatness of the biggest example ; and a conformity to God, whose anger is always just, and marches slowly, and is without transportation, and often hindered, and never hasty, and is full of mercy : prayer is the peace of om* spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our tempest ; prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts ; it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness ; and he that prays to God with an angry, that is, with a troubled and discomposed spirit, is like him that retires into a battle to meditate, and sets up his closet in the out- quarters of an army, and chooses a frontier- garrison to be wise in. Anger is a perfect ahenation of the mind from prayer, and there- fore is contrary to that attention which pre- sents our prayers in a right line to God. For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of

64 PRA TER.

grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds ; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sia;hino;s of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, de- scending more at every breath of the tempest than it could recover by the libration and fre- quent weighing of his wings ; till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over ; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air about his ministries here below. So is the prayer of a good man ; when his affairs have required business, and his business was matter of discipline, and his discipline was to pass upon a sinning person, or had a design of charity, his duty met with the infirmities of a man, and anger was its instrument, and the instrument became stronger than the prime agent, and raised a tempest, and overruled the man ; and then his prayer was broken, and his thoughts were troubled, and his words went up towards a cloud, and his thoughts pulled them back again and made them without intention ; and the good man sighs for his infirmity, but must be content to lose the prayer, and he must recover it when his anger is removed, and his spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow of

PRATER. 65

Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God ; and then it ascends to heaven upon the wings of the holy dove, and dwells with God, till it returns, like the useful bee, laden with a bless- ing and the dew of heaven.

But, then, for spiritual things, for the inter- est of our souls, and the affairs of the king- dom, we praj to God \dt\\ just such a zeal as a man begs of a surgeon to cut him of the stone, or a condemned man desires his execu- tioner quickly to put him out of his pain, by takuig away his life ; when thmgs are come to that pass, it must be done, but God knows with what little complacency and desire the man makes his request. And yet the things of re- ligion and the spuit are the only tilings that ought to be desu-ed vehemently, and pursued passionately, becaixse God hath set such a value upon them, that they are the effects of his greatest loving-kindness ; they are the pur- chases of Christ's blood, and the effect of his continual intercession ; the fruits of his bloody sacrifice, and the gifts of his healing and saving mercy; the graces of God's spirit, and the only instruments of fehcity ; and if we can have fondness for things indifferent or dangerous, our prayers upbraid our spirits when we beg coldly and tamely for those things for Avhich we ought to die, which are more precious than the globes of kmgs, and weightier than imperial

66 PBA YER.

sceptres, richer than the spoils of the sea, or the treasures of the Indian hills.

He tliat is cold and tame in his prayers, hath not tasted of the deliciousness of religion and the goodness of God ; he is a stranger to the secrets of the kingdom, and therefore he does not know what it is either to have hunger or satiety ; and therefore neither are they hungry for God nor satisfied with the world, but re- main stupid and inapprehensive, without resolu- tion and determination, never choosing clearly, nor pursuing earnestly ; and therefore never enter into possession, but always stand at the gate of weariness, unnecessary caution, and perpetual irresolution. But so it is too often in our prayers ; we come to God because it is civil so to do and a general custom, but neither drawn thither by love, nor pinched by spirit- ual necessities, and pungent apprehensions : we say so many prayers, because we are re- solved so to do, and we pass tlirough them, sometimes with a little attention, sometimes with none at all ; and can we think that the grace of chastity can be obtained at such a pvurchase, that grace that hath cost more la- bors than all the persecutions of faith, and all the disputes of hope, and all the expense of charity besides, amounts to ? Can we expect that our sins should be washed by a lazy prayer ?

Though your person be as gracious as David

PR A YER. 67

or Job, and your desire as holy as the love of angels, and your necessities great as a new- penitent, yet it pierces not the clouds, unless it be also as loud as thunder, passionate as the cries of women, and clamorous as necessity. For every prayer we make is considered by God, and recorded in heaven ; but cold prayers are not put into the account in order to effect an acceptation, but are laid aside like the buds of roses which a cold wind hath nipped into death, and the discolored tawny face of an Indian slave : and when, in order to your hopes of obtaining a gi'eat blessing, you reckon up your prayers with which you have solicited your suit in the court of heaven, you must reckon, not by the number of the collects, but by your sighs and passions, by the vehemence of your desires and the fervor of your spirit, the apprehension of your need and the con- sequent prosecution of your supply. Christ prayed " with loud cryings," and St. Paul made mention of his scholars in his prayers " night and day." Fall upon yom* knees and grow there, and let not your desires cool nor your zeal remit, but renew it again and again ; and let not your offices and the custom of pray- ing put thee in mind of thy need, but let thy need draw thee to thy holy offices ; and remem- ber how great a God, how glorious a Majesty you speak to ; therefore let not your devotions

'68 PSA YER.

and addresses be little. Remember how great a need tliou hast ; let not your desires be less. Remember how great the thing is you pray for ; do not undervalue it with any indifFerency. Remember that prayer is an act of religion ; let it, therefore, be made thy business : and, lastly, remember that God hates a cold prayer, and, therefore, will never bless it, but it shall be always ineffectual.

No prayers can prevail upon an indisposed person. For the sun himself cannot enlighten a blind eye, nor the soul move a body whose silver cord is loosed, and whose joints are un- tied by the rudeness and dissolutions of a per- tinacious sickness. But then, suppose an eye quick and healthfiil, or apt to be refreshed with light and a friendly prospect ; yet a glow-worm or a diamond, the shells of pearl, or a dead man's candle, are not enough to make him dis- cern the beauties of the world, and to admire the glories of creation.

A man of an ordinary piety is like Gideon's fleece, wet in its own locks, but it could not water a poor man's garden. But so does a thirsty land drink all the dew of heaven that wets its face, and a greater shower makes no torrent, nor digs so much as a little ftirrow, that the drills of the water might pass into rivers, or refr^esh their neighbor's weariness ; but when the earth is frill, and hath no strange

PRAYER. 69

consumptive needs, then at the next time when God blesses it with a gracious shower, it divides into portions, and sends it abroad in free and equal communications, that all that stand rovmd about may feel the shower. So is a good man's prayer ; his own cup is full, it is crowned with health, and overflows with blessings, and all that ch-ink of liis cup and eat at his table are refreshed with his joys, and divide with him in his holy portions.

The world itself is established and kept from dissolution by the prayers of saints ; and the prayers of saints shall hasten the day of judg- ment; and we cannot easily find two effects greater. But there are many other very great ones ; for the prayers of holy men appease God's wrath, drive away temptations, and resist and overcome the devil : holy prayer procures the ministry and service of angels, it rescinds the decrees of God, it cures sicknesses and obtains pardon, it arrests the sun in its course, and stays the wheels of the chariot of the moon ; it rules over all God's creatures, and opens and shuts the storehouses of rain ; it unlocks the cabinet of the womb, and quenches the violence of fire ; it stops the mouths of lions, and reconciles our sufferance and weak faculties with the violence of torment and sharpness of persecution ; it pleases God and supplies all our needs.

70 PARDON OF SIN.

Prayer can obtain everything ; it can open the windows of heaven, and shut the gates of hell ; it can put a holy constraint upon God, and detain an angel till he leave a blessino- : it can open the treasures of rain, and soften the iron ribs of rocks, till they melt into tears and a flowing river ; prayer can unclasp the girdles of the north, saying to a mountain of ice. Be thou removed hence, and cast into the bottom of the sea ; it can arrest the sun in the midst of his course, and send the swift-winged winds upon our errand ; and all those strange things, and secret decrees, and unrevealed transactions, which are above the clouds and far beyond the regions of the stars, shall combine in ministry and advantages for the praying man.

PARDON OF SIN.

TF we consider upon how trifling and incon- -*- siderable grounds most men hope for pardon, (if at least that may be called hope, which is nothing but a careless boldness, and an imrea- sonable wilful confidence,) we shall see much cause to pity very many who are going merrily to a sad and intolerable death. Pardon of sins is a mercy which Christ purchased with his dearest blood, which he ministers to us upon

PARDON OF SIN. 71

conditions of an infinite kindness, but yet of great holiness and obedience, and an active living faith. It is a grace, that the most holy- persons beg of God with mighty passion, and labor for with a great diligence, and expect wath trembling fears, and concerning it many times suffer sadnesses with uncertain souls, and receive it by degrees, and it enters upon them by Httle portions, and it is broken as their sighs and sleeps. But so have I seen the returning sea enter upon the strand ; and the waters roll- ing towards the shore, throw up little portions of the tide, and retire as if nature meant to play, and not to change the abode of waters ; but still the flood crept by little stoppings, and invaded more by his progressions than he lost by his retreat ; and having told the number of its steps, it possesses its new portion tiU the angel calls it back, that it may leave its un- faithful dwelling of the sand. So is the pardon of our sm ; it comes by slow motions, and first quits a present death, and turns, it may be, into a sharp sickness ; and if that sickness prove not health to the soul, it washes off", and it may be will dash against the rock again, and pro- ceed to take off the several instances of anger and the periods of wrath ; but all this while it is uncertain concerning our final interest, whether it be ebb or flood ; and every hearty prayer and every bountiful alms still enlarges

72 GODLY FEAR.

the pardon, or adds a degree of probability and hope ; and then a drunken meeting, or a covet- ous desire, or an act of lust, or looser swear- ing, idle talk, or neglect of religion, makes the pardon retire ; and while it is disputed between Christ and Christ's enemj, who shall be Lord, the pardon fluctuates like the wave, striving to climb the rock, and is washed off like its own retinue, and it gets possession by time and un- certainty, by difficulty and the degrees of a hard progression.

GODLY FEAE.

T?EAR is the great bridle of intemperance, -*- the modesty of the spirit, and the restramt of gayeties and dissolutions ; it is the girdle to the soul, and the handmaid to repentance, the arrest of sin, and the cure or antidote to the spirit of reprobation ; it preserves our apprehen- sions of the divine majesty, and hinders our single actions from combining to sinful habits ; it is the mother of consideration, and the nurse of sober comisels ; and it puts the soul to fer- mentation and activity, making it to pass from trembling to caution, from caution to careful- ness, from carefulness to watchftilness, from thence to prudence ; and by the gates and prog- resses of repentance, it leads the soul on to

GODLY FEAR. 73

love, and to felicity, and to joys in God that shall never cease again. Fear is the guard of a man m the days of prosperity, and it stands upon the watch-towers, and spies the approach- ing danger, and gives warning to them that laugh loud, and feast in the chambers of re- joicing, where a man cannot consider by reason of the noises of wme and jest and music : and if prudence takes it by the hand, and leads it on to duty, it is a state of grace, and a mii- versal instrument to infant religion, and the only security of the less perfect persons ; and in all senses is that homao-e we owe to God, who sends often to demand it, even then when he speaks in thunder, or smites by a plague, or awakens us by threatenmgs, or discomposes our cashless by sad thoughts, and tender eyes, and fearful hearts, and trembling considerations.

But this so excellent orace is soon abused m the best and most tender spirits ; in those who are softened by nature and by religion, by in- fehcities or cares, by sudden accidents or a sad soul ; and the devil, observing that fear, like spare diet, starves the fevers of lust and quenches the flames of hell, endeavors to heiohten this abstinence so much as to starve the man, and break the spirit into timorousness and scruple, sadness and unreasonable tremblings, creduhty and trifling observation, suspicion and false accusations of God ; and then vice being turned

74 GODLY FEAR.

out at tlie gate, returns in at the postern, and does the work of hell and death by running too mconsiderately in the paths which seem to lead to heaven. But so have I seen a harm- less dove, made dark with an artificial night, and her eyes sealed and locked up with a little quill, soaring upward and flying with amaze- ment, fear, and an undiscerning wing ; she made towards heaven, but knew not that she was made a train and an instrument to teach her enemy to prevail upon her and all her de- fenceless kindred. So is a superstitious man, zealous and blind, forward and mistaken ; he runs towards heaven, as he thinks, but he chooses foolish paths, and out of fear takes any- thing that he is told ; or fancies and guesses concerning God by measures taken from his own diseases and imperfections. But fear, when it is inordinate, is never a good counsel- lor, nor makes a good friend ; and he that fears God as liis enemy, is the most completely mis- erable person in the world. For if he with reason beheves God to be his enemy, then the man needs no other argument to prove that he is undone than this, that the fountain of bless- ing (in this state in which the man is) will never issue anything upon him but cursings. But if he fears this without reason, he makes his fears true by the very suspicion of God, doing him dishonor, and then doing those fond

GODLY FEAR. 75

and trifling acts of jealousy which will make God to be what the man feared he ah-eady was. We do not know God, if we can think any hard thing concerning him. If God be merciiul, let us only fear to offend him ; but then let us never be fearfid that he will destroy us, when w^e are careful not to displease him. There are some persons so miserable and scrupulous, such perpetual tormentors of themselves with unne- cessary fears, that theu* meat and drink is a snare to theu' consciences ; if they eat, they fear they are gluttons ; if they fast, they fear they are hypocrites ; and if they would watch, they complain of sleep as of a deadly sin ; and every temptation, though resisted, makes them cry for pardon ; and every return of such an accident makes them think God is angry ; and every anger of God will break them in pieces. These persons do not believe noble things concerning God ; they do not think that he is as ready to pardon them as they are to pardon a sinning servant ; they do not believe how much God dehghts m mercy, nor how wise he is to consider and to make abatement for our unavoidable infirmities ; they make judgment of themselves by the measures of an angel, and take the accomit of God by the proj^or- tions of a tyi'ant. The best that can be said concerning such persons is, that they are huge- ly tempted, or hugely ignorant. For although

76 GODLY FEAR.

ignorance is by some persons named the mother of devotion, yet, if it falls in a hard ground, it is the mother of atheism ; if in a soft ground, it is the parent of superstition ; but if it pro- ceeds from evil or mean opinions of God, (as such scruples and unreasonable fears do many times,) it is an evil of a great impiety, and, in some sense, if it were in equal degrees, is as bad as atheism ; for so he that says there was no such man as Julius Caesar does him less dis- pleasure than he that says there was, but that he was a tyrant and a bloody parricide. And the Cimmerians were not esteemed impious for saying that there was no sun in the heavens ; but Anaxagoras was esteemed irreligious for saying the sun was a very stone : and though to deny there is a God is a high impiety and intolerable, yet he says worse who, believing there is a God, says he delights in human sacri- fices, in miseries and death, in tormenting his servants, and punishing their very infelicities and unavoidable mischances. To be God, and to be essentially and infinitely good, is the same thing ; and therefore to deny either is to be reckoned among the greatest crimes in the world.

Let the grounds of our actions be noble, beginning upon reason, proceeding with pru- dence, measured by the common lines of men, and confident upon the expectation of a usual

GODLY FEAR. 77

providence. Let us proceed from causes to effects, from natural means to ordinaiy events, and believe felicity not to be a chance but a choice ; and evil to be the daughter of sin and the divine anger, not of fortune and fancy. Let us fear God when we have made him angry, and not be afi'aid of him when we heartily and laboriously do our duty. Oiu' fears are to be measured by open revelation and certain expe- rience, by the threatenings of God and the say- ings of "svise men, and their hmit is reverence, and godhness is their end ; and then fear shaU be a duty, and a rare instrument of many. In all other cases it is superstition or folly, it is sin or punishment, the ivy of religion, and the misery of an honest and a weak heart ; and is to be cured only by reason and good company, a wise guide and a plain rule, a cheei-ftd spirit and a contented mind, by joy in God according to the commandments, that is, " a rejoicing evermore."

The illusions of a weak piety, or an unskilfal confident soul, fancy to see mountains of diffi- culty ; but touch them, and they seem hke clouds ricUng upon the wings of the wind, and put on shapes as we please to dream. He that denies to give alms for fear of being poor, or to entertain a disciple for fear of being suspected of the party, or to own a duty for fear of being put to venture for a crown ; he that takes part

78 HUMAN WEAKNESS.

of the intemperance because lie dares not dis- please the company, or in any sense fears the fears of the world and not the fear of God, — tliis man enters into his portion of fear betimes, but it will not be finished to eternal ages. To fear the censures of men, when God is your judge ; to fear their evil, when God is yoiu' defence ; to fear death, when he is the entrance to Hfe and felicity, is unreasonable and perni- cious. But if you will tiu-n your passion into duty and joy and security, fear to ofifend God, to enter voluntarily into temptation ; fear the alluring face of lust, and the smooth entertain- ments of intemperance ; fear the anger of God, when you have deserved it; and, when you have recovered from the snare, then infinitely fear to return into that condition, in which whosoever dwells is the heir of fear and eter- nal sorrow.

HUMAN WEAKNESS.

^PIERE is nothing that creeps upon the -*- earth, nothing that ever God made, weaker than man. For God fitted horses and mules with strength, bees and pismires with sagacity, harts and hares with swiftness, birds with feathers and a light airy body ; and they all know their times, and are fitted for their

FAITH. 79

work, and regularly acqiiire the proper end of their creation. But man, that was de- signed to an immortal duration, and the frui- tion of God forever, knows not how to ob- tam it ; he is made upright to look up to heaven, but he knows no more how to pm*- chase it than to chmb it. Once, man went to make an ambitious tower to outreach the clouds, or the preternatural risings of the water, but could not do it ; he cannot prom- ise himself the daily bread of his necessity upon the stock of his own wit or industry ; and for going to heaven, he was so far from doing that naturally, that as soon as ever he was made, he became the son of death, and he knew not how to get a pardon for eating of an apple against the divine commandment.

FAITH.

T7AITH is a certain image of eternity ; all -^ things are present to it ; things past and things to come are all so before the eyes of faith, that he in whose eye that candle is en- kindled beholds heaven as present, and sees how blessed a thing it is to die in God's favor, and to be chimed to our grave with the music of a good conscience. Faith converses ^vith

80 FAITH.

the angels, and antedates the hymns of glory ; every man that hath this grace is as certain that there are glories for him, if he perseveres in duty, as if he had heard and siing the thanks- givmg-song for the blessed sentence of dooms- day. And therefore it is no matter if these things are separate and distant objects ; none but childi'en and fools are taken with the pres- ent trifle, and neglect a distant blessing of which they have credible and believed notices. Did the merchant see the pearls and the wealth he designed to get in the trade of twenty years ? And is it possible that a child should, when he learns the first rudiments of grammar, know what excellent things there are in learn- ing, whither he designs his labor and liis hopes ? We labor for that which is uncertain and dis- tant and believed, and hoped for with many allays, and seen mth diminution, and a troubled ray ; and what excuse can there be that we do not labor for that which is told us by God, and preached by his only Son, and confirmed by miracles, and which Christ himself died to pur- chase, and millions of martyrs died to witness, and which we see good men and wise believe with an assent stronger than their evidence, and which they do believe because they do love, and love because they do believe ? There is nothing to be said, but that faith which did enlighten the bhnd, and cleanse the lepers, and

LUKEWABMNESS AND ZEAL. 81

•washed the soul of the Ethiopian ; that faith that cures the sick, and strengthens the para- lytic, and baptizes the catechumens, and justi- fies the faithful, and repairs the penitent, and confirms the just, and crowns the martyrs ; that faith, if it be true and proper. Christian and ahve, active and effective in us, is suffi- cient to appease the storm of our passions, and to instruct all our ignorances, and to " make us wise mi to salvation."

LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL.

A S our duty must be whole, so it must be •^■*- fervent ; for a languishing body may have all its parts, and yet be useless to many pur- poses of natiu'e : and you may reckon all the joints of a dead man, but the heart is cold, and the joints are stiff, and fit for nothmg but for the little people that creep in graves. And so are very many men ; if you sum up the ac- counts of then' religion, they can reckon days and months of religion, various offices, charity and prayers, reading and meditation, faith and knowledge, catecliism and sacraments, duty to God and duty to princes, paying debts and pro- vision for children, confessions and tears, disci- pline in famihes, and love of good people ; and 6

82 LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL.

it may be, you shall not rej^rove their mimbers, or find any lines mifilled in their tables of accounts. But when you have handled all tliis, and considered, you will find at last you have taken a dead man by the hand ; there is not a finger wanting, but they are stiff as icicles, and without flexure, as the legs of elephants.

I have seen a fair structure begun with art and care, and raised to half its statui'e, and then it stood still by the misfortune or negli- gence of the owner ; and the rain descended, and dwelt in its joints, and supplanted the con- texture of its pillars ; and having stood a while like the antiquated temple of a deceased ora- cle, it fell into a hasty age, and sunk upon its own knees, and so descended into ruin. So is the imperfect, unfinished spirit of a man ; it lays the foundation of a holy resolution, and strengthens it with vows and arts of prosecu- tion ; it raises up the walls, sacraments, and prayers, reading, and holy ordinances ; and holy actions begin with a slow motion, and the buildhig stays, and the spirit is weary, and the soul is naked, and exposed to temptations, and in the days of storm takes in everythmg that can do it mischief ; and it is faint and sick, list- less and tu'ed, and it stands till its own weight wearies the foundation, and then dechnes to death and sad disorder.

LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. 83

However it be very easy to have our thoughts wander, yet it is oiu' indifFerency and lukewarm- ness that makes it so natui'al : and you may ob- serve it, that so long as the hght shines bright, and the fires of devotion and desires flame out, so lone the mind of a man stands close to the altar, and waits upon the sacrifice ; but as the fires die and desires decay, so the mind steals away, and walks abroad to see the Httle images of beauty and pleastu'e, which it beholds in the falling stars and httle glow-worms of the world. The river that runs slow and creeps by the banks, and begs leave of every turf to let it pass, is drawn into httle hollo\^^lesses, and spends itself in smaller portions, and dies with diversion ; but when it runs with vigorousness and a full stream, and breaks down every ob- stacle, making it even as its own brow, it stays not to be tempted by httle avocations, and to creep into holes, but rims into the sea through full and useful channels. So is a man's prayer ; if it moves upon the feet of an abated appetite, it wanders into the society of every trifling accident, and stays at the comers of the fancy, and talks with every object it meets, and can- not arrive at heaven ; but when it is carried upon the wings of passion and strong desires, a swift motion and a hungry appetite, it passes on through all the intermedial regions of clouds, and stays not till it dwells at the foot of the

84 LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL.

tlirone, where mei'cy sits, and thence sends holy showers of refreshment. I deny not but some httle drops will turn aside, and fall from the full channel by the weakness of the banks, and hollowness of the passage ; but the main course is still continued : and although the most earnest and devout persons feel and complain of some looseness of spirit, and unfixed atten- tions, yet their love and their desire secm*e the main portions, and make the prayer to be strong, fervent, and eflFectual.

He that is warm to-day and cold to-morrow, zealous in his resolution and weary in his prac- tices, fierce in the beginning and slack and easy in his progress, hath not yet well chosen what side he will be of; he sees not reason enough for religion, and he hath not confidence enough for its contrary ; and therefore he is, as St. James calls him, "of a doubtftil mind." For religion is worth as much to-day as it was yesterday, and that cannot change though we do ; and if we do, we have left God ; and whither he can go that goes from God, his own sorrows will soon enousrh instruct him. This fire must never go out, but it must be like the fire of heaven, it must shine like the stars ; though sometimes covered with a cloud, or ob- scured by a greater light, yet they dwell for- ever in their orbs, and walk in their circles, and observe their circumstances, but go not out by

LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. 85

day nor niglit, and set not when kings die, nor are extinguished when nations change their government. So must the zeal of a Christian be a constant mcentive of his duty ; and though sometimes his hand is drawn back by violence or need, and his prayers shortened by the im- portunity of business, and some parts omitted by necessities and just compliances, yet still the fire is kept alive, it burns within when the light breaks not forth, and is eternal as the orb of fire, or the embers of the altar of incense.

In every action of religion God expects such a warmth, and a holy fire to go along, that it may be able to enkindle the wood upon the altar, and consume the sacrifice ; but God hates an indifferent spirit. Earnestness and vivacity, quickness and delight, perfect choice of the service and a dehght in the prosecution, is all that the spirit of a man can yield towards his rehcnon : the outward work is the effect of the body ; but if a man does it heartily and with all his mind, then religion hath wings and moves upon wheels of fire.

The zeal of the Apostles was this : they preached publicly and privately, they prayed for all men, they wept to God for the hardness of men's hearts, they " became all things to all men, that they might gain some," they travel- led through deeps and deserts, they endured the heat of the Syrian star and the violence of

86 LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL.

Euroclydon, winds and tempests, seas and pris- ons, mockings and sconrgings, fastings and poverty, labor and watching ; they endured every man and wronged no man ; they would do any good thing and suffer any evil, if they had but hopes to prevail upon a soul ; they persuaded men meekly, they entreated them humbly, they convinced them powerfully ; they watched for their good, but meddled not with their interest: and this is the Christian zeal, the zeal of meekness, the zeal of charity, the zeal of patience.

The Jews tell that Adam, having seen the beauties and tasted the delicacies of paradise, repented and mourned upon the Indian moun- tains for three hundred years together : and we, who have a great share in the cause of his sor- rows, can by nothing be invited to a persever- ing, a great, a passionate religion, more than by remembering what he lost, and what is laid up for them whose hearts are burning lamps, and are all on fire with divine love, whose flames are fanned with the wings of the holy dove, and whose spirits shine and burn with that fire which the holy Jesus came to en- kindle upon the earth.

THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 87

THE EPICUEE'S FEAST.

T ET us eat and drink ; for to-morrow we ^ die." This is the epicure's proverb, begun upon a weak mistake, started by chance from the discourses of drink, and thought witty by the undiscernmg company, and prevailed in- finitely, because it struck their fancy luckily, and mamtained the merry-meeting ; but, as it happens commonly to such discourses, so this also, when it comes to be examined by the con- sultations of the morning, and the sober hours of the day, it seems the most TN^tless and the most unreasonable in the world. "When Seneca describes the spare diet of Epicm-us and Me- trodorus, he uses this expression : " Liberaliora sunt ahmenta carceris ; sepositos ad capitale supplicium, non tam anguste, qui occisurus est, pascit," — The prison keeps a better table ; and lie that is to kill the criminal to-morrow morn- ing gives him a better supper over night. By this he intended to represent his meal to be very short ; for as dying persons have but little stomach to feast high, so they that mean to cut their throat will think it a vain expense to please it with delicacies, which after the first altera- tion must be poured upon the gi'ound, and looked upon as the worst part of the accursed tiling. And there is also the same proportion

88 THE EPICURE-' S FEAST.

of unreasonableness, that, because men shall die to-morrow, and by the sentence and unalter- able decree of God they are now descending to their graves, that therefore they should first destroy their reason, and then force dull time to run faster, that they may die sottish as beasts, and speedily as a fly. But they thought there was no life after this ; or if there were, it was without pleasure, and every soul thrust into a hole, and a dormitory of a span's length allowed for his rest, and for his walk ; and in the shades below no numbering of healths by the numeral letters of Philenium's name, no fat mullets, no oysters of Lucrinus, no Lesbian or Chian wines. Therefore now enjoy the deli- cacies of nature, and feel the descending wines distilled through the limbeck of thy tongue and larynx, and suck the dehcious juice of fishes, the marrow of the laborious ox, and the tender lard of Apulian swine, and the condited bellies of the scarus ; but lose no time, for the sun drives hard, and the shadow is long, and the days of mourning are at hand, but the number of the days of darkness and the grave cannot be told.

Thus they thought they discoursed wisely, and their wisdom was turned into folly ; for all their arts of providence, and witty securities of pleasure, were nothing but unmanly pro- logues to death, fear and folly, sensuality and

THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 89

beastly pleasures. But they are to be excused rather than we. They placed themselves in the order of beasts and birds, and esteemed their bodies nothing but receptacles of flesh and wine, larders and pantries ; and their soul the fine instrument of pleasure and brisk re- ception, of relishes and gusts, reflections and duplications of delight ; and therefore they treated themselves accordingly. But then why we should do the same things, who are led by other principles, and a more severe institution, and better notices of immortality, who under- stand what shall happen to a soul hereafter, and know that this time is but a passage to eternity, this body but a servant to the soul, this soul a minister to the spirit, and the whole man in order to God and to felicity; this, I say, is more unreasonable than to eat aconite to preserve our health, and to enter into the flood that we may die a dry death ; this is a perfect contradiction to the state of good things, whither we are designed, and to all the principles of a wise philosophy, whereby we are instructed that we may become wise unto salvation.

Plenty and the pleasures of the world ai'e no proper instruments of fehcity. It is neces- sary that a man have some violence done to himself before he can receive them : for na- ture's bounds are, " non esurire, non sitire, non

90 THE EPICURE'S FEAST.

algere^'' to be quit from hunger and thirst and cold, — that is, to have nothing upon us that puts us to pain ; against which she hath made provisions by the fleece of the sheep and the skins of the beasts, by the waters of the foun- tain and the herbs of the field ; and of these no good man is destitute, for that share that he can need to fill those appetites and necessities he cannot otherwise avoid. For it is unimao-in- able that nature should be a mother, natural and indulgent to the beasts of the forest, and the spawn of fishes, to every plant and fungus, to cats and owls, to moles and bats, making her storehouses always to stand open to them ; and that, for the Lord of all these, even to the noblest of her productions, she should have made no provisions, and only produced in us appetites sharp as the stomach of wolves, troub- lesome as the tiger's hunger, and then run away, leaving art and chance, violence and study, to feed us and to clothe us. This is so far firom truth, that we are certainly more pro- vided for by nature than all the world besides ; for everything can minister to us ; and we can pass into none of nature's cabinets, but we can find our table spread : so that what David said to God, " Whither shall I go from thy pres- ence ? If I go to heaven, thou art there ; if I descend to the deep, thou art there also ; if I take the wings of the morning, and flee into

THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 91

the uttermost parts of the wilderness, even there thou wilt find me out, and thy right hand shall uphold me," we may say it concern- ing our table and our wardrobe. If we go into the fields, we find them tilled by the mer- cies of heaven, and watered with showers from God, to feed us, and to clothe us. If we go down into the deep, there God hath multiplied our stores, and filled a magazine which no hunger can exhaust. The air drops down deh- cacies, and the wilderness can sustain us ; and all that is in nature, that which feeds lions, and that which the ox eats, that which the fishes live upon, and that which is the provision for the birds, all that can keep us alive. And if we consider that of the beasts and birds, for whom nature hath provided but one dish, it may be flesh or fish, or herbs or flies, and these also we secure with guards from them, and drive away birds and beasts from that provision which na- ture made for them, yet seldom can we find that any of these perish with hunger ; much rather shall we find that we are secured bv the securities proper for the more noble creatures by that Providence that disposes all things ; by that mercy that gives us all things which to other creatures are ministered singly ; by that labor that can procure what we need ; by that wisdom that can consider concerning future necessities ; by that power that can force it

92 THE EPICURE'S FEAST.

from inferior creatures ; and by that temper- ance which can fit our meat to our necessities. For if we go be3^ond what is needful, as we find sometimes more than was promised, and very often more than we need, so we disorder the certainty of our fehcity, by putting that to hazard which nature hath secured. For it is not certain, that, if we desire to have the wealth of Susa, or garments stained with the blood of the Tyrian fish, that, if we desire to feed like Philoxenus, or to have tables laden like the boards of Vitellius, that we shall never want. It is not natvire that desires these things, but lust and violence ; and by a disease we entered into the passion and the necessity, and in that state of trouble it is likely we may dwell forever, unless we reduce our appetites to nature's measures. And therefore it is that plenty and pleasures are not the proper instru- ments of felicity. Because felicity is not a jewel that can be locked in one man's cabinet. God intended that all men should be made happy ; and he that gave to all men the same natural desires, and to all men provision of satisfactions by the same meats and drinks, intended that it sliould not go beyond that measure of good things, which corresponds to those desires which all men naturally have.

He that cannot be satisfied with common provision, hath a bigger need than he that

THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 93

can ; it is harder, and more contingent, and more difficult, and more troublesome for him to be satisfied, "I feed sweetly," said Epicu- rus, " upon bread and water, those sweet and easy provisions of the body, and I defy the pleasures of costly provisions " ; and the man was so confident that he had the advantage over wealthy tables, that he thought himself happy as the immortal gods. For these pro- visions are easy, they are to be gotten without amazing cares ; no man needs to flatter if he can live as nature did intend : " Magna pars libertatis est bene moratus venter " ; he need not swell his accounts, and intricate his spirit with arts of subtilty and contrivance ; he can be free from fears, and the chances of the world cannot concern him. And this is true, not only -in those severe and anchoretical and philosophical persons, who hved meanly as a sheep, and without variety as the Baptist, but in the same proportion it is also true in every man that can be contented with that which is honestly sufficient. Maximus Tyrius considers concerning the felicity of Diogenes, a poor Sinopean, having not so much nobility as to be bom in the better parts of Greece : but he saw that he was compelled by no tyrant to speak or do ignobly ; he had no fields to tUl, and therefore took no care to buy cattle, and to hire servants ; he was not distracted when a

94 THE EPICURE'S FEAST.

rent-day came, and feared not when tlie wise Greeks played the fool and fought who should be lord of that field that lay between Thebes and Athens ; he laughed to see men scramble for dirty silver, and spend ten thousand Attic talents for the gettinor the revenues of two hmidred phihppics ; he went with his staff and bag into the camp of the Phocenses, and the soldiers reverenced his person and despised his poverty, and it was truce with him whosoever had wars ; and the chadem of kings and the piu'ple of the emperors, the mitre of high- priests and the divining-staff of soothsayers, were things of envy and ambition, the piu'- chase of danger, and the rewards of a mighty passion ; and men entered into them by trouble and extreme difficulty, and dwelt under them as a man under a falling roof, or as Damocles under the tyrant's sword, sleeping like a con- demned man ; and let there be what pleasure men can dream of in such broken slumbers, yet the fear of waking from this illusion, and parting from this fantastic pleasure, is a pain and torment which the imaginary felicity can- not pay for.

All our trouble is from within us ; and if a dish of lettuce and a clear fountain can cool all my heats, so that I shall have neither thirst nor pride, lust nor revenge, envy nor ambition, I am lodged in the bosom of fehcity ; and, in-

THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 95

deed, no men sleep so soundly as they that lay then* head upon nature's lap. For a smgle dish, and a clean chahce lifted from the springs, can ciu'e my hunger and thirst ; but the meat of Ahasuerus's feast cannot satisfy my ambition and my pride. He, therefore, that hath the fewest desires and the most quiet passions, whose wants are soon provided for, and whose possessions cannot be disturbed with violent fears, he that dwells next door to satisfaction, and can carry his needs and lay them down where he pleases, — this man is the happy man ; and this is not to be done m great de- signs and swelling fortunes. For as it is in plants which nature thrusts forth fi-om her navel, she makes regular provisions, and dresses them with strength and ornament, with easiness and frill stature ; but if you thrust a jessamine there where she would have had a daisy grow, or bring the tall fir from dwelling in his own country, and transport the orange- or the al- mond-tree near the fringes of the north star, nature is displeased, and becomes unnatural, and starves her sucklings, and renders you a return less than your charge and expectation. So it is in all our appetites ; when they are natural and proper, nature feeds them and makes them healthful and lusty, as the coarse issue of the Scythian clown ; she feeds them and makes them easy without cares and costly

96 THE EPICURE'S FEAST.

passions. But if you thrust an appetite into her wliich she intended not, she gives you sickly and uneasy banquets, you must struggle with her for every drop of milk she gives be- yond her own needs ; you may get gold from her entrails, and at a great charge provide or- naments for your queens and princely women : but your hves are spent in the purchase ; and when you have got them you must have more ; for these cannot content you, nor nourish the spirit. A man must labor infinitely to get more than he needs ; but to di'ive away tliirst and hunger, a man needs not sit in the fields of the oppressed poor, nor lead armies, nor break his sleep, nor suffer shame and danger, and envy and affront, and aU the retinue of infehcity.

If men did but know what felicity dwells in the cottage of the poor man, how sound his sleep, how quiet his breast, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his pro- vision, how healthful his morning, how §ober his night, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admu-e the noises and the diseases, the throng of passions and the violence of unnatural appetites, that fill the houses of the luxuiious and the heart of the ambitious. These which you call pleasiures are but the imagery and fantastic appearances, and such appearances even poor men may have.

THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 97

It is like felicity, that tlie king of Persia sliould come to Babylon in the winter, and to Susa in the summer ; and be attended with all the ser- vants of one hiuidi'ed and twenty-seven prov- inces, and ■\\^th all the prmces of Asia. It is like this, that Diogenes went to Corinth in the time of vintage, and to Athens when winter came ; and instead of courts, visited the temples and the schools, and was pleased in the society of scholars and learned men, and conversed with the students of all Asia and Europe. If a man loves privacy, the poor fortune can have that when princes cannot ; if he loves noises, he can go to markets and to courts, and may glut liimself with strange faces and strange voices and strange manners, and the wild design of all the world. And when that day comes in which we shall die, nothing of the eating and drinking remains, nothing of the pomp and luxmy, but the son'ow to part with it, and shame to have dwelt there where wisdom and virtue seldom come, unless it be to call men to sober counsels, to a plain and a severe and more natural way of living ; and when Lucian derides the dead princes and generals, and says that in hell they go up and down selhng salt meats and crpng mussels, or begging ; and he brings in Philip of Macedon, mending of shoes in a little stall ; he intended to represent, that in

the shades below, and in the state of the grave,

7

98 INTEMPERANCE.

the princes and voluptuous have a being differ- ent from their present plenty ; but that their condition is made contemptible and miserable by its disproportion to their lost and perishing voluptuousness. The result is this, that Tiresias told the ghost of Menippus, inquiring what state of life was nearest to fehcity, the private life, that which is free from tumult and vanity, noise and luxury, business and ambition, near- est to nature, and a just entertainment to om' necessities ; that life is nearest to felicity. Therefore despise the swellings and the dis- eases of a disordered life, and a proud vanity ; be troubled for no outward thing beyond its merit, enjoy the present temperately, and you cannot choose but be pleased to see that you have so Kttle share in the follies and miseries of the intemperate world.

INTEMPEEANCE.

TNTEMPERANCE m eating and drinking is ■*- an enemy to health ; which is, as one calls it, " ansa voluptatum et condimentum vitoe " ; it is that handle by which we can apprehend and perceive pleasures, and that sauce that only makes hfe delicate ; for what content can a frill table administer to a man in a fever ?

INTEMPERANCE. 99

Health is the opportunity of wisdom, the fair- est scene of religion, the advantages of the glorifications of God, the charitable ministries to men ; it is a state of joy and thanksgiving, and m every of its periods feels a pleasure from the blessed emanations of a merciful Provi- dence. The world does not minister, does not feel, a greater pleasure, than to be newly delivered from the racks or the gratings of the stone, and the torments and convulsions of a sharp colic ; and no organs, no harp, no lute, can sound out the praises of the Almighty Father so sprightfully, as the man that rises from his bed of sorrows, and considers what an excellent difference he feels from the groans and intolerable accents of yesterday.

When Cyms had espied Astyages and his fellows coming dnink from a banquet, laden with varietv of folhes and filthiness, their legs failing them, their eyes red and staring, coz- ened with a moist cloud, and abused by a doubled object, their tongues full of sponges, and their heads no wiser, he thought they were poisoned : and he had reason ; for what malignant quality can be more venomous and hurtful to a man than the effect of an Intem- perate goblet and a frill stomach? It poisons both the soul and body. All poisons do not kill presently, and this wIU in process of time, and hath formidable effects at present.

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But, therefore, metliinks tlie temptations which men meet withal from without, are in themselves most unreasonable and soon- est confuted by us. He that tempts me to drmk beyond my measure, civilly invites me to a fever, and to lay aside my reason as the Persian women did their garments and their modesty at the end of feasts ; and all the question then will be, which is the worst evil, to refuse your uncivil kindness, or to suffer a violent headache, or to lay up heaps big enough for an Enghsh surfeit. Creon in the tragedy said well, "It is better for me to grieve thee, O stranger, or to be af- ronted by thee, than to be tormented by thy kindness the next day and the morrow after."

It is reported concerning Socrates, that when Athens was destroyed by the plague, he in the midst of all the danger escaped untouched by sickness, because by a spare and severe diet he had within him no tu- mult of disorderly humors, no factions in his blood, no loads of moisture prepared for char- nel-houses or the sickly hospitals ; but a vig- orous heat, and a well-proportioned radical moisture ; he had enough for health and study, philosophy and religion, for the temples and the academy, but no superfluities to be spent in groans and sickly nights. Strange it is that for the stomach, which is scarce a span long,

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there should be provided so many furnaces and ovens, huge fires and an army of cooks, cellars swimmmg with wine, and granaries sweating with com ; and that mto one belly should enter the vintage of many nations, the spoils of distant provinces, and the shell-fishes of sev- eral seas. When the heathens feasted their gods, they gave nothing but a fat ox, a ram, or a kid ; they poured a little wine upon the altar, and burned a handful of mim : but when they feasted themselves, they had many vessels filled with Campanian wine, turtles of Liguria, Sicilian beeves, and wheat ft'om Eg}^t, wild boars from Illyi-ium, and Grecian sheep ; vari- ety, and load, and cost, and curiosity : and so do we. It is so Httle we spend in religion, and so very much upon ourselves, so httle to the poor, and so without measure to make our- selves sick, that we seem to be in love with our own mischief, and so passionate for neces- sity and want, that we strive all the ways we can to make ourselves need more than nature intended. I end this consideration with the saying of the cynic : " It is to be wondered at, that men eat so much for pleasirre sake ; and yet for the same pleasure should not give over eating, and betake themselves to the delights of temperance, since to be healthful and holy is so great a pleasm^e." However, certain it is that no man ever repented that he arose from

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the table sober, healthful, and with his wits about lum ; but very many have repented that they sat so long, till their belhes swelled, and their health, and their virtue, and their God is departed from them.

Intemperance is the nurse of vice. It makes rage and choler, pride and fantastic principles ; it makes the body a sea of hu- mors, and those humors the seat of violence. By faring deliciously every day, men become senseless of the evils of mankind, inapprehen- sive of the troubles of their brethren, uncon- cerned in the changes of the world, and the cries of the poor, the hunger of the father- less, and the thirst of widows. Tyi-ants, said Diogenes, never come from the cottages of them that eat pulse and coarse fare, but from the delicious beds and banquets of the effemi- nate and rich feeders. For, to maintain plenty and luxury, sometimes wars are necessary, and oppressions and violence : but no landlord did ever grind the face of his tenants, no prince ever sucked blood from his subjects, for the maintenance of a sober and a moderate propor- tion of good things.

Intemperance is a perfect destruction of wis- dom. A full-gorged belly never produced a sprightly mind : and therefore these kind of men are called " slow bellies " ; so St. F'aul con- cerning the intemperate Cretans, out of their

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own poet. They are like the tigers of Brazil, which when they are empty are bold and swift and ftdl of sagacity, but being full, sneak away from the barking of a village dog. So are these men, wise in the morning, quick and fit for business ; but when the sun gives the sign to spread the tables, and intemperance brings in the messes, and dnmkenness fills the bowls, then the man falls away and leaves a beast in liis room. A full meal is hke Sisera's banquet, at the end of Avhich there is a nail struck mto a man's head ; it knocks a man down, and nails his soul to the sensual mixtures of the body. For what wisdom can be expected from them whose soul dwells in clouds of meat, and floats up and down in wme, like the spilled cups which fell from their hands when they could lift them to their heads no longer ? It is a per- fect shipwreck of a man ; the pilot is drunk, and the helm dashed in pieces, and the ship first reels, and by swallowing too much is itself swallowed up at last. And therefore the mad- ness of the young fellows of Agrigentum, who, being drunk, fancied themselves in a storm, and the house the ship, was more than the wild fancy of their cups ; it was really so, they were all cast away, they were broken in pieces by the foul disorder of the storm. The senses lan- guish, the spark of divinity that dwells within is quenched ; and the mind snorts, dead with

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sleep and fulness in the fouler regions of the belly.

So have I seen the eye of the world looking upon a fenny bottom, and di'uiking up too free draughts of moisture, gathered them into a cloud, and that cloud crept about his face, and made him first look red, and then covered him with darkness and an artificial night : so is our reason at a feast. The clouds gather about the head ; and according to the method and period of the children, and productions of darkness, it first grows red, and that redness tm-ns into an obscurity and a thick mist, and reason is lost to all use and profitableness of wise and sober discourses. A cloud of folly and distraction darkens the soul, and makes it crass and mate- rial, polluted and heavy, clogged and laden like the body; and there cannot be anything said worse : reason turns into folly, wine and flesh into a knot of clouds, the soul itself into a body, and the spirit into corrupted meat. There is nothing left but the rewards and portions of a fool, to be reaped and enjoyed there, where flesh and corruption shall dwell to eternal ages ; their heads are gross, their souls are emerged in matter, and drowaied in the moistures of an unwholesome cloud ; they are dull of hearing, slow in apprehension, and to action they are as unable as the hands of a child who too hastily hath broken the enclosures of his first dwelling.

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And now, after all this, I pray consider what a strange madness and prodigious folly possess many men, that they love to swallow death and diseases and dishonor, with an appetite wdiich no reason can restrain. We expect our ser- vants should not dare to touch what we have forbidden to them ; we are watchful that our cliildren should not swallow poisons and filthi- ness and unwholesome nourishment ; we take care that they should be well-mannered and ci\al and of fair demeanor ; and we ourselves desh-e to be, or at least to be accounted, wise, and would mfinitely scorn to be called fools ; and we are so great lovers of health that we will buy it at any rate of money or observance : and then for honor ; it is that which the chil- dren of men pursue with passion, it is one of the noblest rewards of virtue, and the proper orna- ment of the wise and valiant ; and yet all these thino-s are not valued or considered when a merry meeting, or a looser feast, calls upon the man to act a scene of folly and madness, and healthlessness and dishonor. We do to God what we severely punish in our servants ; we correct our children for their meddling with dangers which themselves prefer before immor- tality ; and though no man thinks himself fit to be despised, yet he is willing to make himself a beast, a sot, and a ridiculous monkey, with the follies and vapors of wine ; and when he is

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high in drink or fancy, proud as a Grecian ora- tor in the midst of his popular noises, at the same time he shall talk such dirty language, such mean low things, as may well become a changeling and a fool, for whom the stocks are prepared by the laws, and the just scorn of men.

Every drunkard clothes his head M'ith a mighty scorn, and makes himself lower at that time than the meanest of his servants. The boys can laugh at him when he is led like a cripple, directed like a blind man, and speaks, like an infant, imperfect noises, lisping with a full and spongy tong-ue, and an empty head, and a vain and foolish heart. So cheaply does he part with his honor for drink or loads of meat ; for which honor he is ready to die, rather than hear it to be disparaged by another ; when him- self destroys it, as bubbles jDerish with the breath of children. Do not the laws of all wise na- tions mark the drunkard for a fool, with the meanest and most scornful punishment ? And is there anything in the world so foohsh as a man that is drunk ? But, good God ! what an intolerable sorrow hath seized upon great por- tions of mankind, that this folly and madness shoiild possess the greatest spirits and the wit- tiest men, the best company, the most sensible of the word honor, and the most jealous of losing the shadow, and the most careless of the

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thino- ? Is it not a horrid thing, that a wise or a crafty, a learned or a noble person, should dishonor himself as a fool, destroy his body as a murderer, lessen his estate as a prodigal, dis- grace every good cause that he can pretend to by his relation, and become an appellative of scorn, a scene of laughter or derision, and all for the reward of forgetfulness and madness ? for there are in immoderate drmking no other pleasures.

I end with the saying of a wise man : He is fit to sit at the table of the Lord, and to feast with saints, who moderately uses the creatures which God hath given him: but he that de- spises even lawful pleasures, shall not only sit and feast with God, but reign together with him, and partake of his glorious kingdom.

IVIARRIAGE.

THE first blessing God gave to man was society ; and that society was a marriage, and that marriage was confederate by God himself, and hallowed by a blessing: and at the same time, and for very many descending ages, not only by the instinct of nature, but by a superadded forwardness, (God himself inspir- ing the desire,) the world was most desirous of

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children, impatient of barrenness, accounting single life a curse, and a childless person hated by God. The world was rich and empty, and able to provide for a more numerous posterity than it had. When a family could drive their herds, and set their children upon camels, and lead them till they saw a fat soil watered with rivers, and there sit down without paying rent, they thought of nothing but to have great fam- ilies, that their own relations might swell up to a patriarchate, and their children be enough to possess all the regions that they saw, and their grandchildren become princes, and them- selves build cities and call them by the name of a child, and become the fountain of a nation.

This was the consequent of the first bless- ing, " Increase and multiply." The next blessing was the promise of the Messiah ; and that also increased in men and women a won- derful desire of marriage : for as soon as God had chosen the family of Abraham to be the blessed line from whence the world's Re- deemer should descend according to the flesh, every of his daughters hoped to have the honor to be his mother, or his grandmother, or something of his kindred ; and to be child- less in Israel was a sorrow to the Hebrew women, great as the slavery of Egypt, or their dishonors in the land of their captivity.

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But when the Messiah was come, and the doctrine was puLHshed, and his ministers but few, and his disciples were to suffer persecu- tion, and to be of an unsettled dwelling, and the nation of the Jews, in the bosom and so- ciety of which the Church especially did dwell, were to be scattered and broken all in pieces with fierce calamities, and the world was apt to calumniate and to suspect and dishonor Chris- tians upon pretences and unreasonable jeal- ousies, and that to all these purposes the state of marriage brought many inconveniences ; it pleased God in this new creation to inspire into the hearts of his servants a disposition and strong desire to lead a single life, lest the state of marriage should in that conjunction of things become an accidental impediment to the dis- semination of the gospel, which called men from a confinement in their domestic charo;es to travel, and flight, and poverty, and difii- culty, and martyrdom. Upon this necessity the Apostles and apostolical men published doctrines, declaring the advantages of single life, not by any commandment of the Lord, but by the spirit of prudence, for the present and then incumbent necessities, and in order to the advantages which did accrue to the public ministries and private piety.

Upon this occasion it grew necessary for the Apostle to state the question right, and to do

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honor to the holy rite of marriage, and to snatch the mystery fi'om the hands of zeal and folly, and to place it in Christ's right hand, that all its beauties might appear, and a pres- ent convenience might not bring in a false doctrine, and a perpetual sin, and an intoler- able mischief.

Marriage is a school and exercise of virtue ; and though marriage hath cares, yet the single life hath desires, which are more troublesome and more dangerous, and often end in sin, while the cares are but instances of duty and exercises of piety ; and therefore, if single life hath more privacy of devotion, yet marriage hath more necessities and more variety of it, and is an exercise of more graces. Here is the proper scene of piety and patience, of the duty of parents and the charity of relatives ; here kindness is spread abroad, and love is united and made firm as a centre. Marriage is the nursery of heaven ; the virgin sends prayers to God, but she carries but one soul to him ; but the state of marriage fills up the numbers of the elect, and hath in it the labor of love and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing of society and the union of hands and hearts ; it hath in it less of beauty, but more of safety, than the single life ; it hath more care, but less danger ; it is more merry, and more sad ; is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys; it lies

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under more burdens, but is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful.

Marriage is the mother of the world, and pre- serves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweet- ness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity ; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors and unites into socie- ties and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys their king, and keeps order, and exercises many vir- tues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world.

They that enter into the state of marriage, cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. A woman indeed ventures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband; she must dwell upon her sorrow, and hatch the eggs which her own folly or in- felicity hath produced ; and she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative ; and the woman may complain to

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God as subjects do of tyrant princes, but other- wise she hath no appeal in the causes of un- kindness. And though tlie man can run from many hours of his sadness, yet he must return to it again ; and when he sits among his neigh- bors, he remembers the objection that hes in his bosom, and he sighs deeply. The boys, and the pedlers, and the fruiterers, shall tell of this man, when he is carried to his grave, that he lived and died a poor wretched person.

The stags in the Greek epigram, whose knees were clogged with frozen snow upon the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thaw their joints with the waters of the stream ; but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice till the young herdsman took them in their stranger snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men, finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troub- les, and there they enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the cords of a man's or woman's peevishness. And the worst of the evil is, they are to thank their own follies ; for they fell into the snare by entering an im- proper way. Christ and the Church were no ingredients in their choice. But as the Indian women enter into folly for the price of an ele- phant, and think their crime warrantable, so

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do men and women change their hberty for a rich fortune, (Hke Eriphyle the Argive, she preferred gold before a good man,) and show themselves to be less than money, by overvalu- ing that to all the content and wise felicity of their lives : and when they have counted the money and their sorrows together, how will- ingly would they buy, with the loss of all that money, modesty, or sweet nature, to their rela- tive ! The odd thousand pounds would gladly be allowed in good-nature and fair manners.

As very a fool is he that chooses for beauty principally ; " cui sunt eruditi oculi, et stulta mens " (as one said), whose eyes are witty, and their souls sensual. It is an ill band of affections to tie two hearts together by a little thread of red and white. And they can love no longer but until the next ague comes ; and they are fond of each other, but, at the chance of fancy, or the small-pox, or childbearing, or care, or time, or anything that can destroy a pretty flower.

Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the beginning of their conversation. Every little thing can blast an infant blossom ; and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine, when first they begin to curl like the locks of a new-weaned boy ; but when by age and con- solidation they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have by the warm embraces of the

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sun, and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north, and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken. So are the early unions of an unfixed marriage ; watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. For infirmities do not manifest them- selves in the first scenes, but in the succession of a long society ; and it is not chance or weak- ness when it appears at first, but it is want of love or prudence, or it will be so expounded ; and that which appears ill at first, usually af- frights the inexperienced man or woman, who makes unequal conjectures, and fancies mighty sorrows by the proportions of the new and early unkindness. It is a very great passion, or a huge folly, or a certain want of love, that cannot preserve the colors and beauties of kindness so long as public honesty requires a man to wear their sorrows for the death of a friend.

Plutarch compares a new marriage to a ves- sel before the hoops are on ; everything dis- solves their tender compaginations : but when the joints are stiffened and are tied by a firm compliance and proportioned bending, scarcely can it be dissolved without fire or the violence of iron. After the hearts of the man and the wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual

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confidence, and experience longer than artifice and pretence can last, there are a great many remembrances, and some things present, that dash all httle unkindnesses in pieces. The httle boy m the Greek epigram, that was creeping down a precipice, was invited to his safety by the sight of his mother's pap, when nothing else could entice him to return : and the bond of common children, and the sight of her that niu'ses what is most dear to him, and the endearments of each other in the course of a long society, and the same rela- tion, is an excellent security to redintegrate and to call that love back, which folly and triflino; accidents would disturb. When it is come thus far, it is hard unt■\^^sting the knot ; but be cai'eful in its first coalition that there be no rudeness done ; for if there be, it will forever after be apt to start and to be diseased.

Let man and wife be careful to stifle little things, that as fast as they spring they be cut down and trod upon ; for if they be suffered to groAv by numbers, they make the spirit peevish, and the society troublesome, and the affections loose and easy by an habitual aver- sation. Some men are more vexed with a fly than with a wound ; and when the gnats disturb our sleep, and the reason is disquieted, but not perfectly awakened, it is often seen

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that he is fuller of trouble than if, in the daylight of his reason, he were to contest with a potent enemy. In the frequent little accidents of a family, a man's reason cannot always he awake ; and when his discourses are imperfect, and a trifling trouble makes him yet more restless, he is soon betrayed to the violence of passion. It is certain that the man or woman are in a state of weak- ness and folly then, when they can be troub- led with a trifling accident ; and therefore it is not good to tempt their affections when they are in that state of danger. In this case the caution is, to subtract fuel from the sudden flame ; for stubble, though it be quickly kindled, yet it is as soon exting-uished, if it be not blown by a pertinacious breath, or fed with new materials. Add no new provocations to the accident, and do not inflame this, and peace will soon return, and the discontent will pass away soon, as the sparks from the collision of a fhnt ; ever remembering, that discontents proceeding from daily little things do breed a secret imdiscemible disease, which is more dangerous than a fever proceeding from a dis- cerned notorious surfeit.

Let them be sure to abstain from all those things which by experience and observation they find to be contrary to each other. They that govern elephants, never appear before

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them in white ; and the masters of bulls keep from them all garments of blood and scarlet, as knowing that they will be impatient of civil usages and discipline when their natm-es are provoked by their proper antipathies. The ancients in their marital hieroglyphics used to depict Mercury standing by Venus, to signify that by fair language and sweet entreaties the minds of each other should be united ; and hard by them, " suadam et gratias descripse- runt,^^ they would have all dehciousness of manners, compliance and mutual observance to abide.

Let the husband and vsdfe infinitely avoid a cmnous distmction of mine and thine ; for this hath caused all the laws, and all the suits, and all the wars in the world. Let them who have bvit one person have also but one interest. Corvuius dwells in a farm and receives all its profits, and reaps and sows as he pleases, and eats of the com and drinks of the wine ; it is his own : but all that also is his lord's, and for it Corvinus pays acknowledgment ; and his patron hath such powers and uses of it as are proper to the lords ; and yet for all this, it may be the king's too, to all the purposes that he can need, and is all to be accounted in the census, and for certain services and times of danger. So are the riches of a family ; they are a woman's as

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well as a man's ; they are hers for need, and hers for ornament, and hers for modest de- light, and for the uses of religion and prudent charity : but the disposing them into portions of inheritance, the assignation of charges and governments, stipends and rewards, annuities and greater donatives, are the reserves of the superior right, and not to be invaded by the under-possessors.

As the earth, the mother of all creatures here below, sends up all its vapors and proper emissions at the command of the sun, and yet requires them again to refresh her own needs, and they are deposited between them both, in the bosom of a cloud, as a common receptacle, that they may cool his flames, and yet descend to make her fruitful : so are the proprieties of a wife to be disposed of by her lord ; and yet all are for her provision, it being a part of his need to refresh and supply hers, and it serves the interest of both while it serves the necessities of either.

These are the duties of them both, which have common regards and equal necessities and obligations ; and indeed there is scarce any matter of duty, but it concerns them both alike, and is only distinguished by names, and hath its variety by circumstances and little acci- dents : and what in one is called love, in the other is called reverence ; and what in the wife

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is obedience, the same in the man is duty. He provides, and she dispenses ; he gives com- mandments, and she rules by them ; he rules her by authority, and she rules him by love ; she ought by all means to please him, and he must by no means displease her. For as the heart is set in the midst of the body, and though it strikes to one side by the preroga- tive of nature, yet those throbs and constant motions are felt on the other side also, and the influence is equal to both : so it is in conjugal duties ; some motions are to the one side more than to the other, but the interest is on both, and the duty is equal in the several instances.

The next inquiry is more particular, and considers the power and duty of the man. " Let every one of you so love his wife, even as himself" ; she is as himself, the man hath power over her as over himself, and must love her equally. A husband's power over his wife is paternal and friendly, not magisterial and des- ''potic. The wife is '■'■ in perpetud tuteld,''^ under conduct and counsel ; for the power a man hath is founded in the understanding, not in the will or force ; it is not a power of coercion, but a power of advice, and that government that wise men have over those who are fit to be conducted by them. Thou art to be a father and a mother to her, and a brother: and great reason, unless the state of marriage

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should be no better than the condition of an orphan. For she that is bound to leave father and mother and brother for thee, either is mis- erable, like a poor fatherless child, or else ought to find all these, and more, in thee.

The dominion of a man over his wife is no other than as the soul rules the body ; for which it takes a mighty care, and uses it with a delicate tenderness, and cares for it in all contingencies, and watches to keep it from all evils, and studies to make for it fan' provisions, and very often is led by its inclinations and desires, and does never contradict its appetites but when they are evil, and then also not with- out some trouble and sorrow ; and its govern- ment comes only to this : it furnishes the body with light and understanding, and the body furnishes the soul with hands and feet ; the soul governs because the body cannot else be happy, but the government is no other than provision ; as a nurse governs a child when she causes him to eat, and to be warm, and •• dry, and quiet. And yet even the very gov- ernment itself is divided ; for man and wife in the family are as the sun and moon in the firmament of heaven ; he rules by day, and she by night, that is, in the lesser and more proper circles of her affaii's, in the conduct of domes- tic provisions and necessary offices, and shines only by his light, and rules by his authority.

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And as the moon in opposition to the sun shines brightest, that is, then when she is in her own circles and separate regions, so is the authority of the wife then most conspicuous when she is separate and in her proper sphere ; "zn gi/nceeeo" in the nursery and offices of do- mestic employment. But when she is in con- junction with the sun her brother, that is, in that place and employment in which his care and proper offices are employed, her light is not seen, her authority hath no proper busi- ness. But else there is no difference ; for they were barbarous people among whom wives were instead of servants ; and it is a sign of impotency and weakness to force the camels to kneel for their load, because thou hast not spirit and strength enough to climb : to make the affections and evenness of a wife bend by the flexures of a servant, is a sign the man is not wise enough to govern when another stands by. And as amongst men and women humility is the way to be preferred, so it is in husbands ; they shall prevail by cession, by sweetness and counsel, and charity and com- pliance. So that we cannot discourse of the man's right without describing the measures of his duty ; that, therefore, follows next.

" Let him love his wife even as himself" : — that is his duty, and the measure of it too ; which is so plain, that, if he understands how

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he treats liimself, there needs nothing be added concermng; his demeanor towards her, save only that we add the particulars in which holy Scripture instances this general com- mandment.

The first is, " Be not bitter against her " ; and this is the least index and signification of love ; a civil man is never bitter against a friend or a stranger, much less to him that enters under his roof, and is secured by the laws of hospitality. But a wife does all that and more : she quits all her interest for his love ; she gives him all that she can give ; she is much the same person as another can be the same, who is conjoined by love and mystery and religion, and all that is sacred and profane. They have the same fortune, the same family, the same children, the same religion, the same interest, the same flesh ; and therefore the Apostle urges, " No man hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it " ; and he cer- tainly is strangely sacrilegious and a violator of the rights of hospitality and sanctuary, who uses her rudely, who is fled for protection not only to his house, but also to his heart and bosom.

There is nothing can please a man without love ; and if a man be weary of the wise dis- courses of the Apostles, and of the innocency of an even and a private fortune, or hates peace

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or a fimltfiil year, lie hath reaped thorns and thistles from the choicest flowers of paradise ; for nothing can sweeten fehcity itself, bait love. But when a man dwells in love, then the breasts of his wife are pleasant as the di'oppings upon the hill of Hermon, her eyes are fair as the light of heaven, she is a foimtain sealed, and he can quench his thirst, and ease liis cares, and lay his sorrow down upon her lap, and can retire home as to his sanctuary and refectory, and his gardens of sweetness and chaste reli'eshments.

No man can tell but he that loves his chil- dren, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges ; their childislmess, then* stam- mering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that dehghts in theu' persons and society. But he that loves not his wife and children feeds a honess at home, and broods a nest of sorrows ; and blessing itself cannot make liim happy : so that all the commandments of God enjoining a man to love his wife are nothing but so many necessities and capacities of joy. She that is loved is safe, and he that loves is joyftd.

The husband should nourish and cherish her ; he should refresh her sorrows and entice her fears into confidence and pretty arts of rest.

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But it Avill concern the prudence of the hus- band's love to make the cares and evils as simple and easy as he can, by doubling the joys and acts of a careful friendship, by tolerating her infirmities, (because by so doing he either cures her, or makes himself better,) by fairly expounding all the little traverses of society and communication, by taking everything by the right handle, as Plutarch's expression is; for there is nothing but may be misinterpreted ; and yet if it be capable of a fair construction, it is the office of love to make it. Love will account that to be well said which, it may be, was not so intended ; and then it may cause it to be so, another time.

Hither also is to be referred that he secure the interest of her virtue and felicity by a fair example ; for a wife to a husband is a line or superficies, — it hath dimensions of its own, but no motion or proper affections ; but commonly puts on such images of virtues or vices as are presented to her by her husband's idea : and if thou beest vicious, complain not that she is infected that lies in thy bosom ; the interest of whose love ties her to transcribe thy copy, and write after the character of thy manners. Paris was a man of pleasure, and Helena was an adulteress, and she added covetousness upon her own account. But Ulysses was a prudent man, and a wary coimsellor, sober and severe ;

MARRIAGE. 125

and he efformed liis wife into such imagery as he desired ; and she was chaste as the snows upon the momitains, dihgent as the fatal sisters, always busy, and always faithful ; she had a lazy tongue and a busy hand.

Above all the instances of love let him pre- serve towards her an inviolable faith, and an unspotted chastity ; for tliis is the marriage-rmg ; it ties two hearts by an eternal band ; it is like the cherubim's flaming sword, set for the guard of paradise ; he that passes into that garden, now that it is immured by Christ and the Church, enters into the shades of death. No man must touch the forbidden tree, that in the midst of the garden, which is the tree of knowl- edge and life. Chastity is the secm'ity of love, and preserves all the mysteriousness like the secrets of a temple. Under this lock is deposit- ed security of families, the miion of affections, the repairer of accidental breaches. This is a grace that is shut up and secured by all arts of heaven and the defence of laws, the locks and bars of modesty, by honor and reputation, by fear and shame, by interest and high regards ; and that contract that is intended to be forever is yet dissolved and broken by the violation of this. Nothing but death can do so much evil to the holy rites of marriage as unchastity and breach of faith can ; and by the laws of the Ro- mans a man might kill his daughter or his wife,

126 MARRIAGE.

if he surprised her in the breach of her holy vows, which are as sacred as the threads of hfe, secret as the privacies of the sanctuary, and holy as the society of angels. God that com- manded us to forgive our enemies left it in our choice, and hath not commanded us to forgive an adulterous husband or a wife ; but the oflFend- ed party's displeasure may pass into an eternal separation of society and friendship. Now in this grace it is fit that the wisdom and severity of the man should hold forth a pure taper, that his wife may, by seeing the beauties and trans- parency of that crystal, dress her mind and her body by the light of so pure reflections. It is certain he will expect it fi'om the modesty and retirement, from the passive nature and colder temper, from the humility and fear, from the honor and love, of his wife, that she be pure as the eye of heaven : and therefore it is but reason that the wisdom and nobleness, the love and confidence, the strength and severity of the man should be as holy and certain in this grace as he is a severe exactor of it at her hands, who can more easily be tempted by another, and less by herself.

These are the little lines of a man's duty, which, like threads of light from the body of the sun, do clearly describe all the regions of his proper obligations. Now, concerning the woman's duty, although it consists in doing

MARRIAGE. 127

whatsoever her husband commands, and so receh'es measures from the rules of his gov- ernment, yet there are also some hues of life depicted upon her hands, by which she may read and know how to proportion out her duty to her husband.

The first is obedience. The man's author- ity is love, and the woman's love is obedience ; for this obedience is no way founded in fear, but in love and reverence. We will add, that it is an effect of that modesty which, like ru- bies, adorns the necks and cheeks of women. It is modesty to advance and highly to honor them who have honored us by making us to be the companions of their dearest excellen- cies ; for the woman that went before the man in the way of death, is commanded to follow him in the way of love ; and that makes the society to be perfect, and the union profitable, and the harmony complete. A wife never can become equal but by obeying. A ruling wom- an is intolerable. But that is not all ; for she is miserable, too : for it is a sad calamity for a woman to be joined to a fool or a weak person ; it is like a giuird of geese to keep the capitol ; or as if a flock of sheep should read grave lec- tures to their shepherd, and give him orders when he shall conduct them to pasture. To be ruled by weaker people, to have a fool to one's master, is the fate of miserable and un-

128 MARRIAGE.

blessed people : and the wife can be no ways happy unless she be governed by a prudent lord, whose commands are sober covmsels, whose authority is paternal, whose orders are provisions, and whose sentences are charity.

The next line of the woman's duty is com- pliance, which St. Peter calls " the hidden man of the heart, the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit " ; and to it he opposes " the outward and pompous ornament of the body " ; concerning Avhich, as there can be no partic- ular measure set down to all persons, but the proportions were to be measured by the cus- toms of wise people, the quality of the woman, and the desires of the man ; yet it is to be limited by Christian modesty and the usages of the more excellent and severe matrons. Menander in the comedy brings in a man turn- ing his wife from his house because she stained her hair yellow, which was then the beauty. A wise woman should not paint. A studious gallantry in clothes cannot make a wise man love his wife the better. Such gayeties are fit for tragedies, but not for the uses of life. " Decor occultus, et teeta venustas " ; that is the Christian woman's fineness, the hidden man of the heart, sweetness of manners, humble com- portment, fair interpretation of all addresses, ready compliances, high opinion of him, and mean of herself.

MARRIAGE. 129

To partake secretly, and in her heart, of all his joys and sorrows ; to believe him comely and fair, though the sun hath dra\vn a cypress over him ; (for as marriages are not to be con- tracted by the hands and eye, but with reason and the hearts, so are these judgments to be made by the mind, not by the sight ;) and dia- monds cannot make the woman virtuous, nor him to value her who sees her put them off, then, when charity and modesty are her bright- est ornaments.

And indeed those husbands that are pleased with indecent gayeties of their wives, are like fishes taken with ointments and intoxicating baits, apt and easy for sport and mockery, but useless for food ; and Avhen Circe had turned Ulysses's companions into hogs and monkeys, by pleasures and the enchantments of her brav- ery and luxury, they were no longer usefiil to her, she knew not what to do with them ; but on wise Ulysses she was continually en- amoured. Indeed the outward ornament is fit to take fools, but they are not worth the tak- ing ; but she that hath a wise husband must entice him to an eternal deamess by the veil of modesty, and the grave robes of chastity, the ornament of meekness, and the jewels of faith and charity : she must have no '-'•fucus " but blushings ; her brightness must be purity, and she must shine round about with sweet- 9

130 MARRIAGE.

nesses and friendship, and she shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies. If not, her grave shall be full of rottenness and dishonor, and her memory shall be worse after she is dead : " after she is dead " ; for that will be the end of all merry meetings ; and I choose this to be the last advice to both.

Remember the days of darkness, for they are many ; the joys of the bridal chambers are quickly past, and the remaining portion of the state is a dvill progress, without variety of joys, but not without the change of sorrows ; but that portion that shall enter into the grave must be eternal. It is fit that I should infuse a bunch of myrrh into the festival goblet, and after the Egyptian manner serve up a dead man's bones at a feast ; I will only show it, and take it away again ; it will make the wine bitter, but wholesome. But those married pairs that hve, as remembering that they must part again, and give an account how they treat themselves and each other, shall at that day of their death be admitted to glorious espousals ; and then they shall hve again, be married to their Lord, and partake of his glories, with Abraham and Joseph, St. Peter and St. Paul, and all the mamed saints.

All those tilings that now please us shall pass from us, or we from them ; but those things that concern the other life are per-

THE ATHEIST. 131

manent as the numbers of eternity : and al- though at the resurrection there shall be no relation of husband and wife, and no mar- riage shall be celebrated but the marriao;e of the Lamb ; yet then shall be remembered how men and women passed through this state, which is a type of that ; and from this sacramental union all holy pairs shall pass to the spiritual and eternal, where love shall be their portion, and joys shall crown then* heads, and they shall lie in the bosom of Jesus, and in the heart of God to eternal affes.

THE ATHEIST.

\T7H0 in the world is a verier fool, a more * ' ignorant, wretched person, than he that is an atheist ? A man may better believe there is no such man as himself, and that he is not in being, than that there is no God ; for himself can cease to be, and once was not, and shall be changed from what he is, and in very many periods of his life knows not that he is ; and so it is every night with him when he sleeps. But noiie of these can happen to God ; and if he knows it not, he is a fool. Can anything in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven

132 THE ATHEIST.

and earth can come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster ? To see rare effects and no cause ; an excel- lent govBrnment and no prmce ; a motion with- out an immovable ; a circle without a centre ; a time without eternity ; a second without a first ; a thing that begins not from itself, and therefore not to perceive there is something from whence it does begin, which must be without beginning ; these things are so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must needs be a beast in his understanding that does not assent to them. This is the atheist: " The fool hath said in liis heart there is no God " ; that is his character. The thing framed says that nothing framed it ; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him that did ; saying, that which is made is, and that which made it is not. But this folly is as infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or primitive nothing. But in this the devil never prevailed very far ; his schools were always thin at these lectures. Some few people have been witty against God, that taught them to speak before they knew how to spell a syllable ; but either they are monsters in their manners, or mad in their understand- ings, or ever find themselves confuted by a thunder or a plague, by danger or death.

THE TONGUE. 133

THE TONGUE.

T) Y the use of the tongue, God hath distin- ^ guished us fi'om beasts ; and by the well or ill usino; it we are distinguished fi-om one another ; and therefore though silence be inno- cent as death, harmless as a rose's breath to a distant passenger, yet it is rather the state of death than life ; and therefore when the Egyp- tians sacrificed to Harpocrates their god of silence, in the midst of their rites they cried out, " The tongue is an angel," good or bad, that is, as it happens. Silence was to them a god, but the tongue is greater ; it is the band of human intercourse, and makes men apt to unite in societies and republics ; and I remem- ber what one of the ancients said, that we are better in the company of a known dog than of a man whose speech is not known. A stranger to a stranger in his language is not as a man to a man ; for by voices and homilies, by ques- tions and answers, by narratives and invectives, by counsel and reproof, by praises and hymns, by prayers and glorifications, we serve God's glory and the necessities of men ; and by the tongue our tables are made to differ from man- gers, our cities from deserts, our churches' from herds of beasts and flocks of sheep.

But the tongue is a fountain both of bitter

134 THE TONGUE.

waters and of pleasant ; it sends forth blessing and cursing ; it praises God, and rails at men ; it is sometimes set on fire, and then it puts whole cities in combustion ; it is unruly, and no more to be restramed than the breath of a tem- pest ; it is volatile and fugitive : reason should go before it ; and, when it does not, repentance comes after it ; it was intended for an organ of the divine praises, but the devil often plays upon it, and then it sounds like the screech- owl, or the groans of death ; sorrow and shame, folly and repentance, are the notes and formi- dable accents of that discord.

He that loves to talk much, must scrape materials together to furnish out the scenes and long orations ; and some talk themselves into anger, and some furnish out their dialogues with the lives of others ; either they detract or censure, or they flatter themselves, and tell their own stories with friendly circumstances ; and pride creeps up the sides of the discourse, and the man entertains liis friend with his own panegyric ; or the discourse looks one way and rows another, and more minds the design than its own truth ; and most commonly will be so ordered that it shall please the company.

* IDLE TALK. 135

IDLE TALK.

T ET no man think it a light matter that he -'-^ spends his precious time in idle words ; let no man be so weary of what flies away too fast, and cannot be recalled, as to use arts and de- vices to pass the time away m vanity, which might be rarely spent in the interests of eter- nity. Time is given us to repent in, to appease the divine anger, to prepare for and hasten to the society of angels, to stir up our slackened wills, and enkindle ou^r cold devotions, to weep for our daily iniquities, and to sigh after, and work for, the restitution of our lost inheritance ; and the reward is very inconsiderable that ex- changes all this for the pleasiu-e of a voluble tonsue : and mdeed this is an evil that cannot be avoided by any excuse that can be made for words that are in any sense idle, though in all senses of their own nature and proper relations they be innocent. They are a throwing away something of that which is to be expended for eternity, and put on degi-ees of folly accordmg as they are tedious and expensive of tune to no good purposes.

Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tonorie. For so have I heard that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is

136 IDLE TALK*

hushed and appeased upon the instant of bring- ing upon them the hght of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and raj of knowledge checks the dissolutions of the tongue. But, every man as he is a fool and contemptible, so his tongue is hanged loose, being like a bell, in which there is nothing; but tonmie and noise. No prudence is a sufficient g-uard, or can always stand " in excubiis,^^ still watching, when a man is in perpetual floods of talk : for prudence attends after the manner of an angel's ministry; it is despatched on messages from God, and drives away enemies, and places guards, and calls upon the man to awake, and bids him send out spies and observers, and then goes about his own ministries above : but an angel does not sit by a man, as a nurse by the baby's cradle, watching every motion, and the lighting of a fly upon the child's hp. And so is prudence ; it gives rules, and proportions out our measures, and prescribes us cautions, and by general influences orders our particulars : but he that is given to talk cannot be secured by all this ; the emissions of his tongue are beyond the general figures and lines of rule ; and he can no more be wise in every period of a long and running talk than a lutanist can deliberate and make every motion of his hand by the division of his notes to be chosen and distinctly voluntary. And hence it comes, that

IDLE TALK. 137

at every corner of the mouth a folly peeps out, or a mischief creeps in. A little pride and a great deal of vanity will soon escape, while the man minds the sequel of his talk, and not that ugliness of humor which the severe man that stood by did observe and was ashamed of. Do not many men talk themselves into anger, screwing up themselves with dialogues of fancy, till they forget the company and themselves ? And some men hate to be contradicted or inter- rupted, or to be discovered in their folly ; and some men being a little conscious, and not striving to amend by silence, they make it worse by discourse. A long story of them- selves, a tedious praise of another collaterally, to do themselves advantage ; a declamation against a sin, to imdo the person or oppress the reputation of theu' neighbor ; unseasonable rep- etition of that which neither profits nor delights ; trifling contentions about a goat's beard or the blood of an oyster, anger and animosity, spite and rage, scorn and reproach, begiui upon ques- tions which concern neither of the litigants ; fierce disputations ; strivings for what is past, and for what shall never be : these are the events of the loose and unwary tongue, which are like flies and gnats upon the margin of a pool ; they do not sting like an asp, or bite deep as a bear, yet they can vex a man into a fever and impatience, and make him inca2)uble of rest and comisel.

138 JESTING.

JESTING.

"PCCLESIASTICAL History reports that -^ many jests passed between St. Anthony, the father of the Hermits, and his scholar St. Paul ; and St. Hilarion is reported to have been very pleasant, and of facetious, sweet, and more lively conversation ; and indeed plais- ance, and joy, and a lively spirit, and a pleas- ant conversation, and the innocent caresses of a charitable humanity, is not forbidden ; and here in my text our conversation is commanded to be such, that it may minister grace, that is, favor, complacence, cheerfulness, and be acceptable and pleasant to the hearer : and so must be our conversation ; it must be as far from sullenness as it ought to be from light- ness, and a cheei-fid spirit is the best convoy for religion ; and though sadness does in some cases become a Christian, as being an index of a pious mind, of compassion, and a wise, proper resentment of things, yet it serves but one end, being useful in the only instance of repent- ance ; and hath done its greatest works, not when it weeps and sighs, but when it hates and grows careful against sin. But cheerfulness and a festival spirit fills the soul full of har- mony, it composes music for churches and hearts, it makes and publishes glorifications of

JESTING. 139

God, it produces thankfulness and serves the end of charity; and when the oil of gladness runs over, it makes bright and tall emissions of light and holy fires, reaching up to a cloud, and making joy round about. And therefore, since it is so innocent, and may be so pious and full of holy advantage, whatsoever can innocently minister to this holy joy does set forward the work of religion and charity. And indeed charity itself, which is the vertical top of all religion, is nothing else but a union of joys, concentred in the heart, and reflected from all the angles of our life and intercourse. It is a rejoicing in God, a gladness in our neighbor's good, a pleasure in doing good, a rejoicing with him ; and without love we can- not have any joy at all. It is this that makes childi-en to be a pleasure, and friendship to be so noble and divine a thing ; and upon this account it is certain that all that which can innocently make a man cheerful does also make him charitable ; for grief, and age, and sickness, and weariness, these are peevish and troublesome ; but mirth and cheerfulness is content, and civil, and compliant, and com- municative, and loves to do good, and swells up to felicity only upon the wings of charity. Upon this account here is pleasure enough for a Christian at present ; and if a facetious dis- course, and an amicable friendly mirth, can

140 COMMON SWEARING.

refresh the spirit, and take it off from the vile temptation of peevish, despairing, uncomplying melancholy, it must needs be innocent and commendable. And we may as well be re- freshed by a clean and a brisk discourse as by the air of Campanian wines ; and our faces and our heads may as well be anointed and look pleasant with wit and friendly intercourse as with the fat of the balsam-tree ; and such a conversation no wise man ever did or ouo-ht to reprove. But when the jest hath teeth and nails, biting or scratching our brother, when it is loose and wanton, when it is unseasonable, and much, or many, when it serves ill pur- poses, or spends better time, then it is the drunkenness of the soul, and makes the spirit fly away, seeking for a temple where the mirth and the music is solemn and religious.

COMMON SWEAEING.

A GAINST common swearing, St. Chrysos- ■^-^ torn spends twenty homilies : and by the number and weight of arguments hath left this testimony, that it is a foolish vice, but hard to be cured ; infinitely unreasonable, but strangely prevailing ; almost as much without remedy as it is without pleasure ; for it enters first by

COMMON SWEARING. 141

folly, and grows by custom, and dwells with carelessness, and is nursed by irreligion and want of the fear of God. It profanes the most holy things, and mingles dirt with the beams of the sun, follies and trifling talk interweaved and knit together with the sacred name of God. It placeth the most excellent of things in the meanest and basest cii'cumstances ; it brings the secrets of heaven into the streets, dead men's bones into the temple. Nothing is a greater sacrilege than to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue, and blend it as an expletive to fill up the emptiness of a weak discourse. The name of God is so sacred, so mi^htv, that it rends mountains ; it opens the bowels of the deepest rocks, it casts out devils, and makes hell to tremble, and fills all the regions of heaven with joy. The name of God is our strength and confidence, the object of our worshippings, and the security of all our hopes ; and when God had given himself a name, and immured it with dread and reverence, like the garden of Eden with the swords of cherubims, none durst speak it but he whose lips were hallowed, and that at holy and solemn times, in a most holy and solemn place.

142 FLATTERY.

FLATTERY.

npmS is the mischief that is done by flattery ; -^ it is a design against the wisdom, against the repentance, against the growth and promo- tion of a man's souL He that persuades an ugly, deformed man, that he is handsome, a short man that he is tall, a bald man that he hath a good head of hair, makes him to become ridiculous and a fool, but does no other mischief. But he that persuades his friend that is a goat in his manners, that he is a holy and a chaste person, or that his looseness is a sign of a quick spirit, or that it is not dangerous but easily par- donable, a trick of youth, a habit that old age will lay aside, as a man pares his nails, this man hath given great advantage to his friend's mischief; he hath made it grow in all the dimensions of the sin, till it grows intolerable, and pei-haps unpardonable. And let it be con- sidered, what a fearful destruction and contra- diction of friendship or service it is, so to love myself and my little interest, as to pi-efer it before the soul of him whom I ought to love. Carneades said bitterly, but it had in it too many degrees of truth, that princes and great personages never learn to do anything per- fectly well but to ride the great horse, because the proud beast knows not how to flatter, but

CONSOLATION. 143

will as soon throw him off from his back as he will shake off the son of a porter. But a flat- terer is Hke a neighing horse, that neigheth under every rider, and is pleased with every- thing, and commends all that he sees, and tempts to mischief, and cares not, so his friend may but perish pleasantly. And indeed that is a calamity that undoes many a soul; we so love our peace, and sit so easily upon our own good opinions, and are so apt to flatter our- selves, and lean upon our o^ai false supports, that we cannot endure to be disturbed or awak- ened from our pleasing lethargy. For we care not to be safe, but to be secure ; not to escape hell, but to hve pleasantly ; we are not solici- tous of the event, but of the way thither ; and it is sufiicient if we be persuaded all is well ; in the mean time we are careless whether in- deed it be so or no, and therefore we give pen- sions to fools and vile persons to abuse us, and cozen us of fehcity.

CONSOLATION.

f^ OD glories in the appellative that he is the ^ Father of mercies, and the God of all com- fort, and therefore to minister in the office is to become like God, and to imitate the charities

144 CONSOLATION.

of heaven ; and God hath fitted mankind for it ; he most needs it, and he feels his brother's wants by his own experience; and God hath given us speech and the endearments of soci- ety, and pleasantness of conversation, and pow- ers of seasonable discourse, arguments to allay the sorrow, by abating our apprehensions, and taking out the sting, or telling the periods of comfort, or exciting hope, or urging a precept, and reconciling our affections, and reciting promises, or telling stories of the divine mercy, or changing it into duty, or making the burden less by comparing it with greater, or by prov- ing it to be less than we deserve, and that it is so intended, and may become the instrument of virtue. And certain it is, that as nothing can better do it, so there is nothing greater for which God made our tongues, next to recit- ing his praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. And what greater measure can we have than that we should bring joy to our brother, who with his dreary eyes looks to heaven and round about, and cannot find so much rest as to lay his eyelids close together, than that thy tongue should be tuned with heavenly accents, and make the weary soul to listen for light and ease ; and when he per- ceives that there is such a thing in the world, and in the order of things, as comfort and joy, to begin to break out fi-om the prison of his

CONSOLATION. 145

ft

sorrows at the door of sighs and tears, and by Httle and httle melt into showers and refresh- ment ? This is glory to thy voice, and employ- ment fit for the brightest angel.

But so have I seen the sun kiss the fi'ozen earth, which was bound up with the images of death and the colder breath of the north ; and then the waters break from their enclosures, and melt with joy, and run in useful channels ; and the flies do rise again from their httle graves in walls, and dance a while in the air, to tell that there is joy within, and that the great mother of creatures ydW. oj)en the stock of her new refreshment, become usefiil to man- kind, and sing praises to her Redeemer. So is the heart of a sorrowftil man under the dis- courses of a wise comforter ; he breaks from the despairs of the grave and the fetters and chains of sorrow, he blesses God, and he blesses thee, and he feels his hfe returning ; for to be miserable is death, but nothing is life but to be comforted ; and God is pleased with no music from below, so much as in the thanksgiving songs of reheved widows, of supported or- phans, of rejoicing and comforted and thank- ftil persons.

This part of communication does the work of God and of our neighbors, and bears us to heaven in streams of joy made by the over- flowings of our brother's comfort. It is a fear- 10

146 THE SPIRIT OF GRACE.

ful tiling to see a man despairing. None knows the sorrow and the intolerable anguish but themselves, and they that are damned ; and so are all the loads of a wounded spirit, when the staff of a man's broken fortune bows his head to the ground, and sinks like an osier under the violence of a mighty tempest. But there- fore in proportion to this I may tell the excel- lency of the employment, and the duty of that charity, which bears the dying and languishing soul from the fringes of hell to the seat of the brightest stars, where God's face shines and Reflects comforts forever and ever.

THE SPIRIT OF GRACE.

TN the law, God gave his spirit in small pro- -*- portions, like the dew upon Gideon's fleece ; a little portion was wet sometimes with the dew of heaven, when all the earth besides was dry. And the Jews called it '•'■filiam vocis,^^ the daughter of a voice, still, and small, and seldom, and that by secret whispers, and some- times inarticulate, by way of enthusiasm rather than of instruction ; and God spake by the prophets, transmitting the sound as through an organ-pipe, things which themselves oftentimes understood not. But in the gospel, the spirit

THE SPIRIT OF GRACE. 147

is given without measure ; first poured forth upon our head Christ Jesus ; then descending upon the beard of Aaron, the fathers of the Church, and, thence falhng, Mke the tears of the balsam of Judea, upon the foot of the plant, upon the lowest of the people. And this is given regvilarly to all that ask it, to all that can receive it, and by a solemn ceremony, and con- veyed by a sacrament : and is now, not the daughter of a voice, but the mother of many voices, of divided tongues, and united hearts ; of the tongues of prophets, and the duty of. saints; of the sermons of apostles, and the wis- dom of governors. It is the parent of boldness and fortitude to martyrs, the fountain of learn- ing to doctors, an ocean of all things excellent to all who are within the ship and bounds of the catholic Church. So that old men and young men, maidens and boys, the scribe and the unlearned, the judge and the advocate, the priest and the people, are full of the spirit, if they belong to God. Moses's wish is fulfilled, and all the Lord's people are prophets in some sense or other.

A man that hath tasted of God's spirit can instantly discern the madness that is in rage, the folly and the disease that is in en\y, the anguish and tediousness that is in lust, the dis- honor that is in breakino; our faith and tellinjj a lie ; and imderstands things truly as they

148 THE SPIRIT OF GRACE.

are ; that is, that charity is