go further than we by the clear sun of the gospel, that an indifferent man could not tell by our practice whether were the Pagan! Let me never, for shame, account myself a Christian, unless my art of Christianity have imitated and gone beyond nature so far, that I can find the best heathen as far below me in true resolution, as the vulgar sort were below them: else I may shame religion; it can neither honest nor help me.

LXXVII. If I would be irreligious and unconscionable, I would make no doubt to be rich; for if a man will defraud, dissemble, forswear, bribe, oppress, serve the time, make use of all men for his own turn, make no scruple of any wicked action for his advantage, I cannot see how he can escape wealth and preferment; but for an upright man to rise, is difficult, while his conscience straitly curbs him in from every unjust action, and will not allow him to advance himself by indirect means. So riches come seldom easily to a good man; seldom hardly, to the conscienceless. Happy is that man that can be rich with truth, or poor with contentment. I will not envy the gravel in the unjust man's throat. Of riches, let me never have more than an honest man can bear away.

LXXVIII. God is the God of order, not of confusion. As therefore, in natural things, he useth to proceed from one extreme to another, by degrees, through the mean, so doth he in spiritual. The sun riseth not at once to his highest from the darkness of midnight, but first sends forth some feeble glimmering of light in the dawning; then looks out with weak and waterish beams; and so, by degrees, ascends to the midst of heaven. So in the seasons of the year, we are not one day scorched with a summer heat, and, on the next, frozen with a sudden extremity of cold; but winter comes on softly, first by cold dews, then hoar frosts, until at last it descend to the hardest weather of all. Such are God's spiritual proceedings. He never brings any man from the estate of sin to the estate of glory, but through the state of grace. And as for grace, he seldom brings a man from gross wickedness to any eminence of perfection. I will be charitably jealous of those men, who from notorious lewdness leap at once into a sudden forwardness of profession. Holiness doth not, like Jonah's

gourd, grow up in a night. I like it better, to go on soft and sure, than, for a hasty fit, to run myself out of wind, and afterwards stand still and breathe me.

LXXIX. It hath been said of old, " to do well and hear ill, is princely;" which as it is most true, by reason of the envy which follows upon justice, so is the contrary justified by many experiments. To do ill and to hear well, is the fashion of many great men; to do ill, because they are borne out with the assurance of impunity; to hear well, because of abundance of parasites, who, as ravens to a carcase, gather about great men. Neither is there any so great misery in greatness as this, that it conceals men from themselves; and when they will needs have a sight of their own actions, it shews them a false glass to look in. Meanness of state, that I can find, hath none so great inconvenience. I am no whit sorry, that I am rather subject to contempt, than flattery.

LXXX. There is no earthly blessing so precious, as health of body; without which, all other worldly good things are but troublesome. Neither is there any thing more difficult, than to have a good soul in a strong and vigorous body; for it is commonly seen, that the worse part draws away the better: but to have a healthful and sound soul in a weak sickly body, is no novelty; while the weakness of the body is a help to the soul, playing the part of a perpetual monitor to incite it to good and check it for evil. I will not be over-glad of health, nor over-fearful of sickness. I will more fear the spiritual hurt that may follow upon health, than the bodily pain that accompanies sickness.

LXXXI. There is nothing more troublesome to a good mind, than to do nothing; for besides the furtherance of our estate, the mind doth both delight and better itself with exercise. There is but this difference then betwixt labour and idleness, that labour is a profitable and pleasant trouble; idleness, a trouble both unprofitable and comfortless. I will be ever doing something, that either God when he cometh, or Satan when he tempteth, may find me busied. And yet since, as the old proverb is, "Better it is to be idle than effect nothing," I will not more hate doing nothing, than doing something to no

purpose. I shall do good but a while: let me strive to do it while I may.

LXXXII. A faithful man hath three eyes; the first, of sense, common to him with brute creatures; the second, of reason, common to all men; the third, of faith, proper to his profession: whereof each looketh beyond other, and none of them meddleth with others' objects; for neither doth the eye of sense reach to intelligible things and matters of discourse, nor the eye of reason to those things which are supernatural and spiritual; neither doth faith look down to things that may be sensibly seen. If thou discourse to a brute beast of the depths of philosophy never so plainly, he understands not, because they are beyond the view of his eye which is only of sense: if to a mere carnal man, of divine things, he perceiveth not the things of God, neither indeed can do, because they are spiritually discerned; and therefore no wonder, if those things seem unlikely, incredible, impossible to him, which the faithful man, having a proportionable means of apprehension, doth as plainly see, as his eye doth any sensible thing. Tell a plain countryman, that the sun, or some higher or lesser star, is much bigger than his cartwheel, or at least so many scores bigger than the whole earth, he laughs thee to scorn, as affecting admiration with a learned untruth; yet the scholar, by the eye of reason, doth as plainly see and acknowledge this truth, as that his hand is bigger than his pen. What a thick mist, yea, what a palpable and more than Egyptian darkness doth the natural man live in! What a world is there, that he doth not see at all! and how little doth he see in this, which is his proper element! There is no bodily thing, but the brute creatures see as well as he, and some of them better. As for his eye of reason, how dim is it in those things, which are best fitted to it! What one thing is there in nature, which he doth perfectly know? What herb, or flower, or worm that he treads on, is there, whose true essence he knoweth? No, not so much as what is in his own bosom; what it is, where it is, or whence it is, that gives being to himself. But as for those things which concern the best world, he doth not so much as confusedly see them, neither knoweth whether Div.-No. XXXVIII.

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they be. He sees no whit into the great and awful majesty of God. He discerns him not in all his creatures, filling the world with his infinite and glorious presence. He sees not his wise providence, overruling all things, disposing all casual events, ordering all sinful actions of men to his own glory. He comprehends nothing of the beauty, majesty, power, and mercy of the Saviour of the world, sitting in his humanity at his Father's right-hand. He sees not the unspeakable happiness of the glorified souls of the saints. He sees not the whole heavenly commonwealth of angels, ascending and descending to the behoof of God's children, waiting upon them at all times invisibly, not excluded by closeness of prisons nor desolateness of wildernesses; and the multitude of evil spirits, passing and standing by him to tempt him unto evil: but, like unto the foolish bird when he hath hid his head that he sees nobody, he thinks himself altogether unseen, and then counts himself solitary, when his eye can meet with no companion. It was not without cause, that we call a mere fool a natural; for however worldlings have still thought Christians God's fools, we know them the fools of the world. The deepest philosopher that ever was, saving the reverence of the schools, is but an ignorant sot to the simplest Christian; for the weakest Christian may, by plain information, see somewhat into the greatest mysteries of nature, because he hath the eye of reason common with the best; but the best philosopher, by all the demonstration in the world, can conceive nothing of the mysteries of godliness, because he utterly wants the eye of faith. Though my insight into matters of the world be so shallow, that my simplicity moveth pity or maketh sport unto others, it shall be my contentment and happiness, that I see further into better matters. That which I see not, is worthless, and deserves little better than contempt; that which I see, is unspeakable, inestimable, for comfort, for glory.

LXXXIII. It is not possible for an inferior to live at peace, unless he have learned to be contemned; for the pride of his superiors, and the malice of his equals and inferiors, shall offer him continual and inevitable occasions of unquietness. As contentation is the mother of

inward peace with ourselves, so is humility the mother of peace with others; for if thou be vile in thine own eyes first, it shall the less trouble thee to be accounted vile of others. So that a man of a high heart, in a low place, cannot want discontentment; whereas a man of lowly stomach can swallow and digest contempt without any distemper; for wherein can he be the worse for being contemned, who, out of his own knowledge of his deserts, did most of all contemn himself? I should be very improvident, if, in this calling, I did not look for daily contempt; wherein we are made a spectacle to the world, to angels, and men." When it comes, I will either embrace it or contemn it; embrace it, when it is within my measure; when above, contemn it; so embrace it, that I may more humble myself under it; and so contemn it, that I may not give heart to him that offers it, nor disgrace him for whose cause I am contemned.

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LXXXIV. Christ raised three dead men to life; one, newly departed; another, on the bier; a third, smelling in the grave; to shew us, that no degree of death is so desperate, that it is past help. My sins are many and great; yet if they were more, they are far below the mercy of him that hath remitted them, and the value of his ransom that hath paid for them. A man hurts himself most by presumption; but we cannot do God a greater wrong, than to despair of forgiveness. It is a double injury to God, first, that we offend his justice by sinning; then, that we wrong his mercy with despairing.

LXXXV. For a man to be weary of the world through miseries that he meets with, and for that cause to covet death, is neither difficult nor commendable, but rather argues a base weakness of mind. So it may be a cowardly part to contemn the utmost of all terrible things, in a fear of lingering misery. But for a man, either living happily here on earth or resolving to live miserably, yet to desire his removal to heaven, doth well become a true Christian courage, and argues a notable mixture of patience and faith; of patience, for that he can and dare abide to live sorrowfully; of faith, for that he is assured of his better being otherwhere, and therefore prefers the absent joys he looks for, to those he feels in present. No