better to marry than to burn: that is, as St. Ambrose interprets it, to be overcome of lust." Thus far Salmeron.

And to the same purpose the learned Chancellor of Paris determines, that, however those meetings, which have no other intention but mere pleasure, cannot be free from some venial offence; yet, that he, who comes to the marriage-bed P, not without a certain renitency and regret of mind, that he cannot live without the use of matrimony, offends not.

Shortly then, howsoever it be difficult, if not altogether impossible, to prescribe fixed limits to all ages and complexions: yet this we may undoubtedly resolve, that we must keep within the bounds of just sobriety, of the health and continued vigour of nature, of our aptitude to God's service, of our alacrity in our vocations; not making appetite our measure, but reason; hating that Messalinelike disposition, which may be wearied, not satisfied; affecting to quench, not to solicit lust; using our pleasure as the traveller doth water, not as the drunkard wine, whereby he is enflamed and enthirsted the more.

[4.] Thus much for the just quantity of our lawful delights: the Manner of our Using them remains.

Whether those of the board, or of the bed, or of the field, one universal rule serves for them all: We may not pursue them, either over-eagerly, or indiscreetly. If we may use them, we may not set our hearts upon them; and, if we give ourselves leave to enjoy them, yet we may not let ourselves loose to their fruition.

(a.) Carelessness is here our best posture: They, that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; they, that have wives, as if they had none; they, that buy, as if they possessed not; they, that use the world, as if they used it not; saith the blessed Apostle; 1 Cor. vii. 29, 30, 31. Far be it from a Christian heart, so to be affected with any earthly delight, as if his felicity dwelt in it; his utter dejection and misery, in the want of it: that, as Phaltiel did his wife, he should follow it weeping. It was a good charge, that the holy man gave to his votary, that he should not totus comedere; and the Spouse, in the Divine Marriage-Song, can say, I slept; but my heart waketh; Cant. v. 2. Thus, while we shall take our pleasure, our pleasure shall not take us.

(b.) Discretion must be the second guide of our pleasure: as in other circumstances, so especially in the choice of meet places and seasons'. It was a shameless word of that brutish cynic, that he would plantare hominem in foro: the Jews made it a matter of their thirty-nine lashes, for a man to lie P Non sine renitentiá, et dolore quodam animi, quòd sine usu matrimonii vivere non possit, &c. 9 Bernard. Nullo modo placuit bis in die saturum fieri. Cic. Tuscul. I. i. Schichard. de Jure Reg. Hebr.

with his own wife in the open field: and, if it were notoriously filthy for Absalom to come near to his father's concubines, in the darkest closet; surely, to set up a tent upon the roof of the house, and, in the sight of the sun and all Israel, to act that wickedness, was no less than flagitious villainy.

The very love-feasts of the primitive Christians were therefore cried down, by the Apostle, because they were misplaced: Have ye not houses, to eat and drink in? 1 Cor. xi. 22: and so were the vigils, in the succeeding ages. If markets, if sports, be never so warrantable; yet in a Church, not without a foul profanation.

So, likewise, there are times, which do justly stave off even those carnal delights, which else would pass with allowance: the priests under the Law, while they did eat the holy bread, which was in their several courses twice in the year, must abstain from the society of their wives. The like charge doth the Apostle impose upon his Corinthians: Defraud not one another; except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; 1 Cor. vii. 5. It was a commendable resolution of good Uriah: The Ark of God, and Israel, and Judah abide in tents; and my Lord Joab, and the servants of my Lord are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go in to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not do this thing; 2 Sam. xi. 11.

When a solemn fast is indicted, for a man to entertain his friends with a feast, is no better than a high impiety and disobedience: neither can it be worthy of less than a just mulct and censure in those, who cast their liberallest invitations upon those days, which, by the wholesome laws both of Church and Commonwealth, are designed to abstinence. And it is a strange charge that Alfonsus de Vargas lays upon the Jesuits, that, upon a slight pretence, made no bones of a fat capon on Good Friday. There is a time for all things, saith wise Solomon: there is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; Eccl. iii. 4, 5.

If then our pleasure shall be rightly differenced, for the Kind; and, where that is allowable, ordered aright for the Measure, Quality, Manner of enjoying it; we shall be safely cheerful, and our life holily comfortable.

Alphons. Varg. Stratagem. Jes. c. xi.

SECT. IV.

Motives to Moderation in the use of all our pleasures. BUT, because it is no easy task, to keep our hearts in so meet a temper, and to curb in our appetite from a lawless immoderation, it will be necessary for us seriously to consider,

(1.) The Shortness of them. They are like to that time, on whose wings they are carried, fugitive and transient; gone, while they come; and, as the Apostle speaks, in their very use perishing. Lysimachus, when, in his extremity of drought, he had yielded himself and his crown to the Scythians, for a draught of water, "Good God," saith he, "how great a felicity have I forgone, for how short a pleasure!" Who ever enjoyed full delight a day? or, if he could, what is he the better for it, to morrow? He may be worse, but who ever is the better, for his yesterday's feast? Sweet meats and fat morsels glut the soonest; and that, which was pleasant in the palate, is noisome in the maw and gut. As for those bodily delights, wherein luxurious men place their chief felicity, alas, what poor abortions they are; dead in the very conception; not lasting out their mention! what vanishing shadows; what a short nothing! And, how great a madness is it, to place our contentment upon mere transitoriness; to fall in love with that face, which cannot stay to be saluted!

(2.) The Unprofitableness of them". It is easy to name thousands, that have miscarried by the use of pleasures; who, with Ulysses's companions have been turned into swinish beasts, by the cups of this Circe: but shew me the man, that ever was the better for them. We have known want, like to the hard soil of Ithaca, breed good wits; but what can fulness yield, save fat guts, ill humours, dull brains?

The observation is as true as old, that the flesh is nourished with soft, but the mind with hard meats. The falconer keeps his hawk sharp, that would fly well; and the horses are breathed and dieted, that would win the bell, and the wager.

Sampson was not so strong, nor David so holy, nor Solomon so wise, as not to be foiled with these assaults. It was one strain in Moses's song, Jesurun is waxed fat and kicked. Thou didst drink of the pure blood of the grape: thou art waxed fat; thou art grown thick; thou art covered with fatness: then he forsook God, that made him; and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation; Deut. xxxii. 15. How many brave hopes have we known dashed, with youthly excess! how many high and

"Onerat quippe talis cibus voluptutis, irritatque famem, non satiat. Gers. Serm. ad Eccles. Cautelam.-Paupertas nemini malum, nisi repugnanti. Senec. Ερ. 123.-Γάστηρ παχεῖα μή τέκει λεπτὴν φρένα.

gallant spirits effeminated! Hannibal could complain, that he brought men into Campania; but carried women out again.

Who ever knew any man, that, by the superfluity of earthly contentments, grew more wise, more learned, more virtuous, more devout? Whereas, it is no rare thing, to find those, whom a strait and hard hand hath improved in all these.

It is better to go to the house of mourning, saith Solomon, than to go to the house of feasting. Sorrow is better than laughter; for, by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better; Eccl. vii. 2, 3. If Job's children do but meet at a kind banquet, their father is fain to expiate their feast with sacrifice; for seldom is ever jollity without excess: whereas, in a sad austerity there is no fear of over-lashing.

(3.) As there is no profit in the immoderation of these momentary pleasures, so no little Pain in the loss. This honeybag hath ever a sting attending it; so as we are commonly plagued, as Bernard well, in that, wherein we were misdelighted. Fishes and fowls are well pleased with their baits; but, when the hook or gin seizeth them, they are too late sensible of their misery. I have known potions, that have been very pleasant in the mouth, which have wrought churlishly in the guts such are these pleasures: What fruit have you, saith the Apostle, in those things, whereof ye are now ashamed? The world deals with too many, as our Bromiard observes, like a bad neighbour, that makes a man drunk purposely, to defeat him of his purse or patrimony: when the liquor is evaporated, the man awakes, and finds himself a beggar.

Could we foresee the issue of these sinful delights, we durst not but fall off. Had any man, beforehand, said, Death is in the pot, which of the children of the prophets durst have been so hardy, as to put in his spoon? It was a good answer, of a well meaning novice; who, when he was told because that he was tender and delicate he could never endure the hardship of a strict profession, answered, "Yes, I will therefore endure it the rather; for, being so tender and delicate, much less shall I be able to endure the pains of hell." Could we, then, foreconsider the everlasting torments, which attend the momentary pleasures of sin, we would say to the best and most plausible of them, as Sir Thomas is reported to have said to his wife, "Gentle Eve, I will none of your apple:" and would be loth, as that Philosopher said in the like case, to buy repentance, yea torment, at so dear a rate.

* Quanto inferiùs delectamur, tanto à superno amore disjungimur. Bern. de Inter Domo. c. xlv. y Brom. Sum. Præd. V. Gula.

2 Camden's Remaines.

CHAP. II.

OF THE MODERATION OF OUR DESIRES, in matter of wealth and honour, Sc.-Motives to that Moderation.

NEXT to the moderation of our Pleasures is that of our DESIRES; if not rather before it: for, whereas there are three acts of our sensitive appetite, in respect of good, Loving, Desiring, Delight; love makes way to our desires, and delight follows it: but, because the desires we now speak of are rather covetous, than love-some; of outward abilities, rather than bodily pleasures; we cannot repent of this order of their

tractation.

And, surely, of the two, our Desires are much more insatiable and boundless than our Delights. A glutton's belly is much sooner filled, than his eye": for that only can quiet the appetite of an intellectual nature, which is all and infinitely good: all other things do rather whet, than satiate our longings. All this sensible world, as Gerson well, is but as one little morsel to the stomach of the soul; and if a thousand worlds could be let down, they cannot fill it: for the mind is, by receiving, enlarged to receive more; and still cries, like the daughters of the horse-leech, Give, Give.

Every soul, as St. Austin wittily, is either Christ's spouse, or the Devil's harlot: I add, if Christ's spouse, she takes up with him, and accounts all things in the world but dung, yea but loss in comparison of him; Phil. iii. 8: if the Devil's harlot, she runs wild, after every gaudy pleasure and profit; like the barren womb, in Solomon, which never saith, It is enough, Prov. xxx. 16. So then, the true Christian soul, as it can say with David, Whom have I in heaven, but thee? and there is nothing in earth, that I desire, besides thee; Ps. lxxiii. 25: so it can say, with St. Paul, I have learned, both to want and to abound, to be full and to be hungry; and, in whatsoever estate, to be therewith content; Phil. iv. 11, 12.

Our desires, therefore, are both the surest measures of our present estate, and the truest prognostics of our future. Upon those words of Solomon, As the tree falls, so it shall lie, Bernard wittily, "How the tree will fall, thou shalt soon know, by the store, and weight of the boughs. Our boughs are our desires: on which side soever they grow and sway most, so shall the soul fall." It was a word too good for him, that sold his birth-right for a mess of pottage, I have enough, my brother.

a Jo. de Neapoli. q. xxviii.

b Totus iste mundus sensibilis, ad anime ventrem, quid est, nisi bolus exiguus, &c.? Ger. Serm. ad Eccles. Cautel. Cor vix ad unius milvi refectionem sufficere posset, et totus mundus ei non sufficit. Bern. de Interiore Domo. c. Ixiii. d Aug. Gen. ad literam.