6

curity of a sinner: and of this Job had an excellent meditation. How oft is the candle of the wicked put out? and how oft cometh their destruction upon them? God distributeth sorrows in his anger. For what pleasure hath he in his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off in the midst ?' This is he that dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.''

25. I sum up this discourse with an observation that is made concerning the family of Eli, upon which, for remissness of discipline on the father's part, and for the impiety and profaneness of his sons, God sent this curse, 'All the increase of their house shall die in the flower of their age.' According to that sad malediction it happened for many generations; the heir of the family died as soon as he begat a son to succeed him; till the family being wearied by so long a curse, by the counsel of Rabbi Johanan Ben Zachary, betook themselves universally to a sedulous and most devout meditation of the law; that is, to an exemplary devotion and strict religion: but then the curse was turned into a blessing, and the line masculine lived to an honourable old age. For the doctors of the Jews said, that God often changes his purposes concerning the death of man, when the sick person is liberal in alms, or fervent in prayer, or changes his name; that is, gives up his name to God by the serious purposes and religious vows of holy obedience. 'He that followeth after righteousness (alms it is in the vulgar Latin) and mercy, findeth life;' that verifies the first; and the fervent prayer of Hezekiah is a great instance 1 Job, xxi. 17. 4 1 Sam. ii. 33.

? Ib. verse 21.

3 Ib. verse 23.

5 Prov. xxi. 21.

of the second: and all the precedent discourse was intended for probation of the third, and proves that no disease is so deadly as a deadly sin; and the ways of righteousness are therefore advantages of health, and preservatives of life, (when health and life are good for us,) because they are a certain title to all God's promises and blessings.

26. Upon supposition of these premises, I consider there is no cause to wonder, that tender persons and the softest women endure the violences of art and physic, sharp pains of caustics and cupping-glasses, the abscission of the most sensible part, for preservation of a mutilous and imperfect body but it is a wonder that, when God hath appointed a remedy in grace apt to preserve nature, and that a dying unto sin should prolong our natural life, yet few men are willing to try the experiment. They will buy their life upon any conditions in the world but those which are the best and easiest; any thing but religion and sanctity although for so doing they are promised that immortality shall be added to the end of a long life, to make the life of a mortal partake of the eternal duration of an angel or of God himself.

27. Fifthly, The last testimony of the excellency and gentleness of Christ's yoke, the fair load of Christianity, is the reasonableness of it, and the unreasonableness of its contrary.' For whatsoever the wisest men in the world, in all nations and religions, did agree upon as most excellent in itself, and of greatest power to make political, or future and immaterial felicities, all that and much more the holy Jesus adopted into his law. For they re

Religio sapientiam adauget, et sapientia religionem. Lactant.-"Religion augments wisdom, and wisdom religion."

ceiving sparks or single irradiations from the regions of light, or else having fair tapers shining indeed excellently in representations and expresses of morality, were all involved and swallowed up into the body of light, the Sun of Righteousness. Christ's discipline was the breviary of all the wisdom of the best men, and a fair copy and transcript of his Father's wisdom: and there is nothing in the laws of our religion but what is perfective of our spirits, excellent rules of religion, and rare expedients of obeying God by the nearest ways of imitation, and such duties which are the proper ways of doing benefits to all capacities and orders of men. But I remember, my design now is not to represent Christianity to be a better religion than any other; for I speak to Christians, amongst whom we presuppose that; but I design to invite all Christians in name to be such as they are called, upon the interest of such arguments which represent the advantages of obedience to our religion as it is commanded us by God. And this I shall do yet further, by considering, as touching those Christian names, who apprehend religion as the fashion of their country, and know no other use of a church but customary, or secular and profane, that supposing Christian religion to have come from God, as we all profess to believe, there are no greater fools in the world, than such whose life conforms not to the pretence of their baptism and institution. They have all the signs and characters of fools, and indiscreet, unwary persons.

28. First, Wicked persons, like children and fools, choose the present, whatsoever it is, and neglect the infinite treasures of the future. They that have no faith nor foresight have an excuse for

snatching at what is now represented, because it is that all which can move them. But then such persons are infinitely distant from wisdom, whose understanding neither reason nor revelation hath carried further than the present adherences: not only because they are narrow souls who cannot look forward, and have nothing to distinguish them from beasts, who enjoy the present, being careless of what is to come; but also because whatsoever is present is not fit satisfaction to the spirit, nothing but gluttings of the sense and sottish appetites.' Moses was a wise person, and so esteemed and reported by the Spirit of God, because he despised the pleasures of Pharaoh's court, having an eye to the recompence of reward; that is, because he despised all the present arguments of delight, and preferred those excellences which he knew should be infinitely greater, as well as he knew they should be at all. He that would have rather chosen to stay in the theatre and see the sports out, than quit the present spectacle, upon assurance to be adopted into Cæsar's family, had an offer made him too great for a fool; and yet his misfortune was not big enough for pity, because he understood nothing of his felicity, and rejected what he understood not. But he that prefers moments before eternity, and despises the infinite successions of eternal ages, that he may enjoy the present, not daring to trust God for what he sees not, and having no objects of his affections, but those which are the objects of his eyes, hath the impatience of a child, and the indiscretion of a fool, and the faithlessness

· Εἰ μὲν γὰρ πράττεις τι μεθ ̓ ἡδονῆς αἰσχρὸν, ἡ μὲν ἡδονὴ παρῆλθε, τὸ κακὸν μένει. Hierocl." If thou docst a base thing for pleasure, the pleasure passes away, the evil remains."

of an unbeliever. The faith and hope of a Christian are the graces and portions of spiritual wisdom, which Christ designed as an antidote against this folly.

29. Secondly, Children and fools choose to please their senses rather than their reason, because they still dwell within the regions of sense, and have but little residence amongst intellectual essences. And because the needs of nature first employ our sensual appetites, these being first in possession would also fain retain it, and therefore for ever continue their title, and perpetually fight for it. But because the inferior faculty fighting against the superior is no better than a rebel, and that it takes reason for its enemy, it shows such actions which please the sense, and do not please the reason, to be unnatural, monstrous, and unreasonable. And it is a greater disreputation to the understanding of a man to be so cozened and deceived, as to choose money before a moral virtue; to please that which is common to him and beasts, rather than that part which is a communication of the Divine nature; to see him run after a bubble which himself hath made and the sun hath particoloured, and to despise a treasure which is offered to him, to call him off from pursuing that emptiness and nothing. But so does every vicious person; he feeds upon husks, and loathes manna; worships cats and onions, the beggarly and basest Egyptian deities, and neglects to adore and honour the eternal God: he prefers the society of drunkards before the communion of saints; or the fellowship of harlots, before a choir of pure, chaste, and immaterial angels; the sickness and filth of luxury, before the health and pu