in ourselves, our zeal, was dead. It was; there is the comfortable word of our text. But now, now that God hath taken his fan into his hand, and sifted his church, now that God hath put us into a straight and crooked limbeck, passed us through narrow and difficult trials, and set us upon a hot fire, and drawn us to a more precious substance and nature than before; now that God hath given our zeal a new concoction, a new refining, a new inanimation by this fire of tribulation, let us embrace and nurse up this new resurrection of this zeal, which his own Spirit hath begot and produced in us, and return to God with a whole and entire soul, without dividing or scattering our affections upon other objects; and in the sincerity of the true religion, without inclinations in ourselves, to induce, and without inclinableness, from others, upon whom we may depend, to admit, any drams of the dregs of a superstitious religion; for it is a miserable extremity, when we must take a little poison for physic. And so having made the right use of God's corrections, we shall enjoy the comfort of this phrase, in this house, ourselves, our first-born, our zeal was dead; it was, but it is not.Sermons.

3. For, where your Heart is, there is your Treasure also.

LITERALLY, primarily, radically, thesaurus, treasure, is no more but Depositum in crastinum, Provision for to-morrow; to show how little a proportion, a regulated mind, and a contented heart may make a treasure. But we have enlarged the signification of these words, provision, and, to-morrow: for, provision must signify all that can any way be compassed; and to-morrow must signify as long as there shall be a to-morrow, till time shall be no more: but waiving

these infinite extensions, and perpetuities, is there any thing of that nature, as, (taking the word treasure in the narrowest signification, to be but provision for to-morrow) we are sure shall last till to-morrow? Sits any man here in an assurance, that he will be the same to-morrow, that he is now? You have your honours, your offices, your possessions, perchance under seal; a seal of wax; wax that hath a tenacity, an adhering, a cleaving nature, to show the royal constancy of his heart, that gives them, and would have them continue with you, and stick to you. But then, wax, if it be heat, hath a melting, a fluid, a running nature too: so have these honours, and offices, and possessions, to them that grow too hot, too confident in them, or too imperious by them. For these honours, and offices, and possessions, you have a seal, a fair and just evidence of assurance; but have they any seal upon you, any assurance of you till to-morrow? Did our blessed Saviour give day, or any hope of a to-morrow, to that man, to whom he said, Fool, this night they fetch away thy soul? Or is there any of us that can say, Christ sayed not that to him?-A Lent Sermon.

4. Sleep.

NATURAL men have conceived a two-fold use of sleep; that it is a refreshing of the body in this life; that it is a preparing of the soul for the next; that it is a feast, and it is the grace at that feast; that it is our recreation, and cheers us, and it is our catechism, and instructs us; we lie down in a hope, that we shall rise the stronger; and we lie down in a knowledge, that we may rise no more. Sleep is an opiate, which gives us rest; but such an opiate, as perchance, being under it, we shall wake no more. But though natural men, who have induced secondary and figurative considerations, have found out this second, this emblematical

use of sleep, that it should be a representation of death, God, who wrought and perfected his work, before nature began (for nature was but his apprentice, to learn in the first seven days, and now is his foreman, and works next under him) God, I say, intended sleep only for the refreshing of man by bodily rest, and not for a figure of death, for he intended not death itself then. But man having induced death upon himself God hath taken man's creature, death, into his hand, and mended it; and whereas it hath in itself a fearful form and aspect, so that man is afraid of his own creature, God presents it to him, in a familiar, in an assiduous, in an agreeable, and acceptable form, in sleep, that so when he awakes from sleep, and says to himself, shall I be no otherwise when I am dead, than I was even now, when I was asleep, he may be ashamed of his waking dreams, and of his melancholy fancying out a horrid and an affrightful figure of that death which is so like sleep. As then we need sleep to live out our threescore and ten years, so we need death, to live that life which we cannot outlive. And as death being our enemy, God allows us to defend ourselves against it (for we victual ourselves against death, twice every day, as often as we eat) so God having so sweetened death unto us, as he hath in sleep, we put ourselves into our enemy's hands once every day, so far, as sleep is death: and sleep is as much death as meat is life.-Meditations.

5. The Passing Bell.

THE bell rings out, the pulse thereof is changed; the tolling was a faint, and intermitting pulse, upon one side; this stronger, and argues more and better life. His soul is gone out; and as a man who had a lease of one thousand years after the expiration of a short one, or an inheritance after the life of a man, in a consumption, he

His

is now entered into the possession of his better estate. soul is gone; Whither? Who saw it come in, or who saw it go out? Nobody; yet every body is sure, he had one, and hath none. If I will ask mere philosophers, what the soul is, I shall find amongst them, that will tell me, it is nothing, but the temperament, and harmony, and just and equal composition of the elements in the body, which produces all those faculties which we ascribe to the soul; and so, in itself is nothing, no separable substance, that overlives the body. They see the soul is nothing else in other creatures, and they affect an impious humility, to think as low of man. But if my soul were no more than the soul of a beast, I could not think so; that soul that can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so. If I will ask, not mere philosophers, but mixt men, philosophical divines, how the soul, being a separate substance, enters into man, I shall find some, that will tell me, that it is by generation and procreation from parents, because they think it hard, to charge the soul with the guiltiness of original sin, if the soul were infused into a body, in which it must necessarily grow foul, and contract original sin, whether it will or no; and I shall find some that will tell me, that it is by immediate infusion from God, because they think it hard, to maintain an immortality in such a soul, as should be begotten and derived with the body from mortal parents. If I will ask, not a few men, but almost whole bodies, whole churches, what becomes of the souls of the righteous, at the departing thereof from the body, I shall be told by some, that they attend an expiation, a purification in a place of torment; by some, that they attend the fruition of the sight of God, in a place of rest; but yet, but of expectation; by some, that they pass to immediate possession of the presence of God. St. Augustine studied the nature of the soul, as much

as any thing, but the salvation of the soul; and he sent an express messenger to St. Hierome, to consult of some things concerning the soul: but he satisfies himself with this: Let the departure of my soul to salvation, be evident to my faith, and I care the less, how dark the entrance of my soul, into my body, be to my reason. It is the going out, more than the coming in, that concerns us. This soul, this bell tells me, is gone out; Whither? Who shall tell me that? I know not who it is; much less what he was: the condition of the man, and the course of his life, which should tell me whither he is gone, I know not. I was not there in his sickness, nor at his death; I saw not his way, nor his end, nor can ask them who did, thereby to conclude, or argue, whither he is gone. But yet I have one nearer me than all these, mine own charity; I ask that, and that tells me, he is gone to everlasting rest, and joy, and glory: I owe him a good opinion, it is but thankful charity in me, because I received benefit and instruction from him when his bell tolled: and I, being made the fitter to pray, by that disposition, wherein I was assisted by his occasion, did pray for him; and I pray not without faith; so I do charitably, so I do faithfully believe, that that soul is gone to everlasting rest, and joy, and glory. But for the body, how poor a wretched thing is that! We cannot express it so fast, as it grows worse and worse. That body, which scarce three minutes since was such a house, as that that soul, which made but one step from thence to heaven, was scarce thoroughly content, to leave that for heaven: that body hath lost the name of a dwelling-house, because none dwells in it, and is making haste to lose the name of a body, and dissolve to putrefaction. Who would not be affected to see a clear and sweet river in the morning, grow a kennel of muddy land-water by noon, and con