The Second Chapter — Of Christian Sobriety
Section I — Of Sobriety in the general sense.
CHRISTIAN religion, in all its moral parts, is nothing else but ^ the law of nature, and great reason; complying with the great necessities of all the world, and promoting the great profit of all relations, and carrying us, through all accidents of variety of chances, to that end which God has from eternal ages purposed for all that live according to it, and which he has revealed in Jesus Christ: and, according to the apostle's arithmetic, has but these three parts of it; 1. Sobriety, 2. Justice, 3. Religion. " For the grace of God, bringing salvation, has appeared to all men; teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live, 1. Soberly, 2. Righteously, and 3. Godly, in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." The first contains all our v deportment in our personal and private capacities, the fair treating of our bodies and our spirits. The second enlarges our duty in all relations to our neighbor. The third contains the offices of direct religion, and intercourse with God.__
Christian sobriety is all that duty that concerns ourselves in the matter of meat, and drink, and pleasures, and thoughts; and it has within it the duties of, 1. Temperance, 2. Chastity, 3. Humility, 4. Modesty, 5. Content.
It is a using severity, denial and frustration of our appetite, when it grows unreasonable in any of these instances: the necessity of which we shall to best purpose understand, by considering the evil consequences of sensuality, effeminacy, or fondness after carnal pleasures.
Evil consequences of Voluptuousness or Sensuality.
1. A longing after sensual pleasures is a dissolution of the spirit of a man, and makes it loose, soft, and wandering; unapt for noble, wise, or spiritual employments; because the principles upon which pleasure is chosen and pursued are sottish, weak, and unlearned, such as prefer the body before the soul,1 the appetite before reason, sense before the spirit, the pleasures of a short abode before the pleasures of eternity.
2. The nature of sensual pleasure is vain, empty, and un satisfying, biggest always in expectation, and a mere vanity in the enjoying, and leaves a sting and thorn behind it, when it goes off. Our laughing, if it be loud and high, commonly ends in a deep sigh; and all the instances of pleasure have a sting in the tail, though they carry beauty on the face and sweetness on the lip.
3. Sensual pleasure is a great abuse to the spirit of a man, being a kind of fascination or witchcraft, blinding the under standing and enslaving the will. And he that knows he is free-born, or redeemed with the blood of the Son of God, will not easily suffer the freedom of his soul to be entangled and rifled.2
^ 4. It is most contrary to the state of a Christian, whose life is a perpetual exercise, a wrestling and warfare, to which sensual pleasure disables him, by yielding to that enemy with whom he must strive if ever he will be crowned.3 And this argument the apostle intimated: " He that strives for mas- 1 Tu si animum vicisti potius quam animus te, est quod gaudeas. Qui
Trpof aVayicjjv, K.T.\. Epict. c. 29. 2. ed. Schw.
teries is temperate in all things: now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible."4
5. It is by a certain consequence the greatest impediment in the world to martyrdom: that being a fondness, this being a cruelty to the flesh; to which a Christian man, arriving by degrees, must first have crucified the lesser affections: for he that is overcome by little arguments of pain, will hardly con sent to lose his life with torments.
Degrees of Sobriety.
Against this voluptuousness, sobriety is opposed in three degrees.
1. A despite or disaffection to pleasures, or a resolving against all entertainment of the instances and temptations of sensuality; and it consists in the internal faculties of will and understanding, decreeing and declaring against them, disapproving and disliking them, upon good reason and strong resolution.
2. A fight and actual war against all the temptations and offers of sensual pleasure in all evil instances and degrees: and it consists in prayer, in fasting, in cheap diet and hard lodging, and laborious exercises, and avoiding occasions, and using all arts and industry of fortifying the spirit, and making it severe, manly, and Christian.
3. Spiritual pleasure is the highest degree of sobriety; and in the same degree in which we relish and are in love with spiritual delights, the hidden manna,5 with the sweetness of devotion, with the joys of thanksgiving, with rejoicing in the Lord, with the comforts of hope, with the deliciousness of charity and alms-deeds, with the sweetness of a good conscience, with the peace of meekness, and the felicities of a contented spirit; in the same degree we disrelish and loathe the husks of swinish lusts, and the parings of the apples of Sodom, and the taste of sinful pleasures is unsavoury as the drunkard's vomit.
Rules for suppressing Voluptuousness.
The precepts and advices which are of best and of general use in the curing of sensuality, are these:
1. Accustom yourself to cut off all superfluity in the provisions of your life, for our desires will enlarge beyond the
present possession so long as all the things of this world are unsatisfying: if, therefore, you suffer them to extend beyond the measures of necessity or moderated conveniency, they will still swell: but you reduce them to a little compass when you make nature to be your limit. We must more take care that our desires should cease6 than that they should be satisfied: and, therefore, reducing them to narrow scantlings and small proportions is the best instrument to redeem their trouble, and prevent the dropsy, because that is next to a universal denying them: it is certainly a paring off from them all un reasonableness and irregularity. For "whatsoever covets unseemly things, and is apt to swell into an inconvenient bulk, is to be chastened and tempered: and such are sensuality, and a boy," 7 said the philosopher.
2. Suppress your sensual desires in their first approach;8 for then they are least, and your faculties and election are stronger; but if they, in their weakness, prevail upon your strengths, there will be no resisting them when they are increased, and your abilities lessened. " You shall scarce obtain of them to end, if you suffer them to begin."
3. Divert them with some laudable employment, and take off their edge by inadvertency, or a not-attending to them. For, since the faculties of a man cannot at the same time, with any sharpness, attend to two objects, if you employ your spirit upon a book, or a bodily labor, or any innocent and indifferent employment, you have no room left for the present trouble of a sensual temptation. For to this sense it was, that Alexander told the Queen of Caria, that his tutor Leonidas had provided two cooks for him;9 " Hard marches all night, and a small dinner the next day:" these tamed his youthful aptnesses to dissolution, so long as he ate of their provisions.
4. Look upon pleasures, not upon that side that is next the sun, or where they look beauteously; that is, as they come towards you to be enjoyed, for then they paint and smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel and glass gems, and count imagery; but when you have rifled and discomposed
recrere. —
them with enjoying their false beauties, and that they begin to go off, then behold them in their nakedness and Aveariness.10 See, what a sigh and sorrow, what naked unhandsome pro portions, and a filthy carcass, they discover; and the next time they counterfeit, remember what you have already discovered, and be no more abused. And I have known some wise persons have advised to cure the passions and longings of their children by letting them taste of every thing they passionately fancied; for they should be sure to find less in it than they looked for, and the impatience of their being denied would be loosened and made slack: and when our wishings are no bigger than the thing deserves, and our usages of them according to our needs, (which may be obtained by trying what they are, and what good they can do us,) we shall find in all pleasures so little entertainment, that the vanity of the possession will soon reprove the violence of the appetite. And if this permission be in innocent instances it may be of good use: but Solomon tried it in all things, taking his fill of all pleasures, and soon grew weary of them all. The same tiling we may do by reason which we do by experience, if either we will look upon pleasures as we are sure they look when they go off, after their enjoyment; or if we will credit the experience of those men who have tasted them and loathed them.
5. Often consider and contemplate the joys of heaven, that, when they have filled your desires, which are the sails of the soul, you may steer only thither, and never more look back to Sodom. And when your soul dwells above, and looks down upon the pleasures of the world, they seem like things at distance, little and contemptible; and men running after the satisfaction of their sottish appetites seem foolish as fishes, thousands of them running after a rotten worm, that covers a deadly hook; or at the best, but like children with great noise pursuing a bubble rising from a walnut-shell, which ends sooner than the noise,
6. To this the example of Christ and his apostles, of Moses, and all the wise men of all ages of the world, will much help; who, understanding how to distinguish good from evil, did
choose a sad and melancholy way to felicity, rather than the broad, pleasant, and easy path to folly and misery.
But this is but the general. Its first particular is temperance.
Section II — Of Temperance in Eating and Drinking.
SOBRIETY is the bridle of the passions of desire \ and temperance is the bit and curb of that bridle, restraint put into a man's mouth, a moderate use of meat and drink, so as may best consist with our health, and may not hinder but help the works of the soul by its necessary supporting us, and ministering cheerfulness and refreshment.
Temperance consists in the actions of the soul principally: for it is a grace that chooses natural means in order to proper, and natural, and holy ends; it is exercised about eating and drinking, because they are necessary; but therefore it permits the use of them, only as they minister to lawful ends; it does not eat and drink for pleasure, but for need, and for re freshment, which is a part or a degree of need. I deny not that eating and drinking may be, and in healthful bodies always is, with pleasure; because there is in nature no greater pleasure than that all the appetites which God has made should be satisfied: and a man may choose a morsel that is pleasant, (the less pleasant being rejected as being less useful, less apt to nourish,) or more agreeing with an infirm stomach, or when the day is festival by order, or by private joy. In all these cases it is permitted to receive a more free delight, and to design it too, as the less principal: that is, that the chief reason why we choose the more delicious be the serving that end for which such refreshments and choices are permitted. But when delight is the only end, and rests in it self, and dwells there long, then eating and drinking is not a serving of God, but an inordinate action; because it is not in the way to that end whither God directed it. But the choosing of a delicate before a more ordinary dish is to be done as other human actions are, in which there are no degrees and precise natural limits described, but a latitude is indulged; it must be done moderately, prudently, and according to the accounts of wise, religious, and sober men: and then God, who gave us such variety of creatures, and our choice to use
which we will, may receive glory from our temperate use, and thanksgiving; and we may use them indifferently without scruple, and a making them to become snares to us, either by too licentious and studied use of them, or too restrained and scrupulous fear of using them at all, but in such certain circumstances, in which no man can be sure he is not mistaken. But temperance in meat and drink is to be estimated by the following measures.
Measures of Temperance in Eating.
1. Eat not before the time, unless necessity, or charity, or any intervening accident, which may make it reasonable and prudent, should happen. Remember, it had almost cost Jona than his life, because he tasted a little honey before the sun went down, contrary to the king's commandment; and al though a great need which he had excused him from the sin of gluttony, yet it is inexcusable when you eat before the usual time, and thrust your hand into the dish unseasonably, out of greediness of the pleasure, and impatience of the delay.
2. Eat not hastily and impatiently, but with such decent and timely action that your eating be a human act, subject to deliberation and choice, and that you may consider in the eating: whereas, he that eats hastily cannot consider particularly of the circumstances, degrees, and little accidents and chances, that happen in his meal; but may contract many little indecencies, and be suddenly surprised.
3. Eat not delicately or nicely, that is, be not troublesome to yourself or others in the choice of your meats or the delicacy of your sauces. It was imputed as a sin to the sons of Israel, that they loathed manna and longed for flesh: " the quails stunk in their nostrils, and the wrath of God fell upon them." And for the manner of dressing, the sons of Eli were noted of indiscreet curiosity; they would not have the flesh boiled, but raw, that they might roast it with fire. Not that it was a sin to eat it, or desire meat roasted; but that when it was appointed to be boiled, they refused it: which declared an intemperate and a nice palate. It is lawful in all senses to comply with a weak and a nice stomach; but not with a nice and curious palate. When our health requires it, that ought to be provided for; but not so our sensuality and intemperate longings. Whatsoever is set before you, eat; if it be provided
for you, you may eat it, be it never so delicate; and be it plain and common, so it be wholesome, and fit for you, it must not be refused upon curiosity: for every degree of that is a degree of intemperance. Happy and innocent were the ages of our forefathers, who ate herbs and parched corn, and drank the pure stream, and broke their fast with nuts and roots;2 and when they were permitted flesh, ate it only dressed with hunger and fire; and the first sauce they had was bitter herbs, and sometimes bread dipped in vinegar. But in this circumstance, moderation is to be reckoned in proportion to the present customs, to the company, to education, and the judgment of honest and wise persons, and the necessities of nature.
4. Eat not too much: load neither your stomach nor your understanding. "If you sit at a bountiful table, be not greedy upon it, and say not there is much meat on it. Remember that a wicked eye is an evil thing: and what is created more wicked than an eye? Therefore it weeps upon every occasion. Stretch not your hand whithersoever it looks, and thrust it not with him into the dish. A very little is sufficient for a man well nurtured, and he fetches not his wind short upon his bed."
Signs and Effects of Temperance.
We shall best know that we have the grace of temperance by the following signs, which are as so many arguments to engage us, also, upon its study and practice.
1. A temperate man is modest: greediness is unmannerly and rude. And this is intimated in the advice of the son of Sirach, "When you sit among many, reach not your hand out first of all. Leave off first for manners' sake, and be not insatiable, lest you offend." 2. Temperance is accompanied with gravity of deportment: greediness is garish, and rejoices loosely at the sight of dainties.3 3. Sound but moderate sleep is its sign and its effect. Sound sleep comes of moderate eating; he rises early, and his wits are with
him. 4. A spiritual joy and a devout prayer. 5. A sup pressed and seldom anger. 6. A command of our thoughts and passions. 7. A seldom-returning and a never-prevailing temptation. 8. To which add, that a temperate person is not curious of fancies and deliciousness. He thinks not much and speaks not often of meat and drink; has a healthful body and long life, unless it be hindered by some other accident: whereas to gluttony, the pain of watching and choler, the pangs of the belly, are continual company. And therefore Stratonicus said handsomely concerning the luxury of the Rhodians, " They built houses as if they were immortal; but they feasted as if they meant to live but a little while." And Antipater, by his reproach of the old glutton Demades, well expressed the baseness of this sin; saying, that Demades, now old,4 and always a glutton, was like a spent sacrifice, nothing left of him but his belly and his tongue; all the man besides is gone.
Of Drunkenness.
But I desire that it be observed, that because intemperance in eating is not so soon perceived by others as immoderate drinking, and the outward visible effects of it are not either so notorious or so ridiculous, therefore gluttony is not of so great disreputation among men as drunkenness; yet, according to its degree, it puts on the greatness of the sin before God, and is most strictly to be attended to, lest we be surprised by our security and want of diligence; and the intemperance is alike criminal in both, according as the affections are either to the meat or drink. Gluttony is more uncharitable to the body, and drunkenness to the soul, or the understanding part of man; and therefore in Scripture is more frequently forbid den and declaimed against than the other; and sobriety has by use obtained to signify temperance in drinking.
Drunkenness is an immoderate affection and use of drink. That I call immoderate that is besides or beyond that order of good things for which God has given us the use of drink. The ends are, digestion of our meat, cheerfulness and refreshment of our spirits, or any end of health; besides which if we go, or at any time beyond it, it is inordinate and criminal — it is the vice of drunkenness. It is forbidden by our blessed 4 Plutarch, de Cupid. Divit.
Savior in these words:5 " Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness:" surfeiting, that is, the evil effects, the sottishness and remaining stupidity of habitual or of the last night's drunkenness. For Christ forbids both the actual and the habitual intemperance; not only the effect of it, but also the affection to it; for in both there is sin. He that drinks but little, if that little make him drunk, and if he know before hand his own infirmity, is guilty of surfeiting, not of drunkenness.6 But he that drinks much, and is strong to bear it, and is not deprived of his reason violently, is guilty of the sin of drunkenness. It is a sin not to prevent such uncharitable effects upon the body and understanding; and therefore a man that loves not the drink is guilty of surfeiting if he does not watch to prevent the evil effect: and it is a sin, and the greater of the two, inordinately to love or to use the drink, though the surfeiting or violence do not follow. Good there fore is the counsel of the son of Sirach, " Show not your valiantness in wine; for wine has destroyed many."7
Evil Consequents to Drunkenness.
The evils and sad consequents of drunkenness (the consider ation of which are as so many arguments to avoid the sin) are to this sense reckoned by the writers of Holy Scripture, and other wise personages of the world. 1. It causes woes and mischief,8 wounds and sorrow, sin and shame; 9 it makes bitterness of spirit, brawling, and quarrelling; it increases rage and lessens strength; it makes red eyes, and a loose and babbling tongue. 2. It particularly ministers to lust, and yet disables the body; so that in effect it makes man wanton as a satyr, and impotent as age. And Solomon, in enumerating the evils of this vice, adds this to the account,10 "your eyes shall behold strange women, and your heart shall utter perverse things:" as if the drunkard were only desire, and then impatience, muttering and enjoying like an eunuch embracing a woman. 3. It besots and hinders the actions of the
understanding, makes a man brutish in his passions, and a fool in his reason; and differs nothing from madness, but that it is voluntary, and so is an equal evil in nature, and a worse in manners.11 4. It takes off all the guards, and lets loose the reins of all those evils to which aman is by his nature or by his evil customs inclined, and from which he is restrained by rea son and severe principles. Drunkenness calls off the watch men from their towers; and then all the evils that can proceed from a loose heart, and an untied tongue, and a dissolute spirit, and an unguarded, unlimited will, all that we may put upon the accounts of drunkenness. 5. It extinguished and quenches the Spirit of God, for no man can be filled with the Spirit of God and with wine at the same time. And there fore St. Paul makes them exclusive of each other:12 " Be not drunk with wine, in which is excess; but be filled with the Spirit."13 And since Joseph's cup was put into Benjamin's sack, no man had a divining goblet. 6. It opens all the sanctuaries of nature, and discovers the nakedness of the soul, all its weaknesses and follies; it multiplies sins and discovers them; it makes a man incapable of being a private friend or public counsellor. 7. It takes a man's soul into slavery and imprisonment more than any vice whatsoever,14 because it disarms a man of all his reason and his wisdom, whereby he might be cured, and therefore commonly it grows upon him with age; a drunkard being still more a fool and less a man. I need not add any sad examples, since all story and all ages have too many of them. Amnon was slain by his brother Absalom when he was warm and high with wine. Simon, the high priest, and two of his sons, were slain by their bro ther at a drunken feast. Holofernes was drunk when Judith slew him; and all the great things that Daniel spoke of Alex ander 15 were drowned with a surfeit of one night's intemperance: and the drunkenness of Noah and Lot are upon record
Corpus onustum
14 Prov. xxxi. 4.
to eternal ages, that in those early instances, and righteous persons, and less criminal drunkenness than is that of Chiis- £M in this period of the world, God might show that very great evils are prepared to punish this vice; no less than shame, and slavery, and incest; the first upon Noah, the se cond upon one of his sons, and the third in the person of Lot.
Signs of Drunkenness.
But if it be inquired concerning the periods and distinct significations of this crime; and when a man is said to be drunk; to this I answer, that drunkenness is in the same man ner to be judged as sickness. As every illness or violence done to health, in every part of its continuance, is a part or degree of sickness; so is every going off from our natural and common temper and our usual severity of behavior, a degree ot drunkenness. He is not only drunk that can drink no more; for few are so: but he has sinned in a degree of drunkenness who has done any thing towards it beyond his proper measure. But its parts and periods are usually thus reckoned: 1. apish gestures; 2. much talking; 3. immoderate laughing; 4. dulness of sense; 5. scurrility, that is, wanton, or jeering, or abusive language; 6. an useless understanding; 7. stupid sleep; 8. epilepsies, or fallings and reelings, and beastly vomitings. The least of these, even when the tongue begins to be untied, is a degree of drunkenness.
But that we may avoid the sin of intemperance in meats and drinks, besides the former rules of measures, these counsels also may be useful.
Rules for obtaining Temperance.
1. Be not often present at feasts, nor at all in dissolute company, when it may be avoided, for variety of pleasing objects steals away the heart of man; and company is either violent or enticing, and we are weak or complying, or perhaps desirous enough to be abused. But if you be unavoidably or indiscreetly engaged, let not mistaken civility or good-nature engage you either to the temptation of staying, (if you understand your weakness,) or the sin of drinking inordinately.
2. Be severe in your judgment concerning your proportions, and let no occasion make you enlarge far beyond your
ordinary. For a man is surprised by parts; and while he thinks one glass more will not make him drunk, that one glass has disabled him from well discerning his present condition and neighbor danger. " While men think themselves wise, they become fools:" they think they shall taste the aconite and not die, or crown their heads with juice of poppy and not be drowsy; and if they drink off the whole vintage, still they think they can swallow another goblet.16 But remember this, whenever you begin to consider whether you may safely take one draught more, it is then high time to give over. Let that be accounted a sign late enough to break oif; for every rea son to doubt is a sufficient reason to part the company.
3. Come not to table but when your need invites you; and, if you are in health, leave something of your appetite unfilled, something of your natural heat unemployed, that it may secure your digestion, and serve other needs of nature or the spirit.
4. Propound to yourself (if you are in a capacity) a constant rule of living, of eating and drinking, which, though it may not be fit to observe scrupulously, lest it become a snare to your conscience, or endanger your health upon every accidental violence; yet let not your rule be broken often nor much, but upon great necessity and in small degrees.
5. Never urge any man to eat or drink beyond his own limits and his own desires. He that does otherwise is drunk with his brother's surfeit,17 and reels and falls with his in temperance; that is, the sin of drunkenness is upon both their scores, they both lie wallowing in the guilt.
6. Use St. Paul's instruments of sobriety: " Let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breast-plate of faith and love, and, for an helmet, the hope of salvation." Faith, hope, and charity, are the best weapons in the world to fight against imtemperance. The faith of the Mahometans forbids them to drink wine, and they abstain religiously, as the sons of Rechab; and the faith of Christ forbids drunkenness to us, and therefore is infinitely more powerful to suppress this vice, when we remember that we are Christians, and to abstain from drunkenness and gluttony is part of the faith and discipline of Jesus, and that with these vices neither our love to God, nor our hopes of heaven, can possibly consist; and, therefore,
when these enter the heart, the others go out at the mouth; for this is the devil that is cast out by fasting and prayer, which are the proper actions of these graces.
7. As a pursuance of this rule, it is a good advice, that, as we begin and end all our times of eating with prayer and thanksgiving, so, at the meal, we remove and carry up our mind and spirit to the celestial table, often thinking of it, and often desiring it; that, by enkindling your desire to heavenly banquets, you may be indifferent and less passionate for the earthly.
8. Mingle discourses, pious, or, in some sense, profitable, and in all senses charitable and innocent, with your meal, as occasion is ministered.
9. Let your drink so serve your meat as your meat does your health; that it be apt to convey and digest it, and refresh the spirits; but let it never go beyond such a refreshment as may a little lighten the present load of a sad or troubled spirit, never to inconvenience, lightness, sottishness, vanity, or intemperance; and know, that the loosing the bands of the tongue, and the very first dissolution of its duty, is one degree of the intemperance.
10. In all cases be careful that you be not brought under the power of such things which otherwise are lawful enough in the use. " All things are lawful for me; but I will not be brought under the power of any," said St. Paul. And to be perpetually longing, and impatiently desirous of any thing, so that a man cannot abstain from it, is to lose a man's liberty, and to become a servant of meat and drink, or smoke. — And I wish this last instance were more considered by persons who little suspect themselves guilty of intemperance, though their desires are strong and impatient, and the use of it perpetual and unreasonable to all purposes, but that they have made it habitual and necessary, as intemperance itself is made to some men.
1 1. Use those advices which are prescribed as instruments to suppress voluptuousness, in the foregoing section.
Section III — Of Chastity.
READER, stay, and read not the advices of the following section, unless you have a chaste spirit, or desire to be chaste, or at least art apt to consider whether you ought or no. For
there are some spirits so atheistical, and some so wholly possessed with a spirit of uncleanness, that they turn the most prudent and chaste discourses into dirty and filthy apprehensions; like choleric stomachs, changing their very cordials and medicines into bitterness, and, in a literal sense, turning the grace of God into wantonness. They study cases of conscience in the matter of carnal sins, not to avoid, but to learn ways how to offend God and pollute their own spirits; and search their houses with a sunbeam, that they may be instructed in all the corners of nastiness. I have used all the care I could, in the following periods, that I might neither be wanting to assist those that need it, nor yet minister any occasion of fancy or vainer thoughts to those that need them not. If any man will snatch the pure taper from my hand and hold it to the devil, he will only burn his own fingers, but shall not rob me of the reward of my care and good intention, since I have taken heed how to express the following duties, and given him caution how to read them.
Chastity is that duty which was mystically intended by God in the law of circumcision. It is the circumcision of the heart, the cutting off all superfluity of naughtiness, and a suppression of all irregular desires in the matter of sensual or carnal pleasure. I call all desires irregular and sinful that are not sanctified, 1. by the holy institution, or by being with in the protection of marriage; 2. by being within the order of nature; 3. by being within the moderation of Christian modesty. Against the first are fornication, adultery, and all voluntary pollutions of either sex. Against the second are all unnatural lusts and incestuous mixtures. Against the third is all immoderate use of permitted beds, concerning which judgment is to be made, as concerning meats and drinks, there being no certain degree of frequency or intention prescribed to all persons; but it is to be ruled as the other actions of a man, by proportion to the end, by the dignity of the person in the honor and severity of being a Christian, and by other circumstances of which I am to give account.
Chastity is that grace which forbids and restrains all these, keeping the body and soul pure in that state in which it is placed by God, whether of the single or of the married life; concerning which our duty is thus described by St. Paul: " For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you
should abstain from fornication; that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God." l
Chastity is either abstinence or continence. Abstinence is that of virgins or widows; continence, of married persons. Chaste marriages are honorable and pleasing to God; widowhood is pitiable in its solitariness and loss, but amiable and comely when it is adorned with gravity and purity, and not sullied with remembrances of the passed licence, nor with present desires of returning to a second bed. But virginity is a life of angels, the enamel of the soul, the huge advantage of religion, the great opportunity for the retirements of devotion;2 and, being empty of cares, it is full of prayers; being unmingled with the world, it is apt to converse with God; and by not feeling the warmth of a too forward and indulgent nature, flames out with holy fires till it be burning like the cherubim and the most ecstasied order of holy and unpolluted spirits.
Natural virginity, of itself, is not a state more acceptable to God; but that which is chosen and voluntary, in order to the conveniences of religion and separation from worldly encum brances, is therefore better than the married life, not that it is more holy, but that it is a freedom from cares, an opportunity to spend more time in spiritual employments; it is not allayed with businesses and attendances upon lower affairs: and if it be a chosen condition to these ends, it contains in it a vic tory over lusts, and greater desires of religion, and self-denial; and therefore is more excellent than the married life, in that degree in which it has greater religion, and a greater mortification, a less satisfaction of natural desires, and a greater fulness of the spiritual: and just so is to expect that little coronet, or special reward, which God has prepared (extra ordinary and besides the great crown of all faithful souls) for those " who have not defiled themselves with women, but fol low the " virgin " Lamb for ever." 3
But some married persons, even in their marriage, do better please God than some virgins in their state of virginity; they, by giving great example of conjugal affection, by preserving
their faith unbroken, by educating children in the fear of God, by patience and contentedness, and holy thoughts, and the exercise of virtues proper to that state, do not only please God, but do in a higher degree than those virgins whose piety is not answerable to their great opportunities and advantages. However, married persons, and widows, and virgins, are all servants of God, and co-heirs in the inheritance of Jesus, if they live within the restraints and laws of their particular estate chastely, temperately, justly, and religiously.
The Evil Consequents of Uncleanness.
The blessings and proper effects of chastity we shall best understand, by reckoning the evils of uncleanness and carnality.
1. Uncleanness, of all vices, is the most shameful. " The eye of the adulterer waits for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me; and disguises his face. In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the day-time; they know not the light, for the morning is to them as the shadow of death. He is swift as the waters; their portion is cursed in the earth; he beholds not the way of the vineyards."4 Shame is the eldest daughter of uncleanness.5
2. The appetites of uncleanness are full of cares and trouble, and its fruition is sorrow and repentance. The way of the adulterer is hedged with thorns;6 full of fears and jealousies, burning desires and impatient waitings, tediousness of delay, and sufferance of affronts, and amazements of discovery.7
3. Most of its kinds are of that condition that they involve the ruin of two souls; and he that is a fornicator or adulterous steals the soul, as well as dishonours the body, of his neighbor; and so it becomes like the sin of falling Lucifer, who brought a part of the stars with his tail from heaven.
4. Of all carnal sins, it is that alone which the devil takes delight to imitate and counterfeit; communicating with witches and impure persons in the corporal act, but in this only.
5. Uncleanness, with all its kinds, is a vice which has a professed enmity against the body. " Every sin which a man does is without the body; but he that commits fornication sins against his own body."8
6. Uncleanness is hugely contrary to the spirit of government,9 by embasing the spirit of a man, making it effeminate, sneaking, soft, and foolish, without courage, without confidence. David felt this after his folly with Bathsheba; he fell to unkingly arts and stratagems to hide the crime; and he did nothing but increase it, and remained timorous and poor-spirited, till he prayed to God once more to establish him with a free and a princely spirit.10 And no superior dare strictly observe discipline upon his charge, if he has let him self loose to the shame of incontinence.
7. The gospel has added two arguments against uncleanness which were never before used, nor, indeed, could be. Since God has given the Holy Spirit to them that are baptized, and rightly confirmed and entered into covenant with him, our bodies are made temples of the Holy Ghost, in which he dwells; and therefore uncleanness is sacrilege, and defiles a temple. It is St. Paul's argument, " Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?"u and " He that defiles a temple, him will God destroy.12 Therefore glorify God in your bodies;" that is, flee fornication. To which, for the likeness of the argument, add, that " our bodies are members of Christ; and therefore God forbid that we should take the members of Christ, and make them members of a harlot." So that uncleanness dishonours Christ, and dis honors the Holy Spirit: it is a sin against God, and, in this sense, a sin against the Holy Ghost.
8. The next special argument which the gospel ministers, especially against adultery, and for the preservation of the purity of marriage, is, that marriage is by Christ hallowed into a mystery, to signify the sacramental and mystical union of Christ and his church.13 He, therefore, that breaks this knot, which the church and their mutual faith have tied, and, Christ has knit up into a mystery, dishonours a great rite of Christianity, of high, spiritual, and excellent signification.
9. St. Gregory reckons uncleanness to be the parent of these monsters,14 blindness of mind, iriconsideration, precipi tancy or giddiness in actions, self-love, hatred of God, love of the present pleasures, a despite or despair of the joys of religion here, and of heaven hereafter. Whereas, a pure mind
in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and deliberation, sober counsels and ingenuous actions, open deportment and sweet carriage, sincere principles and unprejudicate under standing, love of God and self-denial, peace and confidence, holy prayers and spiritual comfort, and a pleasure of spirit infinitely greater than the sottish and beastly pleasures of unchastity. " For to overcome pleasure is the greatest plea sure: and no victory is greater than that which is gotten over our lusts and filthy inclinations."15
10. Add to all these, the public dishonesty and disreputation that all the nations of the world have cast upon adulterous and unhallowed embraces. Abimelech, to the men of Gerar, made it death to meddle with the wife of Isaac; and Judah condemned Thamar to be burnt for her adulterous conception: and God, besides the law made to put the adulterous person to death, did constitute a settled and constant miracle to dis cover the adultery of a suspected woman,16 that her bowels should burst with drinking the waters of jealousy. The Egyptian law was to cut off the nose of the adulteress, and the offending part of the adulterer. The Locrians put out both the adulterer's eyes. The Germans (as Tacitus reports) placed the adulteress amidst her kindred naked, and shaved her head, and caused her husband to beat her with clubs through the city. The Gortyriaaans crowned the man with wool, to shame him for his effeminacy; and the Cumani caused the woman to ride upon an ass, naked and hooted at, and for ever after called her by an appellative of scorn, " a rider upon the ass:" 17 all nations, barbarous and civil, agreeing in their general design, of rooting so dishonest and shameful a vice from under heaven.
The middle ages of the church were not pleased that the adulteress should be put to death: 18 but in the primitive ages, the civil laws by which Christians were then governed gave leave to the wronged husband to kill his adulterous wife if he took her in the fact:19 but because it was a privilege indulged to men rather than a direct detestation of the crime, a consideration of the injury rather than of the un cleanness, there-
19 Cod. de adulteriis, ad legem Juliam, 1. 1. et Cod. Theod. de adulteriis, c. placuit.
fore it was soon altered; but yet has caused an inquiry, Whether is worse, the adultery of the man or the woman?
The resolution of which case, in order to our present affair, is thus: 1. In respect of the person, the fault is greater in a man than in a woman, who is of a more pliant and easy spirit, and weaker understanding, and has nothing to supply the unequal strengths of men, but the defensative of a passive nature and armour of modesty, which is the natural ornament of that sex. And "it is unjust that the man should demand chastity and severity from his wife Avhich himself will not observe towards her,"20 said the good emperor Antoninus: it is as if the man should persuade his wife to fight against those enemies to which he had yielded himself a prisoner. 2. In respect of the effects and evil consequents, the adultery of the woman is worse, as bringing bastardy into a family, and disinherisons or great injuries to the lawful children, and infinite violations of peace, and murders, and divorces, and all the effects of rage and madness. 3. But in respect of the crime, and as relating to God, they are equal, intolerable, and damnable: and since it is no more permitted to men to have many wives than to \vomen to have many husbands, and that in this respect their privilege is equal, their sin is so too. And this is the case of the question in Christianity. And the church anciently refused to admit such persons to the holy communion, until they had done seven years' penances in fasting, in sackcloth, in severe inflictions and instruments of chastity and sorrow, according to the discipline of those ages.
Acts of Chastity in general.
The actions and proper offices of the grace of chastity in general, are these:
1. To resist all unchaste thoughts: at no hand entertaining pleasure in the unfruitful fancies and remembrances of uncleanness, although no definite desire or resolution be enter tained.
At no hand to entertain any desire,21 or any fantastic imaginative loves, though by shame, or disability, or other circumstance, they be restrained from act.
Poeta.
3. To have a chaste eye and hand: for it is all one with what part of the body we commit adultery; and if a man lets his eye loose and enjoys the lust of that, he is an adulterer.22 "Look not upon a woman to lust after her."23 And supposing all the other members restrained, yet if the eye be permitted to lust, the man can no otherwise be called chaste than he can be called severe and mortified that sits all day long seeing plays and revellings, and out of greediness to fill his eye, neglects his belly. There are some vessels which, if you offer to lift by the belly or bottom, you cannot stir them, but are soon removed if you take them by the ears. It matters not with which of your members you are taken and carried off from your duty and severity.
4. To have a heart and mind chaste and pure; that is, de testing all uncleanness; disliking all its motions, past actions, circumstances, likenesses, discourses: and this ought to be the chastity of virgins and widows, of old persons and eunuchs especially, and generally of all men, according to their several necessities.
5. To discourse chastely and purely;24 with great care declining all indecencies of language, chastening the tongue and restraining it with grace, as vapors of wine are restrained with a bunch of myrrh.
6. To disapprove by an after-act all involuntary and natural pollutions: for if a man delights in having suffered any natural pollution, and with pleasure remembers it, he chooses that which was in itself involuntary; and that which, being natural, was innocent, becoming voluntary, is made sinful.
7. They that have performed these duties and parts of chastity will certainly abstain from all exterior actions of un cleanness, those noonday and midnight devils, those lawless and ungodly worshippings of shame and uncleanness, whose birth is in trouble, whose growth is in folly, and whose end is in shame.
But besides these general acts of chastity, which are common to all states of men and women, there are some few things proper to the severals.
Acts of Virginal Chastity.
1. Virgins must remember, that the virginity of the body is only excellent in order to the purity of the soul; who therefore must consider, that since they are in some measure in a condition like that of angels, it is their duty to spend much of their time in angelical employment; for in the same degree that virgins live more spiritually than other persons, in the same degree is their virginity a more excellent state. But else, it is no better than that of involuntary or con strained eunuchs, a misery and a trouble, or else a mere pri vation, as much without excellency as without mixture.
2. Virgins must contend for a singular modesty; whose first part must be an ignorance in the distinction of sexes, or their proper instruments; or if they accidentally be instructed in that, it must be supplied with an inadvertency or neglect of all thoughts and remembrances of such difference; and the following parts of it must be pious and chaste thoughts, holy language, and modest carriage.
3. Virgins must be retired and unpublic: for all freedom and looseness of society is a violence done to virginity, not in its natural, but in its moral capacity; that is, it loses part of its severity, strictness, and opportunity of advantages, by publishing that person whose work is religion, whose company is angels, whose thoughts must dwell in heaven, and separate from all mixtures of the world.
4. Virgins have a peculiar obligation to charity: for this is the virginity of the soul; as purity, integrity, and separation is of the body: which doctrine we are taught by St. Peter: " Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit to unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart fervently."25 For a virgin that consecrates her body to God, and pollutes her spirit with rage, or impatience, or inordinate anger, gives him what he most hates, a most foul and defiled soul.
These rules are necessary for virgins that offer that state to God, and mean not to enter into the state of marriage; for they that only wait the opportunity of a convenient change, are to steer themselves by the general rules of chastity.
Rules for Widows, or Vidual Chastity.
For widows, the fontanel of whose desires has been opened by the former permissions of the marriage-bed, they must remember,
1. That God has now restrained the former licence, bound up their eyes and shut up their heart into a narrower compass, and has given them sorrow to be a bridle to their desires. A widow must be a mourner; and she that is not cannot so well secure the chastity of her proper state.
2. It is against public honesty to marry another man so long as she is with child by her former husband; and of the same fame it is in a lesser proportion, to marry within the year of mourning; but anciently it was infamous for her to marry till by common account the body was dissolved into its first principle of earth.
3. A widow must restrain her memory and her fancy, not recalling or recounting her former permissions and freer licences with any present delight; for then she opens that sluice which her husband's death and her own sorrow have shut up.
4. A widow that desires her widowhood should be a state pleasing to God, must spend her time as devoted virgins should, in fastings and prayers, and charity.
5. A widow must forbid herself to use those temporal solaces, which in her former estate were innocent, but now are dangerous.
Rules for Married Persons, or Matrimonial Chastity.
Concerning married persons, besides the keeping of their mutual faith and contract with each other, these particulars are useful to be observed.26
1. Although their mutual endearments are safe within the protection of marriage, yet they that have wives or husbands must be as though they had them not; that is, they must have an affection greater to each other than they have to any person in the world, but not greater than they have to God; but that they be ready to part with all interest in each other's person rather than sin against God.
2. In their permissions and licence, they must be sure to
observe the order of nature, and the ends of God. ^ He is an ill husband that uses his wife as a man treats a harlot," 27 having no other end but pleasure. Concerning which our best rule is, that although in this, as in eating and drinking, there is an appetite to be satisfied which cannot be done without pleasing that desire, yet, since that desire and satisfaction was intended by nature for other ends, they should never be separate from those ends, but always be joined with all or one of these ends, "with a desire of children, or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the cares and sadness of household affairs, or to endear each other;" but never with a purpose, either in act or desire, to separate the sensuality from these ends which hallow it. Onan did separate his act from its proper end, and so ordered his embraces that his wife should not conceive, and God punished him.
3. Married persons must keep such modesty and decency of treating each other,28 that they never force themselves into high and violent lusts, with arts and misbecoming devices; always remembering, that those mixtures are most innocent which are most simple and most natural, most orderly and most safe.
4. It is a duty of matrimonial chastity to be restrained and temperate in the use of their lawful pleasures; concerning which, although no universal rule can antecedently be given to all persons any more than to all bodies one proportion of meat and drink, yet married persons are to estimate the degree of their licence according to the following proportions. 1. That it be moderate, so as to consist with health. 2. That it be so ordered as not to be too expensive of time, that precious opportunity of working out our salvation. 3. That when duty is demanded, it be always paid (so far as is in our powers and election) according to the foregoing measures. 4. That it be with a temperate affection, without violent, transporting desires, or too sensual applications. Concerning which a man is to make judgment by proportion to other actions, and the severities of his religion, and the sentences
of sober and wise persons; always remembering, that marriage is a provision for supply of the natural necessities of the body, not for the artificial and procured appetites of the mind. And it is a sad truth, that many married persons, thinking that the flood-gates of liberty are set wide open without measure or restraint, (so they sail in that channel,) have felt the final rewards of intemperance and lust, by their unlawful using of lawful permissions. Only let each of them be temperate, and both of them be modest. Socrates was wont to say, that those women to whom nature had not been indulgent in good features and colors, should make it up themselves with excellent manners; and those who were beautiful and comely should be careful that so fair a body be not polluted with unhandsome usages. To which Plutarch20 adds, that a wife, if she be unhandsome, should consider how extremely ugly she would be if she wanted modesty; but if she be handsome, let her think how gracious that beauty would be if she superadds chastity.
5. Married persons by consent are to abstain from their mutual entertainments at solemn times of devotion; not as a duty of itself necessary, but as being the most proper act of purity, which, in their condition, they can present to God, and being a good advantage for attending their preparation to the solemn duty and their demeanour in it. It is St. Paul's counsel, that, " by consent for a time they should abstain, that they may give themselves to fasting and prayer."30 And though when Christians did receive the holy communion every day,31 it is certain they did not abstain, but had children; yet, when the communion was more seldom, they did with religion abstain from the marriage-bed during the time of their solemn preparatory devotions, as anciently they did from eating and drinking, till the solemnity of the day was past.
tial prayers and in their general confessions, suspect them selves, and accordingly ask a general pardon for all their in decencies, and more passionate applications of themselves in the offices of marriage: that what is lawful and honorable in its kind may not be sullied with imperfect circumstances; or if it be, it may be made clean again by the interruption and recallings of such a repentance, of which such uncertain parts of action are capable.
But, because of all the dangers of a Christian none more pressing and troublesome than the temptations to lust, no enemy more dangerous than that of the flesh, no accounts greater than what we have to reckon for at the audit of concupiscence, there fore it concerns all that would be safe from this death to arm themselves by the following rules, to prevent or to cure all the wounds of our flesh made by the poisoned arrows of lust.
Remedies against Uncleanness.
1. When a temptation of lust assaults you, do not resist it by heaping up arguments against it and disputing with it, considering its offers and its dangers, but fly from it;32 that is, think not at all of it, lay aside all consideration concerning it, and turn away from it by any severe and laudable thought of business. St. Jerome very wittily reproves the Gentile superstition, who pictured the virgin-deities armed with a shield and lance, as if chastity could not be defended without war and direct contention. No; this enemy is to be treated other wise. If you hear it speak, though but to dispute with it, it ruins you; and the very arguments you go about to answer, leave a relish upon the tongue. A man may be burned if. he goes near the tire, though but to quench his house; and by handling pitch, though but to draw it from your clothes, you defile your fingers.
2. Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of your time with severe and useful employment; for lust usually creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed, and the body is at ease. For no easy, healthful, and idle person was ever chaste, if he could be tempted. But of all employments bodily labor is most useful, and of greatest benefit for the driving away the devil.
" Contra lilndinis impctum apprchende fugam, si vis obtinere victoriam. -bt. Aug. Nclla guerra d' amor chi fugc vince.
3. Give no entertainment to the beginnings, the first mo tions and secret whispers of the spirit of impurity. For if you totally suppress it, it dies;33 if you permit the furnace to breathe its smoke and flame out at any vent, it will rage to the consumption of the whole. This cockatrice is soonest crushed in the shell; but if it grows, it turns to a serpent, and a dragon, and a devil.
4. Corporal mortification, and hard usages of our body, has, by all ages of the church, been accounted a good instrument, and of some profit against the spirit of fornication. A spare diet, and a thin coarse table, seldom refreshment, frequent fasts, not violent, and interrupted with returns to ordinary feeding, but constantly little, unpleasant, of wholesome but sparing nourishment: for by such cutting off the provisions of victual, we shall weaken the strengths of our enemy. To which if we add lyings upon the ground, painful postures in prayer, reciting our devotions with our arms extended at full length, like Moses praying against Amalek, or our blessed Savior hanging upon his painful bed of sorrows, the cross, and (if the lust be upon us, and sharply tempting) by inflicting any smart to overthrow the strongest passion by the most violent pain, we shall find great ease for the present, and the resolution and apt sufferance against the future danger. And this was St. Paul's remedy, " J bring my body under; " he used some rudenesses towards it. But it was a great nobleness of chastity which St. Jerome reports of a son of the king of Nicomedia,34 who, being tempted upon flowers and a perfumed bed with a soft violence, but yet tied down to the temptation, and solicited with circumstances of Asian luxury by an im pure courtesan, lest the easiness of his posture should abuse him, spit out his tongue into her face; to represent that no virtue has cost the saints so much as this of chastity.35
5. Fly from all occasions, temptations, loosenesses of company, balls and revellings, indecent mixtures of wanton
dancings, idle talk, private society with strange women, starings upon a beauteous face, the company of women that are singers, amorous gestures, garish and wanton dresses, feasts and liberty, banquets and perfumes,36 wine and strong drinks, which are made to persecute chastity; some of these being the very prologues to lust, and the most innocent of them being but like condited and pickled mushrooms, which, if carefully corrected and seldom tasted, may be harmless, but can never do good; ever remembering that it is easier to die for chastity than to live with it: and the hangman could not ex tort a consent from some persons from whom a lover would have entreated it. For the glory of chastity will easily over come the rudeness of fear and violence; but easiness and softness and smooth temptations creep in, and, like the sun, make a maiden lay by her veil and robe, which persecution, like the northern wind, makes her hold fast and clap close about her.
6. He that will secure his chastity, must first cure his pride and his rage. For often lust is the punishment of a proud man,37 to tame the vanity of his pride by the shame and affronts of unchastity; and the same intemperate heat that makes anger does enkindle lust.
7. If you'are assaulted with an unclean spirit, trust not yourself alone; but run forth into company whose reverence and modesty may suppress, or whose society may divert your thoughts: and a perpetual witness of your conversation is of especial use against this vice, which evaporates in the open air like camphire, being impatient of light and witnesses.
8. Use frequent and earnest prayers to the King of puri ties, the first of virgins, the eternal God, who is of an essential
'Ev rolf p6coi£*Ep(t)Ta,
Krtt T(t>V TTTfpdiv KarCKTYlUV,
Kai vvv taw /.K\WV fiov
ITrfpoTfft yapyaX<£a.— Julian.
- numquid ego a te
purity, that he would be pleased to reprove and cast out the unclean spirit. For beside the blessings of prayer by way of reward, it has a natural virtue to restrain this vice: because a prayer against it is an unwillingness to act it; and so long as we heartily pray against it our desires are secured, and then this devil has no power. This was St. Paul's other remedy: " For this cause I besought the Lord thrice." And there is much reason and much advantage in the use of this instrument; because the main thing that in this affair is to be se cured, is a man's mind.38 He that goes about to cure lust by bodily exercise alone (as St. Paul's phrase is) or mortifications, shall find them sometimes instrumental to it, and incitations of sudden desires, but always insufficient and of little profit; but he that has a chaste mind shall find his body apt enough to take laws; and let it do its worst, it cannot make a sin, and in its greatest violence can but produce a little natural un easiness, not so much trouble as a severe fasting-day, or a hard night's lodging upon boards. If a man be hungry he must eat; and if he be thirsty he must drink in some convenient time, or else he dies: but if the body be rebellious, so the mind be chaste, let it do its worst, if you resolve perfectly not to satisfy it, you can receive no great evil by it. Therefore the proper cure is by application to the spirit and securities of the mind, which can no way so well be secured as by frequent and fervent prayers, and sober resolutions, and severe dis courses. Therefore,
9. Hither bring in succor from consideration of the Di vine presence and of his holy angels, meditation of death, and the passions of Christ upon the cross, imitation of his purities, and of the Virgin Mary, his unspotted and holy mother, and of such eminent saints, who, in their generations, were burning and shining lights, unmingled with such uncleannesses which defile the soul, and who now follow the Lamb whither soever he goes.
10. These remedies are of universal efficacy in all cases extraordinary and violent; but in ordinary and common, the remedy which God has provided, that is, honorable marriage,39 has a natural efficacy, besides a virtue by Divine
38 Mens impudicam facere, non corpus solet. 39 Danda est opera
blessing, to cure the inconveniences which otherwise might afflict persons temperate and sober.
Section IV — Of Humility.
HUMILITY is the great ornament and jewel of Christian religion; that whereby it is distinguished from all the wisdom of the world; it not having been taught by the wise men of the Gentiles, but first put into a discipline, and made part of a religion, by our Lord Jesus Christ, who propounded himself imitable by his disciples so signally in nothing as in the twin __sisters of meekness and humility. Learn of me, for I am meek and humble; and you shall find rest to your souls.
For all the world, all that we are, and all that we have, our bodies and our souls, our actions and our sufferings, our conditions at home, our accidents abroad, our many sins and our seldom virtues, are as so many arguments to make our souls dwell low in the deep valleys of humility.
Arguments against Pride by way of consideration.
1. Our body is weak and impure, sending out more uncleannesses from its several sinks than could be endured, if they were not necessary and natural; and we are forced to pass that through our mouths, which as soon as we see upon the ground, we loathe like rottenness and vomiting.
2. Our strength is inferior to that of many beasts, and our infirmities so many that we are forced to dress and tend horses and asses, that they may help our needs and relieve our wants.
3. Our beauty is in color inferior to many flowers, and in proportion of parts it is no better than nothing; for even a dog has parts as well proportioned and fitted to his purposes, and the designs of his nature, as we have; and when it is most florid and gay, three fits of an ague can change it into yellowness and leanness, and the hollowness and wrinkles of deformity.
4. Our learning is then best when it teaches most humility; but to be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance in the world. For our learning is so long in getting, and so very imperfect, that the greatest clerk knows not the thousandth part of what he is ignorant; and knows so uncertainly what he seems to know, and knows no otherwise than a fool or a child even what is told him or what he guesses at, that except
those things which concern his duty, and which God has revealed to him, which also every woman knows so far as is necessary, the most learned man has nothing to be proud of, unless this be a sufficient argument to exalt him, that he un certainly guesses at some more unnecessary things than many others, who yet know all that concerns them, and mind other things more necessary for the needs of life and common wealths.
5. He that is proud of riches is a fool. For, if he be exalted above his neighbors, because he has more gold, how much inferior is he to a gold mine! How much is he to give place to a chain of pearl, or a knot of diamonds! For certainly that has the greatest excellence from whence he derives all his gallantry and pre-eminence over his neighbors.
6. If a man be exalted by reason of any excellence in his soul, he may please to remember that all souls are equal; and their differing operations are because their instrument is in better tune, their body is more healthful or better tempered; which is no more praise to him than it is that he was born in Italy.
7. He that is proud of his birth is proud of the blessings of others, not of himself: for if his parents were more eminent in any circumstances than their neighbors, he is to thank God, and to rejoice in them; but still he may be a fool, or unfortunate, or deformed; and when himself was born, it was indifferent to him whether his father were a king or a peasant, for he knew not any thing nor chose any thing: and most commonly it is true, that he who boasts of his ancestors, who were the founders and raisers of a noble family, does confess that he has in himself a less virtue and a less honor, and therefore that he is degenerated.
8. Whatsoever other difference there is between you and your neighbor, if it be bad it is your own, but you have no reason to boast of your misery and shame: if it be good, you have received it from God; and then you are more obliged to pay duty and tribute, use and principal to him: and it were a strange folly for a man to be proud of being more in debt than another.
9. Remember what you were before you were begotten. Nothing. What were you in the first regions of your dwelling, before your birth? Uncleanness. What were you for
many years after? Weakness. What in all your life? A great sinner. What in all your excellences? A mere debtor to God, to your parents, to the earth, to all the creatures. But we may, if we please, use the method of the Platonists,1 who reduce all the causes and arguments for humility, which we can take from ourselves, to these seven heads. 1. The spirit of a man is light and troublesome. 2. His body is brutish and sickly. 3. He is constant in his folly and error, and in constant in his manners and good purposes. 4. His labors are vain, intricate, and endless. 5. His fortune is changeable, but seldom pleasing, never perfect. 6. His wisdom comes not till he be ready to die, that is, till he be past using it. 7. His death is certain, always ready at the door, but never far off. Upon these or the like meditations if we dwell, or frequently retire to them, we shall see nothing more reasonable than to be humble, and nothing more foolish than to be proud.
Acts or Offices of Humility.
The grace of humility is exercised by these following rules.
1. Think not yourself better for any thing that happens to you from without. For although you may, by gifts bestowed upon you, be better than another, as one horse is better than another, that is, of more use to others; yet, as you are a man, you have nothing to commend you to yourself but that only by which you are a man, that is, by what you choose and refuse.
2. Humility consists not in railing against yourself, or wearing mean clothes, or going softly and submissively; but in hearty and real evil or mean opinion of yourself. Believe your self an unworthy person heartily, as you believe yourself to be hungry, or poor, or sick, when you are so.
3. Whatsoever evil you say of yourself, be content that others should think to be true: and if you call yourself fool, l)e not angry if another says so of you. For if you think so truly, all men in the world desire other men to be of their opinion; and he is a hypocrite that accuses himself before others, with an intent not to be believed. But he that calls himself intemperate, foolish, lustful, and is angry when his neighbors call him so, is both a false and a proud person.
1 Apuleius de Demon. Socratis.
4. Love to be concealed, and little esteemed:2 be content to want praise, never being troubled when tliou art slighted or undervalued; for you can not undervalue yourself, and if you think so meanly as there is reason, no contempt will seem unreasonable, and therefore it will be very tolerable.
5. Never be ashamed of your birth,3 or your parents, or your trade,4 or your present employment, for the meanness or poverty of any of them; and when there is an occasion to speak of them, such an occasion as would invite you to speak of any thing that pleases you, omit it not, but speak as readily and indifferently of your meanness as of your greatness. Primislaus, the first king of Bohemia, kept his country shoes always by him, to remember from whence he was raised: and Agathocles, by the furniture of his table, confessed that from a potter he was raised to be the king of Sicily.
6. Never speak any thing directly tending to your praise or glory; that is, with a purpose to be commended, and for no other end. If other ends be mingled with your honor, as if the glory of God, or charity, or necessity, or any thing of prudence be your end, you are not tied to omit your discourse or your design, that you may avoid praise, but pursue your end, though praise come along in the company. Only let not praise be the design.
7. When you have said or done any thing for which you receive praise or estimation, take it indifferently and return it to God; reflecting upon him as the giver of the gift, or the blesser of the action, or the aid of the design: and give God thanks for making you an instrument of his glory, for the benefit of others.
8. Secure a good name to yourself by living virtuously and humbly; but let this good name be nursed abroad, and never be brought home to look upon it: let others use it for their own advantage; let them speak of it if they please; but do not you at all use it, but as an instrument to do God glory, and your neighbor more advantage. Let your face, like Moses's, shine to others, but make no looking-glasses for yourself.
9. Take no content in praise when it is offered you; but let your rejoicing in God's gift be allayed with fear, lest this
good bring you to evil. Use the praise as you use your pleasure in eating and drinking; if it comes, make it do drudgery, let it serve other ends, and minister to necessities, and to caution; lest by pride you lose your just praise, which you have deserved, or else, by being praised unjustly, you receive shame into yourself with God and wise men.
10. Use no stratagems and devices to get praise. Some use to inquire into the faults of their own actions or discourses, on purpose to hear that it was well done or spoken, and with out fault;5 others bring the matter into talk, or thrust them selves into company, and intimate and give occasion to be thought or spoke of. These men make a bait to persuade themselves to swallow the hook, till by drinking the waters of vanity they swell and burst.
11. Make no suppletories to yourself, when you are disgraced or slighted, by pleasing yourself with supposing you did deserve praise, though they understood you not, or en viously detracted from you: neither do you get to yourself a private theatre and flatterers,6 in whose vain noises and fantastic praises you may keep up your own good opinion of yourself.
12. Entertain no fancies of vanity and private whispers of this devil of pride; such as was that of Nebuchadnezzar: "Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the honor of my name, and the might of my majesty, and the power of my kingdom? " Some fantastic spirits will walk alone, and dream waking of greatnesses, of palaces, of excellent orations, full theatres, loud applauses, sudden advancement, great for tunes, and so will spend an hour with imaginative pleasure; all their employment being nothing but fumes of pride, and secret indefinite desires and significations of what their heart wishes. In this, although there is nothing of its own nature directly vicious, yet it is either an ill mother or an ill daughter, an ill sign or an ill effect; and, therefore, at no hand consisting with the safety and interests of humility.
13. Suffer others to be praised in your presence, and enter tain their good and glory with delight; but at no hand dis-
parage them, or lessen the report, or make an objection; and think not the advancement of your brother is a lessening of your worth. But this act is also to extend further.
14. Be content that he should be employed, and you laid by as unprofitable; his sentence approved, your rejected; he be preferred, and you fixed in a low employment.
15. Never compare yourself with others, unless it be to ad vance them and to depress yourself. To which purpose, we must be sure, in some sense or other, to think ourselves the worst in every company where we come: one is more learned than I am, another is more prudent, a third more honorable, a fourth more chaste, or he is more charitable, or less proud. For the humble man observes their good, and reflects only upon his own vileness; or considers the many evils of him self certainly known to himself, and the ill of others but by uncertain report; or he considers that the evils done by another are out of much infirmity or ignorance, but his own sins are against a clearer light, and if the other had so great helps, he would have done more good and less evil; or he remembers, that his old sins before his conversion were greater in the nature of the thing, or in certain circumstances, than the sins of other men. So St. Paul reckoned himself the chiefest of sinners, because formerly he had acted the chiefest sin of persecuting the church of God. But this rule is to be used with this caution, that though it be good always to think meanest of ourselves, yet it is not ever safe to speak it, because those circumstances and considerations which determine your thoughts are not known to others as to yourself; and it may concern others that they hear you give God thanks for the graces he has given you. But if you preserve your thoughts and opinions of yourself truly humble, you may with more safety give God thanks in public for that good which cannot or ought not to be concealed.
16. Be not always ready to excuse every oversight, or in discretion, or ill action, but if you are guilty of it confess it plainly; for virtue scorns a lie for its cover, but to hide a sin with it is like a crust of leprosy drawn upon an ulcer. If you are not guilty, (unless it be scandalous,) be not overearnest to remove it, but rather use it as an argument to chastise all greatness of fancy and opinion in yourself; and accustom yourself to bear reproof patiently and contentedly.
and the harsh words of your enemies, as knowing that the anger of an enemy is a better monitor, and represents our faults, or admonishes us of our duty, with more heartiness than the kindness does, or precious balms, of a friend.
17. Give God thanks for every weakness, deformity, and imperfection, and accept it as a favor and grace of God, and an instrument to resist pride, and nurse humility; ever remembering, that when God, by giving you a crooked back, has also made your spirit stoop or less vain, you are more ready to enter the narrow gate of heaven, than by being straight, and standing upright, and thinking highly. Thus the apostles rejoiced in their infirmities, not moral, but natural and accidental, in their being beaten and whipped like slaves, in their nakedness and poverty.
18. Upbraid no man's weakness to him to discomfort him, neither report it to disparage him, neither delight to remember it to lessen him, or to set yourself above him. Be sure never to praise yourself, or to dispraise any man else, unless God's glory or some holy end do hallow it. And it was noted to the praise of Cyrus, that, among his equals in age,7 he would never play at any sport, or use any exercise, in which he knew himself more excellent than they; but in such in which he was unskilful he would make his challenges, lest he should shame them by his victory, and that himself might learn something of their skill, and do them civilities.
19. Besides the foregoing parts and actions, humility teaches us to submit ourselves and all our faculties to God, " to believe all things, to do all things, to suffer all things," which his will enjoins us; to be content in every, state or change, knowing we have deserved worse than the worst we feel, and (as Anytus said to Alcibiades) he has taken but half when he might have taken all: to adore his goodness, to fear his greatness, to worship his eternal and infinite excel lences, and to submit ourselves to all our superiors, in all things, according to godliness, and to be meek and gentle in our conversation towards others.8
Now, although, according to the nature of every grace, this begins as a gift, and is increased like a habit, that is, best by its own acts; yet, besides the former acts and offices of humility, there are certain other exercises and considerations, which are good helps and instruments for the procuring and increasing this grace, and the curing of pride.
Means and Exercises for obtaining and increasing the Grace of Humility.
1. Make confession of your sins often to God; and consider what all that evil amounts to, which you then charge upon yourself. Look not upon them as scattered in the course of a long life, now an intemperate anger, then too full a meal; now idle talking, and another time impatience; but unite them into one continued representation, and remember, that he whose life seems fair, by reason that his faults are scattered at large distances in the several parts of his life, yet, if all his errors and follies were articled against him, the man would seem vicious and miserable; and possibly this exercise, really applied upon your spirit, may be useful.
2. Remember that we usually disparage others upon slight grounds and little instances, and towards them one fly is enough to spoil a whole box of ointment; and if a man be highly commended, we think him sufficiently lessened if we clap one sin or folly or infirmity into his account. Let us, therefore, be just to ourselves, since we are so severe to others, and consider that whatsoever good any one can think or say of us, we can tell him of hundreds of base, and unworthy, and foolish actions, any one of which were enough (we hope) to destroy another's reputation; therefore, let so many be sufficient to destroy our over-high thoughts of ourselves.
3. When our neighbor is cried up by public fame and popular noises, that we may disparage and lessen him, we cry out that the people is a herd of unlearned and ignorant persons, ill judges, loud trumpets, but which never give certain sound: let us use the same art to humble ourselves, and never take delight and pleasure in public reports and acclamations of assemblies, and please ourselves with their judgment,9 of whom, in other the like cases, we affirm that they are mad.
4. We change our opinion of others by their kindness or unkindness towards us. If he be my patron and bounteous, he is wise, he is noble; his faults are but warts, his virtues are mountainous: but if he proves unkind, or rejects our im portunate suit, then he is ill-natured, covetous, and his free meal is called gluttony; that which before we called civility is now very drunkenness, and all he speaks is flat, and dull, and ignorant as a swine. This, indeed, is unjust towards others; but a good instrument if we turn the edge of it upon our selves. We use ourselves ill, abusing ourselves with false principles, cheating ourselves with lies and pretences, stealing the choice and election from our wills, placing voluntary ignorance in our understandings, denying the desires of the spirit, setting up a faction against every noble and just desire, the least of which, because we should resent up to reviling the injurious person, it is but reason we should, at least, not flatter ourselves with fond and too kind opinions.
5. Every day call to mind some one of your foulest sins, or the most shameful of your disgraces, or the indiscreetest of your actions, or any thing that did then most trouble you, and apply it to the present swelling of your spirit and opinion, and it may help to allay it.
6. Pray often for his grace with all humility of gesture and passion of desire, and in your devotion interpose many acts of humility, by Avay of confession and address to God, and reflection upon yourself.
7. Avoid great offices and employments, and the noises of worldly honor.10 For in those states, many times so many ceremonies and circumstances will seem necessary, as will destroy the sobriety of your thoughts. If the number of your servants be fewer, and their observances less, and their reverences less solemn, possibly they will seem less than your dignity; and if they be so much and so many, it is likely they will be too big for your spirit. And here be you very careful, lest you be abused by a pretence, that you would use your great dignity as an opportunity of doing great good. For sup posing it might be good for others, yet it is not good for you; they may have encouragement in noble things from you, and, by the same instrument, you may yourself be tempted to
pride and vanity. And certain it is, God is as much glorified by your example of humility in a low or temperate condition as by your bounty in a great and dangerous.
8. Make no reflex acts upon your own humility, nor upon any other grace with which God has enriched your soul. For, since God often hides from his saints and servants the sight of those excellent things by which they shine to others, (though the dark side of the lantern be toward themselves,) that he may secure the grace of humility, it is good that you do so yourself: and if you behold a grace of God in you, remember to give him thanks for it, that you may not boast in that which is none of your own; and consider how you have sullied it by handling it with dirty fingers, with your own imperfections, and with mixture of unhandsome circumstances. Spiritual pride is very dangerous, not only by reason it spoils so many graces, by which we drew near to the kingdom of God, but also because it so frequently creeps upon the spirit of holy persons. For it is no wonder for a beggar to call himself poor, or a drunkard to confess that he is no sober person; but for a holy person to be humble, for one whom all men esteem a saint to fear lest himself become a devil, and to observe his own danger, and to discern his own infirmities, and make discovery of his bad adherences, is as hard as for a prince to submit himself to be guided by tutors, and make himself subject to discipline, like the meanest of his servants.
9. Often meditate upon the effects of pride on one side, and humility on the other. First, That pride is like a canker, and destroys the beauty of the fairest flowers, the most excel lent gifts and graces; but humility crowns them all. Secondly, That pride is a great hinderance to the perceiving the things of God,11 and humility is an excellent preparative and instrument of spiritual wisdom. Thirdly, That pride hinders the acceptation of our prayers, but " humility pierces the clouds, and will not depart till the Most High shall regard." Fourthly, That humility is but a speaking truth, and all pride is a lie. Fifthly, That humility is the most certain way to real honor, and pride is ever affronted or despised. Sixthly, That pride turned Lucifer into a devil, and humility exalted the Son of God above every name, and placed him eternally at the right hand of his Father. Seventhly, That "God resists the
proud," 12 professing open defiance and hostility against such persons, but " gives grace to the humble;" grace and pardon, remedy and relief against misery and oppression, content in all conditions, tranquillity of spirit, patience in afflictions, love abroad, peace at home, and utter freedom from contention, and the sin of censuring others, and the trouble of being censured themselves. For the humble man will not "judge his brother for the mote in his eye," being more troubled at " the beam in his own eye;" and is patient and glad to be reproved, because himself has cast the first stone at himself, and there fore wonders not that others are of his mind.
10. Remember that the blessed Savior of the world has done more to prescribe, and transmit, and secure this grace, than any other;13 his whole life being a great continued example of humility, a vast descent from the glorious bosom of his Father, to the womb of a poor maiden, to the form of a servant, to the miseries of a sinner, to a life of labor, to a state of poverty, to a death of malefactors, to the grave of death, and the intolerable calamities which we deserved; and it were a good design, and yet but reasonable, that we should be as humble in the midst of our greatest imperfections and basest sins, as Christ was in the midst of his fulness of the Spirit, great wisdom, perfect life, and most admirable virtues.
1 1. Drive away all flatterers from your company, and at no hand endure them; for he that endures himself so to be abused by another is not only a fool for entertaining the mockery, but loves to have his own opinion of himself to be heightened and cherished.
12. Never change your employment for the sudden coming of another to you; but if modesty permits, or discretion, appear to him that visits you the same that you were to God and yourself in your privacy. But if you were walking or sleeping, or in any other innocent employment or retirement, snatch not up a book to seem studious, nor fall on your knees to seem devout, nor alter any thing to make him believe you better employed than you were.
13. To the same purpose it is of great use, that he who,-ould preserve his humility should choose some spiritual
person to whom he shall oblige himself to discover his very
thoughts and fancies, every act of his, and all his intercourse
12 James iv. 6. « John xiii. 15.
with others, in which there may be danger; that by such an openness of spirit he may expose every blast of vain-glory, every idle thought, to be chastened and lessened by the rod of spiritual discipline; and he that shall find himself tied to confess every proud thought, every vanity of his spirit, will also perceive they must not dwell with him, nor find any kindness from him; and, besides this, the nature of pride is so shameful and unhandsome, that the very discovery of it is a huge mortification and means of suppressing it. A man would be ashamed to be told that he inquires after the faults of his last oration or action on purpose to be commended; and, therefore, when the man shall tell his spiritual guide the same shameful story of himself, it is very likely he will be humbled, and heartily ashamed of it.
14. Let every man suppose what opinion he should have of one that should spend his time in playing with drum-sticks and cockle-shells, and that should wrangle all day long with a little boy for pins, or should study hard and labor to cozen a child of his gauds; and who would run into a river, deep and dangerous, with a great burden upon his back, even then when he were told of the danger, and earnestly impor tuned not to do it; and let him but change the instances and the person, and he shall find that he has the same reason to think as bad of himself, who pursues trifles with earnestness, spending his time in vanity, and his " labor for that which profits not;" who, knowing the laws of God, the rewards of virtue, the cursed consequents of sin, that it is an evil spirit that tempts him to it, a devil, one that hates him, that longs extremely to ruin him; that it is his own destruction that he is then working; that the pleasures of Ids sin are base and brutish, unsatisfying in the enjoyment, soon over, shameful in their story, bitter in the memory, painful in the effect here, and intolerable hereafter and for ever: yet in despite of all this, he runs foolishly into his sin and his ruin, merely because he is a fool, and winks hard, and rushes violently like a horse into the battle, or like a madman to his death. He that can think great and good things of such a person, the next step may court the rack for an instrument of pleasure, and admire a swine for wisdom, and go for counsel to the prodigal and trifling grasshopper.
After the use of these and such like instruments and con-
siderations, if you would try how your soul is grown, you shall know that humility, like the root of a goodly tree, is thrust very far into the ground by these goodly fruits which appear above ground.
Signs of Humility.
\. The humble man trusts not to his own discretion, but in matters of concernment relies rather upon the judgment of his friends, counsellors, or spiritual guides. 2. He does not I>ertinaciously pursue the choice of his own will, but in all things lets God choose for him, and his superiors, in those things which concern them. 3. He does not murmur against commands.14 4. He is not inquisitive into the reasonableness of indifferent and innocent commands, but believes their command to be reason enough in such cases to exact his obedience. 6. He lives according to a rule, and with compliance to pub lic customs, without any affectation or singularity. 6. He is meek and indifferent in all accidents and chances. 7. He patiently bears injuries.15 8. He is always unsatisfied in his own conduct, resolutions, and counsels. 9. He is a great lover of good men, and a praiser of Avise men, and a censurer of no man. 10. He is modest in his speech, and reserved in his laughter. 11. He fears when he hears himself commended, lest God make another judgment concerning his actions than men do. 1 2. He gives no pert or saucy answers when he is reproved, whether justly or unjustly. 1 3. He loves to sit down in private, and, if he may, he refuses the temptation of offices and new honors. 14. He is ingenuous, free, and open, in his actions and discourses. 15. He mends his fault, and gives thanks, when he is admonished. 16. He is ready to do good offices to the murderers of his fame, to his slanderers, back biters, and detractors, as Christ washed the feet of Judas. 17. And is contented to be suspected of indiscretion, so before God he may be really innocent, and not offensive to his neighbor, nor wanting to his just and prudent interest.
SKCT. V. Of Modesty.
Section V — Of Modesty
MODESTY is the appendage of sobriety, and is to chastity, to temperance, and to humility, as the fringes are to a garment. It is a grace of God, that moderates the over-activeness and
llier.
curiosity of the mind, and orders the passions of the body and external actions, and is directly opposed to curiosity, to boldness, to indecency. The practice of modesty consists in these following rules.
Acts and Duties of Modesty, as it is opposed to Curiosity.1
1. Inquire not into the secrets of God,'2 but be content to learn your duty according to the quality of your person or employment: that is, plainly, if you are not concerned in the conduct of others; but if you are a teacher, learn it so as may best enable you to discharge your office. God's commandments were proclaimed to all the world; but God's counsels are to himself and to his secret ones, when they are admitted within the veil.
2. Inquire not into the things which are too hard for you, but learn modestly to know your infirmities and abilities;3 and raise not your mind up to inquire into mysteries of state, or the secrets of government, or difficulties theological, if your employment really be, or your understanding be judged to be, of a lower rank.
3. Let us not inquire into the affairs of others that concern us not, but be busied within ourselves and our own spheres; ever remembering that to pry into the actions or interests of other men not under our charge, may minister to pride, to tyranny, to uncharitableness, to trouble, but can never consist with modesty; unless where duty or the mere intentions of charity and relation do warrant it.
4. Never listen at the doors or windows:4 for, besides that it contains in it danger and a snare, it is also an invading my neighbor's privacy, and a laying that open which he there fore enclosed, that it might not be open. Never ask what he carries covered so curiously; for it is enough that it is covered curiously. Hither, also, is reducible that we never open letters without public authority, or reasonable presumed leave, or great necessity, or charity.
Every man has in his own life sins enough, in his own mind trouble enough, in his own fortune evils enough, and in performance of his offices failings more than enough, to enter tain his own inquiry; so that curiosity after the affairs of others cannot be without envy and an evil mind. What is it to me, if my neighbor's grandfather were a Syrian, or his grandmother illegitimate; or that another is indebted five Thousand pounds, or whether his wife be expensive? But commonly curious persons, or (as the apostle's phrase is) "busybodies," are not solicitous or inquisitive into the beauty and order of a well-governed family, or after the virtues of an excellent person; but if there be any thing for which men keep locks and bars, and porters, things that blush to see the light, and either are shameful in manners, or private in nature, these things are their care and their business. But if great things will satisfy our inquiry, the course of the sun and moon, the spots in their faces, the firmament of heaven, and the sup posed orbs, the ebbing and flowing of the sea, are work enough for us: or if this be not, let him tell me whether the number of the stars be even or odd, and when they began to be so; since some ages have discovered new stars which the former knew not, but might have seen if they had been where now they are fixed. If these be too troublesome, search lower, and tell me why this turf this year brings forth a daisy, and the next year a plantain, why the apple bears his seed in his heart, and wheat bears it in his head: let him tell why a graft, taking nourishment from a crab-stock, shall have a fruit more noble than its nurse and parent: let him say why the best of oil is at the top, the best of wine in the middle, and the best of honey at the bottom, otherwise than it is in some liquors.that are thinner, and in some that are thicker. But these tilings are not such as please busy-bodies; they must feed upon tragedies, and stories of misfortunes and crimes: and yet tell them ancient stories of the ravishment of chaste maid ens, or the debauchment of nations, or the extreme poverty of learned persons, or the persecutions of the old saints, or the changes of government, and sad accidents happening in royal families among the Arsacida?, the Caesars, the Ptolemies, these were enough to scratch the itch of knowing sad stories; but unless you tell them something sad and new, something that is done within the bounds of their own knowledge or relation,
it seem tedious and unsatisfying; which shows plainly, it is an evil spirit: envy and idleness married together, and begot curiosity. Therefore Plutarch rarely well compares curious and inquisitive ears to the execrable gates of cities, out of which only malefactors and hangmen and tragedies pass — nothing that is chaste or holy. If a physician should go from house to house unsent for, and inquire what woman has a cancer in her bowels, or what man has a fistula in his colicgut, though he could pretend to cure it, he would be almost as unwelcome as the disease itself; and therefore it is inhuman to- inquire after crimes and disasters without pretence of amending them, but only to discover them. We are not angry with searchers and publicans, when they look only on public merchandise; but when they break open trunks, and pierce vessels, and unrip packs, and open sealed letters.
Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit; and adultery itself, in its principle, is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envying of, another man's en closed pleasures; and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor. But these inquisitions are seldom without danger, never without baseness; they are neither just, nor honest, nor delightful, and very often useless to the curious inquirer. For men stand upon their guards against them, as they secure their meat against harpies and cats, laying all their counsels and secrets out of their way; or as men clap their garments close about them, when the searching and saucy winds would discover their nakedness; as knowing that what men willingly hear they do willingly speak of. Knock, therefore, at the door before you enter upon your neighbor 's privacy; and remember, that there is no difference between entering into his house, and looking into it.
Acts of Modesty as it is opposed to Boldness.5
1. Let us always bear about us such impressions of reverence and fear of God as to tremble at his voice, to express our apprehensions of his greatness in all great accidents, in popular judgments, loud thunders, tempests, earthquakes; not only for fear of being smitten ourselves, or that we are concerned in the accident, but also that we may humble our-
selves before his Almightiness, and express that infinite distance between his infiniteness and our weaknesses, at such times especially when he gives such visible arguments of it. He that is merry and airy at shore when he sees a sad and a loud tempest on the sea, or dances briskly when God thunders from heaven, regards not when God speaks to all the world, but is possessed with a firm immodesty.
2. Be reverent, modest, and reserved in the presence of your betters, giving to all according to their quality their titles of honor, keeping distance, speaking little, answering perti nently, not interposing without leave or reason, not answering to a question propounded to another; and ever present to your superiors the fairest side of your discourse, of your temper, of your ceremony, as being ashamed to serve excellent persons with unhandsome intercourse.
3. Never lie before a king or a great person, nor stand in a lie, when you are accused; nor offer to justify what is indeed a fault, but modestly be ashamed of it, ask pardon, and make amends.6
4. Never boast of your sin, but at least lay a veil upon your nakedness and shame,7 and put your hand before your eyes, that you may have this beginning of repentance, to believe your sin to be your shame. For he that blushes not at his crime, but adds shamelessness to his shame, has no instrument left to restore him to the hopes of virtue.
5. Be not confident and affirmative in an uncertain matter, but report things modestly and temperately, according to the degree of that persuasion which is, or ought to be, begotten in you by the efficacy of the authority, or the reason inducing you.
6. Pretend not to more knowledge than you have, but be content to seem ignorant where you are so, lest you are either brought to shame, or retire into shamelessness.8
Acts of Modesty as it is opposed to Indecency.9 1. In your prayers, in churches and places of religion, use
Abscondunt spurcashaec monumenta lupas. — Mart. lib. i. Ep. 35. 1 Ecclus. iii. 25. 9 Kooya6r//£, tvrat,ia or ivTrptTrtia.
reverent postures, great attention, grave ceremony, the lowest gestures of humility, remembering that we speak to God, in our reverence to whom we cannot possibly exceed; but that the expression of this reverence be according to law or custom, and the example of the most prudent and pious persons; that is, let it be the best in its kind to the best of essences.
2. In all public meetings, private addresses, in discourses, in journeys, use those forms of salutation, reverence, and decency, which the custom prescribes, and is usual among the most sober persons; giving honor to whom honor belongs, taking place of none of your betters, and in all cases of question concerning civil precedency, giving it to any one that will take it, if it be only your own right that is in question.
3. Observe the proportion of affections in all meetings and to all persons: be not merry at a funeral, nor sad upon a festival; but rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
4. Abstain from wanton and dissolute laughter, petulant and uncomely jests, loud talking, jeering, and all such actions, which in civil account are called indecencies and incivilities.
5. Towards your parents use all modesty of duty and hum ble carriage; towards them and all your kindred, be severe in the modesties of chastity; ever fearing lest the freedoms of natural kindness should enlarge into any neighborhood of unhandsomeness. For all incestuous mixtures, and all circumstances and degrees towards it, are the highest violations of modesty in the world: for therefore incest is grown to be so high a crime, especially in the last periods of the world, because it breaks that reverence which the consent of all nations and the severity of human laws has enjoined towards our pa rents and nearest kindred, in imitation of that law which God gave to the Jews in prosecution of modesty in this instance.
6. Be a curious observer of all those things which are of good report, and are parts of public honesty.10 For public fame, and the sentence of prudent and public persons, is the measure of good and evil in things indifferent; and charity requires us to comply with those fancies and affections which are agreeable to nature, or the analogy of virtue, or public laws, or old customs. It is against modesty for a woman to marry a second husband as long as she bears a burden by the first;
10 Philip, iv. 8.
or to admit a second love while her funeral tears are not wiped from her cheeks. It is against public honesty to do some lawful actions of privacy in public theatres, and therefore in such cases retirement is a duty of modesty.11
7. Be grave, decent, and modest, in your clothing and ornament: never let it be above your condition, not always equal to it, never light or amorous, never discovering a nakedness through a thin veil, which you pretend to hide, never to lay a snare for a soul; but remember what becomes a Chris tian, professing holiness, chastity, and the discipline of the Holy Jesus: and the first effect of this let your servants feel by your gentleness and aptness to be pleased with their usual diligence, and ordinary conduct. For the man or woman that is dressed with anger and impatience,12 wears pride under their robes, and immodesty above.
8. Hither, also, is to be reduced singular and affected walking, proud, nice, and ridiculous gestures of body, painting and lascivious dressings: all which together God reproves by the prophet: " The Lord says, Because the daughters of Sion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and make a tinkling with their feet; therefore the Lord will smite her with a scab of the crown of the head, and will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments."13 And this duty of modesty, in this instance, is expressly enjoined to all Christian women by St. Paul: " That women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearl, or costly array, but (which becomes women professing godliness) with good works."14
9. As those meats are to be avoided which tempt our stomachs beyond our hunger, so, also, should prudent persons decline all such spectacles, relations, theatres, loud noises and outcries, which concern us not, and are besides our natural or moral interest. Our senses should not, like petulant and wanton girls, wander into markets and theatres without just
employment; but when they are sent abroad by reason, return quickly with their errand, and remain modestly at home under their guide, till they be sent again.15
10. Let all persons be curious in observing modesty towards themselves, in the handsome treating their own body, and such as are in their power, whether living or dead. Against this rule they offend who expose to others their own, or pry into others' nakedness beyond the limits of necessity, or where a leave is not made holy by a permission from God. It is also said, that God was pleased to work a miracle about the body of Epiphanius to reprove the immodest curiosity of an unconcerned person who pried too near, when charitable people were composing it to the grave. In all these cases and particulars, although they seem little, yet our duty and concernment is not little. Concerning which I use the words of the son of Sirach, " He that despises little things, shall perish by little and little."
Section VI — Of Contentedness in all Estates and Accidents.
VIRTUES and discourses are, like friends, necessary in all for tunes; but those are the best, which are friends in our sad nesses, and support us in our sorrows and sad accidents: and in this sense, no man that is virtuous can be friendless; nor has any man reason to complain of the Divine providence, or accuse the public disorder of things, or his own infelicity, since God has appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world, and that is a contented spirit: for this alone makes a man pass through fire, and not be scorched; through seas, and not be drowned,, through hunger and nakedness, and
want nothing. For since all the evil in the world consists in
the disagreeing between the object and the appetite, as when a man has what he desires not, or desires what he has not, or desires amiss; he that composes his spirit to the present accident, has variety of instances for his virtue, but none to trouble him, because his desires enlarge not beyond his present fortune: and a wise man is placed in the variety of chances, like the nave or centre of a wheel, in the midst of all the circumvolutions and changes of posture, without violence or change, save that it turns gently in compliance with its changed parts, and is indifferent which part is up, and which is 15 CEdipum curiositas in extremas conjecit calamitates. — Pint.
down; for there is some virtue or other to be exercised, what ever happens, either patience or thanksgiving, love or fear, moderation or humility, charity or contentedness, and they are every one of them equally in order to his great end and im mortal felicity: and beauty is not made by white or red, by black eyes and a round face, by a straight body and a smooth skin; but by a proportion to the fancy. No rules can make amiability; our minds and apprehensions make that: and so is our felicity; and we may be reconciled to poverty and a low fortune, if we suffer contentedness and the grace of God to make the proportions. For no man is poor that does not think himself so: but if, in a full fortune, with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition.1 But because this grace of contentedness was the sum of all the old moral philosophy, and a great duty in Chris tianity, and of most universal use in the whole course of our lives, and the only instrument to ease the burdens of the world and the enmities of sad chances, it will not be amiss to press it by the proper arguments by which God has bound it upon our spirits; it being fastened by reason and religion, by duty and interest, by necessity and conveniency, by example, and by the proposition of excellent rewards, no less than peace and felicity.
1. Contentedness in all estates is a duty of religion; it is the great reasonableness of complying with the Divine Pro vidence, which governs all the world, and has so ordered us in the administration of his great family. He were a strange fool that should be angry because dogs and sheep need no shoes, and yet himself is full of care to get some. God has supplied those needs to them by natural provisions, and to you by an artificial: for he has given you reason to learn a trade, or some means to make or buy them, so that it only differs in the manner of our provision: and which had you rather want, shoes or reason? and my patron, that has given me a farm, is freer to me than if he gives a loaf ready baked. But, however, all these gifts come from him, and therefore it is fit he should dispense them as he pleases; and if we murmur here, we may, at the next melancholy, be troubled that God did not make us to be angels or stars. For if that which we
are or have do not content us, we may be troubled for every thing in the world which is beside our being or our possessions.
God is the master of the scenes; we must not choose which part we shall act; it concerns us only to be careful that we do it well, always saying, " If this please God, let it be as it is:"2 and we, who pray that God's will may be done in earth as it is in heaven, must remember that the angels do whatsoever is commanded them, and go wherever they are sent, and refuse no circumstances; and if their employment be crossed by a higher decree, they sit down in peace, and rejoice in the event; and when the angel of Judea could not prevail in behalf of the people committed to his charge,3 because the angel of Persia opposed it, he only told the story at the command of God, and was as content, and worshipped with as great an ecstasy in his proportion, as the prevailing spirit. Do you so likewise: keep the station where God has placed you, and you shall never long for things without, but sit at home, feasting upon the Divine Providence and your own reason, by which we are taught that it is necessary and reasonable to submit to God.
For is not all the world God's family? Are not we his creatures? Are we not as clay in the hand of the potter? Do we not live upon his meat, and move by his strength, and do our work by his light? Are we any thing but what we are from him? And shall there be a mutiny among the flocks and herds, because their lord or their shepherd chooses their pastures, and suffers them not to wander into deserts and unknown ways? If we choose, we do it so foolishly that we cannot like it long, and most commonly not at all: but God, who can do what he pleases, is wise to choose safely for us, affectionate to comply with our needs, and powerful to execute all his wise decrees. Here, therefore, is the wisdom of the contented man, to let God choose for him; for when we have given up our wills to him, and stand in that station of the battle where our great General has placed us, our spirits must needs rest while our conditions have for their security the power, the wisdom, and the charity of God.
2. Contentedness in all accidents brings great peace of spirit, and is the great and only instrument of temporal felicity. It removes the sting from the accident, and makes a
man not to depend upon chance and the uncertain dispositions of men for his well-being, but only on God and his own spirit. We ourselves make our fortunes good or bad;4 and when God lets loose a tyrant upon us, or a sickness, or scorn, or a lessened fortune, if we fear to die, or know not to be patient, or are proud, or covetous, then the calamity sits heavy on us. But if we know how to manage a noble principle, and fear not death so much as a dishonest action, and think impatience a worse evil than a fever, and pride to be the biggest dis grace, and poverty to be infinitely desirable before the torments of covetousness; then we who now think vice to be so easy, and make it so familiar, and think the cure so impossible, shall quickly be of another mind, and reckon these accidents among things eligible.
But no man can be happy that has great hopes and great fears of things without, and events depending upon other men, or upon the chances of fortune. The rewards of virtue are certain, and our provisions for our natural support are certain; or if we want meat till we die, then we die of that disease — and there are many worse than to die with an atrophy or consumption, or unapt and coarser nourishment. But he that suffers a transporting passion concerning things Avithin the power of others, is free from sorrow and amazement no longer than his enemy shall give him leave; and it is ten to one but he shall be smitten then and there where it shall most trouble him; for so the adder teaches us where to strike, by her curious and fearful defending of her head. The old Stoics, when you told them of a sad story, would still answer, rl TT?OQ pi; " What is that to me? " Yes, for the tyrant has sentenced you also to prison. Well, what is that? He will put a chain upon my leg; but he cannot bind my soul. No; but he will kill you. Then I will die. If presently, let me go, that I may presently be freer than himself: but if not till anon, or to-morrow, I will dine first, or sleep, or do what reason or nature calls for, as at other times. This, in Gentile philosophy, is the same with the discourse of St. Paul,5 " I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, with it to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed,
4 'O 3-«t»c rkQiiKt, Km tyrimv, a TI djaQbv Z-iXug, irapd veavrcv XaSt.
both to be full and to be. hungry; both to abound and suffer need."0
We are in the world like men playing at tables; the chance is not in our power, but to play it is; and when it is fallen we must manage it as we can: and let nothing trouble us, but when we do a base action, or speak like a fool, or think wickedly, — these things God has put into our powers; but concerning those things which are wholly in the choice of another, they cannot fall under our deliberation, and there fore neither are they fit for our passions. My fear may make me miserable, but it cannot prevent what another has in his power and purpose; and prosperities can only be enjoyed by them who fear not at all to lose them; since the amazement and passion concerning the future takes off all the pleasure of the present possession. Therefore, if you have lost your land, do not also lose your constancy; and if you must die a little sooner, yet do not die impatiently. For no chance is evil to him that is content: and to a man nothing is miserable unless it be unreasonable.7 No man can make another man to be his slave unless he has first enslaved himself to life and death, to pleasure or pain, to hope or fear: command these passions, and you are freer than the Parthian kings.
Instruments or Exercises to procure Contentcdness.
Upon the strength of these premises, we may reduce this virtue to practice by its proper instruments first, and then by some more special considerations or arguments of content.
1, When any thing happens to our displeasure, let us endeavor to take off its trouble by turning it into spiritual or artificial advantage, and handle it on that side in which it may be useful to the designs of reason; for there is nothing but has a double handle, or at least we have two hands to apprehend it. When an enemy reproaches us, let us look on him as an impartial relater of our faults, for he will tell you truer than your fondest friend will; and you may call them precious balms, though they break your head, and forgive his anger, while you make use of the plainness of his declamation. " The ox, when he is weary, treads surest: " and if there be nothing else in the disgrace, but that it makes us to
walk warily, and tread sure for fear of our enemies, that is better than to be flattered into pride and carelessness. This is the charity of Christian philosophy, which expounds the sense of the Divine providence fairly, and reconciles us to it by a charitable construction: and we may as well refuse all physic, if we consider it only as unpleasant in the taste; and we may find fault with the rich valleys of Thasus, because they are circled by sharp mountains: but so, also, we may be in charity with every unpleasant accident, because, though it taste bitter, it is intended for health and medicine.
If, therefore, you fall from your employment in public, take sanctuary in an honest retirement, being indifferent to your gain abroad, or your safety at home. If you are out of favor with your prince, secure the favor of the King of kings, and then there is no harm come to you. And when Zeno Citiensis lost all his goods in a storm, he retired to the studies of philosophy, to his short cloak and a severe life, and gave thanks to fortune for his prosperous mischance. When the north wind blows hard, and it rains sadly, none but fools sit down in it and cry; wise people defend themselves against it with a warm garment, or a good fire and a dry roof. When a storm of a sad mischance beats upon our spirits, turn it into some advantage by observing where it can serve another end, either of religion or prudence, of more safety or less envy: it will turn into something that is good, if we list to make it so; at least it may make us weary of the world's vanity, and take off our confidence from uncertain riches, and make our spirits to dwell in those regions where content dwells essentially. If it does any good to our souls, it has made more than sufficient recompence for all the temporal affliction. He that threw a stone at a dog, and hit his cruel step-mother, said, that although he intended it otherwise, yet the stone was not quite lost; and if we fail in the first design, if we bring it home to another equally to content us, or more to profit us, then we have put our conditions past the power of chance; and this was called, in the old Greek comedy, " a being re venged on fortune by becoming philosophers," and turning the chance into reason or religion: for so a wise man shall overrule his stars, and have a greater influence upon his own content than all the constellations and planets of the firmament.
2. Never compare your condition with those above you;
but, to secure your content, look upon those thousands with whom you would not, for any interest, change your fortune and condition. A soldier must not think himself unprosperous if he be not successful as the son of Philip, or cannot grasp a fortune as big as the Roman empire. Be content that you are not lessened as was Pyrrhus, or, if you are, that you are not routed like Crassus; and when that comes to you, it is a great prosperity that you are not caged and made a spectacle, like Bajazet, or your eyes were not pulled out, like Zedekiah's, or that you were not flayed alive, like Valentinian. If you admire the greatness of Xerxes, look also on those that digged the mountain Atho, or whose ears and noses were cut off because the Hellespont carried away the bridge. It is a fine thing (you think) to be carried on men's shoulders; but give God thanks that you are not forced to carry a rich fool upon your shoulders, as those poor men do whom you behold. There are but a few kings in mankind; but many thousands who are very miserable if compared to you. How ever, it is a huge folly rather to grieve for the good of others than to rejoice for that good which God has given us of our own.
And yet there is no wise or good man that would change persons or conditions entirely with any man in the world. It may be, he would have one man's wealth added to himself, or the power of a second, or the learning of a third; but still he would receive these into his own person because he loves that best, and therefore esteems it best, and therefore overvalues all that which he is, before all that which any other man in the world can be. Would any man be Dives to have his Avealth, or Judas for his office, or Saul for his kingdom, or Absalom for his beauty, or Achitophel for his policy? It is likely he would wish all these, and yet he would be the same person still. For every man has desires of his own, and objects just fitted to them, without which he cannot be, unless he were not himself. And let every man that loves himself so well as to love himself before all the world, consider if he have not something for which in the whole he values himself far more than he can value any man else. There is, therefore, no reason to take the finest feathers from all the winged nation to deck that bird that thinks already she is more valuable than any of the inhabitants of the air. Either change all or none. Cease
to love yourself best, or be content with that portion of being and blessing for which you love yourself so well.
3. It conduces much to our content, if we pass by those things which happen to our trouble, and consider that which is pleasing and prosperous, that, by the representation of the better, the worst may be blotted out; and, at the worst, you have enough to keep you alive, and to keep up and to improve your hopes of heaven. If I be overthrown in my suit at law, yet my house is left me still and my land; or I have a virtuous wife, or hopeful children, or kind friends, or good hopes. If I have lost one child, it may be I have two or three still left me. Or else reckon the blessings which already you have received, and therefore be pleased, in the change and variety of affairs, to receive evil from the hand of God as well as good. Antipater, of Tarsus, used this art to support his sorrows on his death-bed, and reckoned the good tilings of his past life, not forgetting to recount it as a blessing, an argument that God took care of him, that he had a prosperous journey from Cilicia to Athens. Or else please yourself with hopes of the future;8 for we were not born with this sadness upon us, and it was a change that brought us into it, and a change may bring us out again. Harvest will come, and then every farmer is rich, at least for a month or two.9 It may be you are entered into the cloud, which will bring a gentle shower to refresh your SOITOAVS.
Now suppose yourself in as great a sadness as ever did load your spirit, wouklst you not bear it cheerfully and nobly if you were sure that within a certain space some strange excellent fortune would relieve you, and enrich you, and re compense you, so as to overflow all your hopes and your desires and capacities? Now then, when a sadness lies heavy upon you, remember that you are a Christian designed to the inheritance of Jesus; and what do you think concerning your great fortune, your lot and portion of eternity? Do you think you shall be saved or damned? Indeed, if you think you shall perish, I cannot blame you to be sad, till your heart-strings crack; but then why art you troubled at the loss of your money? What should a damned man do with
Non si mal£ nunc, et olim sic erit. — Hor. ii. 10.
money, which in so great a sadness it is impossible for him to enjoy? Did ever any man upon the rack afflict himself because he had received a cross answer from his mistress? or call for the particulars of a purchase upon the gallows? If you do really believe you shall be damned, I do not say it will cure the sadness of your poverty, but it will swallow it up. But if you believe you shall be saved, consider IIOAV great is that joy, how infinite is that change, how unspeakable is the glory, how excellent is the recompence, for all the sufferings in the world, if they were all laden upon the spirit? So that let your condition be what it will, if you consider your own present condition, and compare it to your future possibility, you can not feel the present smart of a cross fortune to any great degree, either because you have a far bigger sorrow, or a far bigger joy. Here you are but a stranger travelling to your country, where the glories of a kingdom are prepared for you; it is therefore a huge folly to be much afflicted because you have a less convenient inn to lodge in by the way.
But these arts of looking forwards and backwards are more than enough to support the spirit of a Christian: there is no man but has blessings enough in present possession to out weigh the evils of a great affliction. Tell the joints of your body, and do not accuse the universal Providence for a lame leg, or the want of a finger, when all the rest is perfect, and you have a noble soul, a particle of divinity, the image of God himself; and by the want of a finger you may the better know how to estimate the remaining parts, and to account for every degree of the surviving blessings. Aristippus, in a great suit at law, lost a farm, and to a gentleman, who in civility pitied and deplored his loss, he answered, " I have two farms left still, and that is more than I have lost, and more than you have by one." If you miss an office for which you stood can didate, then, besides that you are quit of the cares and the envy of it, you still have all those excellences which rendered you capable to receive it, and they are better than the best office in the commonwealth. If your estate be lessened, you need the less to care who governs the province, whether he be rude or gentle. I am crossed in my journey, and yet I escaped robbers; and I consider that if I had been set upon by villains, I would have redeemed that evil by this which I now suffer, and have counted it a deliverance: or if I did fall
into the hands of thieves, yet they did not steal my land. Or, I am fallen into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they have taken all from me: what now? let me look about me. They have left me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me, and I can still discourse; and, unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance, and my cheerful spirit, and a good conscience: they still have left me the providence of God, and all the promises of the gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them too; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read and meditate; I can walk in my neighbor's pleasant fields, and see the varieties of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights — that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God himself. And he that has so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns. Such a person is fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppea's hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia's sparrow; and because he loves it, he deserves to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort while he is encircled with blessings.
4. Enjoy the present, whatsoever it be, and be not solicitous for the future; for if you take your foot from the present standing, and thrust it forward towards to-morrow's event, you are in a restless condition: it is like refusing to quench your present thirst by fearing you shall want drink the next day.10 If it be well to-day, it is madness to make the present miserable by fearing it may be ill to-morrow — when your belly is full of to-day's dinner, to fear you shall want the next day's supper; for it may be you shall not, and then to what pur pose was this day's affliction? But if to-morrow you shall
Appone. Hor. 1. i. Od. 9.
To (ri)fifpov piXti not' T6 S' avpiov rig olfcv; Anacr. Od. 15.
want, your sorrow will come time enough, though you do not hasten it; let your trouble wait till its own day comes. But if it chance to be ill to-day, do not increase it by the care of to-morrow. Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them, and the evils of it bear patiently and sweetly; for this day is only ours: we are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow. He, therefore, that enjoys the present, if it be good, enjoys as much as is possible; and if only that day's trouble leans upon him., it is singular and finite. " Sufficient to the day (said Christ) is the evil of it:" sufficient, but not intolerable. But if we look abroad, and bring into one day's thoughts the evil of many, certain and uncertain, what will be, and what will never be, our load will be as intolerable as it is unreasonable. To reprove this instrument of discontent, the ancients feigned that in hell stood a man twisting a rope of hay; and still he twisted on, suffering an ass to eat up all that was finished: so miserable is he who thrusts his passions forwards towards future events, and suffers all that he may enjoy to be lost and devoured by folly and inconsideration, thinking nothing fit to be enjoyed but that which is not or cannot be had. Just so, many young persons are loth to die, and therefore desire to live to old age, and when they are come thither, are troubled that they are come to that state of life, to which, before they were come, they were hugely afraid they should never come.
5. Let us prepare our minds against changes, always expecting them, that we be not surprised when they come: for nothing is so great an enemy to tranquillity and a contented spirit as the amazement and confusions of unreadiness and in consideration; and when our fortunes are violently changed, our spirits are unchanged if they always stood in the suburbs and expectation of sorrows. " O death, how bitter art you to a man that is at rest in his possessions! " And to the rich man who had promised to himself ease and fulness for many years, it was a sad arrest that his soul was surprised the first night: but the apostles, who every day knocked at the gate of death, and looked upon it continually, went to their mar tyrdom in peace and evenness.
6. Let us often frame to ourselves, and represent to our considerations, the images of those blessings we have, just as we usually understand them when we want them. Consider how
desirable health is to a sick man, or liberty to a prisoner; and if but a fit of the toothache seizes us with violence, all those troubles which in our health afflicted us disband instantly, and seem inconsiderable. Pie that in his health is troubled that he is in debt, and spends sleepless nights, and refuses meat because of his infelicity, let him fall into a fit of the stone or a high fever, he despises the arrest of all his first troubles, and is as a man unconcerned. Remember, then, that God has given you a blessing, the want of which is infinitely more trouble than your present debt, or poverty, or loss; and therefore is now more to be valued in the possession, and ought to outweigh your trouble. The very privative blessings, the blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty, and integrity, which we commonly enjoy, deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life. If God should send a cancer upon your face, or a wolf into your side, if he should spread a crust of leprosy upon your skin, what would you give to be but as now you are? Would you not, on that condition, be as poor as I am, or as the meanest of your brethren? Would you not choose your present loss and affliction as a thing extremely eligible, and a redemption to you, if you might exchange the other for this? You are quit from a thousand calamities, every one of which, if it were upon you, would make you insensible of your present sorrow: and therefore let your joy (which should be as great for your freedom from them, as is your sadness when you feel any of them) do the same cure upon your discontent. For if we be not extremely foolish or vain, thankless or senseless, a great joy is more apt to cure sorrow and discontent than a great trouble is. I have known an affectionate wife, when she has been in fear of parting with her beloved hus band, heartily desire of God his life or society upon any conditions that were not sinful; and choose to beg with him rather than to feast without him; and the same person has, upon that consideration, borne poverty nobly, when God has heard her prayer in the other matter. What wise man in the world is there who does not prefer a small fortune with peace before a great one with contention, and war, and violence? And then he is no longer wise if he alters his opinion when he has his wish.
7. If you will secure a contented spirit, you must measure your desires by your fortune and condition, not your fortunes
by your desires — that is, be governed by your needs, not by your fancy; by nature, not by evil customs and ambitious principles.11 He that would shoot an arrow out of a plough, or hunt a hare with an elephant, is not unfortunate for missing the mark or prey; but he is foolish for choosing such unapt instruments: and so is he that runs after his content with appetites not springing from natural needs, but from artificial, fantastical, and violent necessities. These are not to be satisfied; or if they were, a man has chosen an evil instrument towards his content: nature did not intend rest to a man by filling of such desires. Is that beast better that has two or three mountains to graze on, than a little bee that feeds on dew or manna, and lives upon what falls every morning from the storehouses of heaven, clouds and providence? Can a man quench his thirst better out of a river than a full urn, or drink better from the fountain which is finely paved with marble, than when it swells over the green turf?12 Pride and artificial gluttonies do but adulterate nature, making our diet healthless, our appetites impatient and unsatisfiable, and the taste mixed, fantastical, and meretricious. But that which we miscall poverty is indeed nature: and its proportions are the just measures of a man, and the best instruments of content. But when we create needs that God or nature never made, we have erected to ourselves an infinite stock of trouble that can have no period. Sempronius complained of want of clothes, and was much troubled for a new suit, being ashamed to appear in the theatre with his gown a little threadbare: but when he got it, and gave his old clothes to Codrus, the poor man was ravished with joy, and went and gave God thanks for his new purchase; and Codrus was made richly fine and
Juv. iii. 20.
cheerfully warm by that which Sempronius was ashamed to \v<-;u-: and yet their natural needs were both alike; the difference only was, that Sempronius had some artificial and fan tastical necessities superinduced, which Codrus had not, and was harder to be relieved, and could not have joy at so cheap a rate, because he only lived according to nature, the other by pride and ill customs, and measures taken by other men's eyes and tongues, and artificial needs. He that propounds to his fancy things greater than himself or his needs, and is dis content and troubled when he fails of such purchases, ought not to accuse providence, or blame his fortune, but his folly. God and nature made no more needs than they mean to satisfy; and he that will make more must look for satisfaction where he can.
8. In all troubles and sadder accidents, let us take sanctuary in religion, and by innocence cast out anchors for our souls, to keep them from shipwreck, though they be not kept from storm.13 For what philosophy shall comfort a villain that is haled to the rack for murdering his prince, or that is broken upon the wheel for sacrilege? His cup is full of pure and unmingled sorrow: his body is rent with torment, his name with ignominy, his soul with shame and sorrow, which are to last eternally. But when a man suffers in a good cause, or is afflicted, and yet walks not perversely with his God, then " Anytus and Melitus may kill me, but they cannot hurt me;" then St. Paul's character is engraved in the forehead of our fortune:u "We are troubled on every side, but not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. And who is he that will harm you, if you be followers of that which is good?"15 For, indeed, every thing in the world is indifferent but sin; and all the scorchings of the sun are very tolerable in respect of the burnings of a fever or a calenture. The greatest evils are from within us; and from ourselves, also, we must look for our greatest good; for God is the fountain of it, but reaches it to us by our own hands; and when all things look sadly round about us, then only we shall find how excellent a fortune it is to have God to our friend; and, of all friendships, that only is created to support us in our needs; for it is sin
that turns an ague into a fever, and a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, and loss into madness, and sor row to amazement and confusion. But if either we were innocent, or else by the sadness are made penitent, we are put to school, or into the theatre, either to learn how, or else actually to combat for a crown; the accident may serve an end of mercy, but is not a messenger of wrath.
Let us not therefore be governed by external, and present, and seeming things; nor let us make the same judgment of things that common and weak understandings do; nor make other men, and they not the wisest, to be judges of our felicity, so that we be happy or miserable as they please to think us: but let reason, and experience, and religion, and hope relying upon the Divine promises, be the measure of our judgment. No wise man did ever describe felicity without virtue;16 and no good man did ever think virtue could depend upon the variety of a good or bad fortune. It is no evil to be poor, but to be vicious and impatient.
Means to obtain Content by way of consideration.
To these exercises and spiritual instruments if we add the following considerations concerning the nature and circumstances of human chance, we may better secure our peace. For as to children, who are afraid of vain images, we use to persuade confidence by making them to handle and look nearer such things, that, when in such a familiarity they perceive them innocent, they may overcome their fears: so must timorous, fantastical, sad, and discontented persons be treated; they must be made to consider, and on all sides to look upon the accident, and to take all its dimensions, and consider its consequences, and to behold the purposes of God, and the common mistakes of men, and their evil sentences they usually pass upon them. For then we shall perceive that, like colts. or unmanaged horses, we start at dead bones and lifeless blocks, things that are inactive as they are innocent. But if we secure our hopes and our fears, and make them moderate and within government, we may the sooner overcome the evil of the accident; for nothing that we feel is so bad as what we fear.
1. Consider that the universal providence of God has so ordered it, that the good things of nature and fortune are divided, that we may know how to bear our own, and relieve each other's wants and imperfections. It is not for a man, but for a God, to have all excellences and all felicities.17 He supports my poverty with his wealth; I counsel and instruct him Avith my learning and experience. He has many friends, I many children; he has no heir, I have no inheritance; and any one great blessing, together with the common portions of nature and necessity, is a fair fortune, if it be but health or strength, or the swiftness of Ahimaaz. For it is an unreasonable discontent to be troubled that I have not so good cocks, or dogs, or horses, as my neighbor, being more troubled that I want one thing that I need not, than thankful for having received all that I need. Nero had this disease, that he was not content with the fortune of the whole empire, but put the fiddlers to death for being more skilful in the trade than he was; and Dionysius the elder was so angry at Philoxenus for singing, and with Plato for disputing, better than he did, that lie sold Plato a slave into jEgina, and condemned the other to the quarries.
This consideration is to be enlarged by adding to it, that there are some instances of fortune and a fair condition that cannot stand with some others; but if you desire this, you must lose that, and unless you be content with one, you lose the comfort of both. If you covet learning, you must have leisure and a retired life; if to be a politician, you must go abroad and get experience, and do all businesses, and keep all company, and have no leisure at all. If you will be rich, you must be frugal; if you will be popular, you must be bountiful; if a philosopher, you must despise riches. The Greek that designed to make the most exquisite picture that could be imagined, fancied the eye of Chione, and the hair of Pa3gnium, and Tarsia's lip, Philenium's chin, and the forehead of Delphia, and set all these upon Milphidippa's neck, and thought that he should outdo both art and nature. But when he came to view the proportions, he found that what was excellent in Tarsia, did not agree with the other excellency of Philenium;
and although, singly, they were rare pieces, yet in the whole they made a most ugly face. The dispersed excellences and blessings of many mien, if given to one, would not make a handsome, but a monstrous fortune. Use, therefore, that faculty which nature has given you, and your education has made actual, and your calling has made a duty. But if you desire to be a saint, refuse not his persecution; if you would be famous as Epaminondas or Fabricius, accept also of their poverty; for that added lustre to their persons, and envy to their fortune, and their virtue without it could not have been so excellent. Let Euphorion sleep quietly with his old rich wife; and let Medius drink on with Alexander; and remember you can not have the riches of the first, unless you have the old wife too; nor the favor which the second had with his prince, unless you buy it at his price;18 that is, lay your sobriety down at first, and your health a little after; and then their condition, though it look splendidly, yet, when you handle it on all sides, it will prick your fingers.
2. Consider how many excellent personages in all ages have suffered as great or greater calamities than this which now tempts you to impatience. Agis was the most noble of the Greeks, and yet his wife bore a child by Alcibiades; and Philip was prince of Ituraea, and yet his wife ran away with his brother Herod into Galilee; and certainly, in a great fortune, that was a great calamity. But these are but single instances. Almost all the a'ges of the world have noted that their most eminent scholars were most eminently poor, some by choice, but most by chance, and an inevitable decree of Providence; and in the whole sex of women God has decreed the sharpest pains of child-birth, to show that there is no state exempt from sorrow, and yet that the weakest persons have strength more than enough to bear the greatest evil: and the greatest queens, and the mothers of saints and apostles, have no charter of exemption from this sad sentence. But the Lord of men and angels was also the king of sufferings; and if your coarse robe trouble you, remember the swaddling-clothes of Jesus; if your bed be uneasy, yet it is not worse than his manger; and it is no sadness to have a thin table, if you call to mind that the King of heaven and earth was fed with a little
breast-milk; and yet, besides this, he suffered all the sorrows which we deserved. We, therefore, have great reason to sit down upon our hearths, and warm ourselves at our own fires, and feed upon content at home; for it were a strange pride to expect to be more gently treated by the Divine Providence than the best and wisest men, than apostles and saints, nay, the Son of the eternal God, the heir of both the worlds.
This consideration may be enlarged by surveying all the states and families of the world: and he19 that at once saw vEgina and Megara, Piraeus and Corinth, lie gasping in their ruins, and almost buried in their own heaps, had reason to blame Cicero for mourning impatiently the death of one woman. In the most beauteous and splendid fortune there are many cares and proper interruptions and allays: in the fortune of a prince there is not the coarse robe of beggary, but there are infinite cares; and the judge sits upon the tribunal with great ceremony and ostentation of fortune, and yet, at his house or in his breast there is something that causes him to sigh deeply. Pittacus20 was a wise and valiant man, but his wife overthrew the table when he had invited his friends; upon which the good man, to excuse her incivility, and his own misfortune, said that "every man had one evil, and he was most happy that had but that alone." And if nothing else happens, yet sicknesses so often do embitter the fortune and content of a family, that a physician in a few years, and with the practice upon a very few families, gets experience enough to administer to almost all diseases. And when your little mis fortune troubles you, remember that you have known the best of kings and the best of men put to death publicly by his own subjects.
3. There are many accidents which are esteemed great ca lamities, and yet we have reason enough to bear them well and unconcernedly; for they neither touch our bodies nor our souls — our health and our virtue remain entire, our life and our reputation. It may be I am slighted, or I have re-
ceived ill language; but my head aches not for it, neither has it broke my thigh, nor taken away my virtue, unless I lose my charity or my patience. Inquire, therefore, what you are the worse, either in your soul or in your body, for what has happened; for upon this very stock many evils will dis appear, since the body and the soul make up the whole man.21 And when the daughter of Stilpo proved a wanton, he said it was none of his sin, and therefore there was no reason it should be his misery. And if an enemy has taken all that from a prince whereby he was a king, he may refresh him self by considering all that is left him whereby he is a man.
4. Consider that sad accidents and a state of affliction is a school of virtue; it reduces our spirits to soberness, and our counsels to moderation; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning. " It is good for me (said David) that I have been afflicted, for by it have I learned your law." 22 And, " I know, O Lord, that you of very faithfulness have caused me to be troubled." For God, who in mercy and wisdom governs the world, would never have suffered so many sadnesses, and have sent them especially to the most virtuous and the wisest men, but that he intends they should be the seminary of comfort, the nursery of virtue, the exercise of wisdom, the trial of patience, the venturing for a crown, and the gate of glory.
5. Consider that afflictions are often the occasions of great temporal advantages; and we must not look upon them as they sit down heavily upon us, but as they serve some of God's ends, and the purposes of universal providence. And when a prince fights justly, and yet unprosperously, if he could see all those reasons for which God has so ordered it, he would think it the most reasonable thing in the world, and that it would be very ill to have it otherwise. If a man could have opened one of the pages of the Divine counsel, and could have seen the event of Joseph's being sold to the merchants
22 Psal. cxix. part 10, ver. 3.
of Amalek, lie might, with much reason, have dried up the ydung man's tears: and when God's purposes are opened in the events of things, as it was in the case of Joseph, when he sustained his father's family and became lord of Egypt, then we see what ill judgment we made of things, and that we were passionate as children, and transported with sense and mistaken interest. The case of Themistocles was almost like that of Joseph; for, being banished into Egypt, he also grew in favor with the king, and told his wife, " he had been un done, unless he had been undone." For God esteems it one of his glories, that he brings good out of evil; and therefore it were but reason we should trust God to govern his own world as he pleases; and that we should patiently wait till the change comes, or the reason be discovered.
And this consideration is also of great use to them who envy at the prosperity of the wicked, and the success of per secutors, and the baits of fishes, and the bread of dogs. God fails not to sow blessings in the long furrows which the ploughers plough upon the back of the church; and this success which troubles us will be a great glory to God, and a great benefit to his saints and servants, and a great ruin to the persecutors, who shall have but the fortune of Theramenes, one of the thirty tyrants of Athens, who escaped when his house fell upon him, and was shortly after put to death with torments by his colleagues in the tyranny.
To which, also, may be added, that the great evils which happen to the best and wisest men are one of the great arguments upon the strength of which we can expect felicity to our souls and the joys of another world. And certainly they are then very tolerable and eligible, when with so great advantages they minister to the faith and hope of a Christian. But if we consider what unspeakable tortures are provided for the wicked to all eternity, we should not be troubled to see them prosperous here, but rather wonder that their portion in life is not bigger, and that ever they should be sick, or crossed, or affronted, or troubled with the contradiction and
Jase of their own vices, since, if they were fortunate betheir own ambition, it could not make them recompence tor one hour's torment in hell, which yet they shall have for their eternal portion.
After all these considerations deriving from sense and ex-
perience, grace and reason, there are two remedies still remaining, and they are necessity and time.
6. For it is but reasonable to bear that accident patiently which God sends, since impatience does but entangle us, like the fluttering of a bird in a net, but cannot at all ease our trouble, or prevent the accident:23 it must be run through, and therefore it were better we compose ourselves to a patient than to a troubled and miserable suffering.
7. But, however, if you will not otherwise be cured, time at last will do it alone; and then consider, do you mean to mourn always, or but for a time? If always, you are miserable and foolish. If for a time, then why will you not apply those reasons to your grief at first with which you will cure it at last? or if you will not cure it with reason, see how little of a man there is in you, that you suffer time to do more with you than reason or religion! You suffer yourself to be cured, just as a beast or a tree is; let it alone, and the thing will heal itself: but this is neither honorable to your person, nor of reputation to your religion. However, be content to bear your calamity, because you are sure, in a little time, it will sit down gentle and easy, for to a mortal man no evil is immortal. And here let the worst thing happen that can, it will end in death, and we commonly think that to be near enough.
8. Lastly, of those things which are reckoned among evils, some are better than their contraries; and to a good man the very worst is tolerable.
Poverty or a low Fortune.
1. Poverty is better than riches, and a mean fortune to be chosen before a great and splendid one. It is indeed despised, and makes men contemptible; it exposes a man to the insolence of evil persons, and leaves a man defenseless; it is always suspected; its stories are accounted lies, and all its counsels follies; it puts a man from all employment; it makes a man's discourses tedious, and his society troublesome. This is the worst of it; and yet all this, and far worse than this, the apostles suffered for being Christians; and Christianity itself may be esteemed an affliction as well as poverty, if this be all that can be said against it; for the apostles and the most eminent Christians were really poor, and were used 23 Nemo recusat ferre, quod necessc est pati.
contemptuously: and yet, that poverty is despised may be an argument to commend it, if it be despised by none but persons vicious and ignorant.24 However, certain it is that a great fortune is a great vanity, and riches is nothing but danger, trouble, and temptation; like a garment that is too long, and bears a train; not so useful to one, but it is troublesome to two — to him that bears the one part upon his shoulders, and to him that bears the other part in his hand. But poverty is the sister of a good mind, the parent of sober counsels, and the nurse of all virtue.
For what is that you admire in the fortune of a great king? Is it that he always goes in a great company? You may thrust yourself into the same crowd, or go often to church, and then you have as great a company as he has; and that may upon as good grounds please you as him, that is, justly neither: for so impertinent and useless pomp, and the other circumstances of his distance, are not made for him, but for his subjects, that they may learn to separate him from common usages, and be taught to be governed.25 But if you look upon them as fine things in themselves, you may quickly alter your opinion when you shall consider that they cannot cure the toothache, nor make one wise, or fill the belly, or give one night's sleep (though they help to break many) — not satisfying any appetite of nature, or reason, or religion; but they are states of greatness which only make it possible for a man to be made extremely miserable. And it was long ago ob served by the Greek tragedians, and from them by Arrianus,26 saying, that " all our tragedies are of kings and princes, and rich or ambitious personages; but you never see a poor man have a part, unless it be as a chorus, or to fill up the scenes, to dance or to be derided; but the kings and the great generals. First," says he, "they begin with joy, ari^are <5o>^ara, crown tlio houses, but about the third or fourth act they cry out, O Citheron! why did you spare my life to reserve me for
24 Alta fortuna alto travaglio apporta. 25 Da autorita la ceremonia al' alto.
this more sad calamity?" And this is really true in the great accidents of the world; for a great estate has great crosses, and a mean fortune has but small ones. It may be the poor man loses a cow, for if his child dies he is quit of his biggest care; but such an accident in a rich and splendid family doubles upon the spirits of the parents. Or, it may be the poor man is troubled to pay his rent, and that is his biggest trouble; but it is a bigger care to secure a great fortune in a troubled estate, or with equal greatness, or with the circumstances of honor and the niceness of reputation, to defend a law-suit; and that which will secure a common man's whole estate is not enough to defend a great man's honor.
And therefore it was not without mystery observed among the ancients, that they w^ho made gods of gold and silver, of hope and fear, peace and fortune, garlic and onions, beasts and serpents, and a quartan ague, yet never deified money;27 meaning, that however wealth was admired by common or abused understandings, yet from riches, that is, from that pro portion of good things which is beyond the necessities of nature, no moment could be added to a man's real content or happiness. Corn from Sardinia, herds of Calabrian cattle, meadows through which pleasant Liris glides, silks from Tyrus, and golden chalices to drown my health in, are nothing but instruments of vanity or sin; and suppose a disease in the soul of him that longs for them or admires them. And this I have otherwhere represented more largely; to which I here add, that riches have very great dangers to their souls, not only who covet them, but to all that have them.28 For if a great personage undertakes an action passionately and upon great interest, let him manage it indiscreetly, let the whole design be unjust, let it be acted with all the malice and impotency in the world, he shall have enough to flatter him, but not enough to reprove him. He had need be a bold man that shall tell his patron he is going to hell; and that prince had need be a good man that shall suffer such a monitor; and though it be a strange kind of civility, and an evil dutifulness, in friends and relatives, to suffer him to perish without refunesta Pecunia, templo
28 Chap. iv. Sect. 8.— Title, Of Covetousness. l
proof or medicine, rather than to seem unmannerly to a great winner, yet it is none, of their least infelicities that their wealth and greatness shall put them into sin, and yet put them past reproof. I need not instance in the habitual intempertBCe <>i rich tables, nor the evil accidents and effects of fulness, pride and lust, wantonness and softness of disposition, huge talking and an imperious spirit, despite of religion, and contempt of poor persons: at the best, " it is a great temptation for a man to have in his power whatsoever he can have in his sensual desires;"w and therefore riches is a blessing like to a present made of a whole vintage to a man in a hectic fever; he will be much tempted to drink of it, and if he does, he is inflamed, and may chance to die with the kindness.
Now, besides what has been already noted in the state of poverty, there is nothing to be accounted for but the fear of wanting necessaries; of which if a man could be secured that he might live free from care, all the other parts of it might be reckoned among the advantages of wise and sober persons, rather than objections against that state of fortune.
But, concerning this, I consider that there must needs be great security to all Christians, since Christ not only made express promises that we should have sufficient for this life, but also took great pains and used many arguments to create confidence in us; and such they were, which by their own strength were sufficient, though you abate the authority of the speaker. The Son of God told us, his Father takes care of us; he that knew all his Father's counsels, and his whole kindness towards mankind, told us so. How great is that truth, how certain, how necessary, which Christ himself proved by arguments! The excellent words and most comfortable sentences which are our bills of exchange, upon the credit of which we lay our cares down and receive provisions for our need, are these: "Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature? And why take you thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of 29 James ii. 5 — 7.
the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; Mini yet 1 SMV to von, that even Solomon in all his ^lory was not arrayed like one ot' these. Therefore if ( Jod so clot he (he grass of llu1 field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the o\ en, shall lie not much more clothe yon, () yc of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, Whttt shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we he clothed? (tor after all t liese things do (he ( lent iles B66K)) lor your heavenly Father knows that you ha\e need of all these things. Hut seek \e lirst the kingdom of (Jod and his righteousness, and all these things shall he added to yon. Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought lor the things of itself: siillicient to the day is the e\ il there of."'"' The same discourse is repeated hy St. Luko;;u and accordingly our duty is iir^ed, and our eonlideuce ahetted, by the disciples of our Lord, in divers places of Holy Scripture. So St. Paul — 'k l»e careful tor nothing; hut in every tiling by praver:md supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request^ he made known to (Jod.":!- And again, "Charge them that are rich in this world, that they he not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, hut in the living (Jod, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. ";n And yet again, " Let your conversation he without co\ etousness, nnd he contiMit with such things as you hav(>; lor he has said, I will never loavo you, nor forsake you: so that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper."-" And all this is by St. IVter summed up in our duty thus: "Cast nil your care upon him, for ho cures for you." \Yhieh words he seems to luive borrowed out of the liftv-lifth I'salm, VIM-..).'2, \\here David says the sjuuc thing almost in the same words. To which I only add the observation made by him, and the argument of experience: "1 have been yoim^, and now am old, and yet saw I never the rightcons forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." And now, after all this, a fearless confidence in (Jod, and concerning u provision of necessaries, is so reasonable, th;it it is become a duty; and he is scarce a Christian whose faith is so little as to be jealous of (Jod and suspicions concerning meat, and clothes: that man has nothing- in him of the nobleness or conlidence of charity.
• I Tim. \i. 17. '•" lick \ui. 5,0.
i '2
Does not God provide for all the birds, and beasts, and fishes? Do not the sparrows fly from their bush, and every morning find meat where they laid it not? Do not the young ravens call to God, and he feeds them? And were it reasonable that the sons of the family should fear the Father would give meat to the chickens and the servants, his sheep and his dogs, but give none to them? He were a very ill father that should do so; or he were a very foolish son that should think so of a good father. But, besides the reasonableness of this faith and this hope, we have infinite experience of it. How innocent, how careless, how secure, is infancy, and yet how certainly provided for! We have lived at God's charges all the days of our life, and have (as the Italian proverb says) sat down to meat at the sound of a bell; and until now he has not failed us; we have no reason to suspect him for the future; we do not use to serve men so; and less time of trial creates great confidences in us towards them, who for twenty years together never broke their word with us: and God has so ordered it, that a man shall have had the experience of many years' provision before he shall understand how to doubt; that he may be provided for an answer against the temptation shall come, and the mercies felt in his childhood may make him fearless when he is a man. Add to this, that God has given us his Holy Spirit; he has promised heaven to us; he has given us his Son; and we are taught from Scripture to make this inference from hence, " How should not he with him give us all things else? "
The Charge of many Children.
We have a title to be provided for as we are God's creatures, another title as we are his children, another because God has promised; and every of our children has the same title; and therefore it is a huge folly and infidelity to be troubled and full of care because we have many children. Every child we have to feed is a new revenue, a new title to God's care and providence; so that many children are a great wealth; and if it be said they are chargeable, it is no more than all wealth and great revenues are. For what difference is it? Titius keeps ten ploughs, Cornelia has ten children: he has land enough to employ and to feed all his hinds; she, blessings and promises, and the provisions and the truth of God, to main-
tain all her children. His hinds and horses eat up all his corn, and her children are sufficiently maintained with her little. They bring in and eat up, and she indeed eats up, but they also bring in from the store-houses of heaven and the granaries of God; and my children are not so much mine as they are God's: he feeds them in the womb, by ways secret and insensible, and would not work a perpetual miracle to bring them forth, and then to starve them.
Violent Necessities.
But some men are highly tempted, and are brought to a strait, that, without a miracle, they cannot be relieved: what shall they do? It may be their pride or vanity has brought the necessity upon them, and it is not a need of God's making; and if it be not, they must cure it themselves, by lessening their desires and moderating their appetites: and yet, if it be innocent, though unnecessary, God does usually relieve such necessities; and he does not only upon our prayers grant us more than he promised of temporal things, but also he gives many times more than we ask. This is no object for our faith, but ground enough for a temporal and prudent hope; and if we fail in the particular, God will turn it to a bigger mercy if we submit to his dispensation, and adore him in the denial. But if it be a matter of necessity, let not any man, by way of impatience, cry out that God will not work a miracle; for God, by miracle, did give meat and drink to his people in the wilderness, of which he had made no particular promise in any covenant; and if all natural means fail, it is certain that God will rather work a miracle than break his word; he can do that — he cannot do this. Only we must remember that our portion of temporal things is but food and raiment. God has not promised us coaches and horses, rich houses and jewels, Tyrian silks and Persian carpets; neither has he promised to minister to our needs in such circumstances as we shall appoint, but such as himself shall choose. God will enable either you to pay your debt, (if you beggestit of him,) or else he will pay it for you; that is, take your desire as a dis charge of your duty, and pay it to your creditor in blessings, or in some secret of his providence. It may be has laid up the corn that shall feed you in the granary of your brother, or will clothe you with his wool. He enabled St. Peter to pay
his gabel by the ministry of a fish, and Elias to be waited on by a crow, who was both his minister and his steward tor provisions; and his holy Son rode in triumph upon an ass that "razed in another man's pastures. And if God gives to him the dominion, and reserves the use to you, you have the better half of the two; but the charitable man serves God and serves your need, and both join to provide for you, and God blesses both. But if he takes away the flesh-pots from you, he can also alter the appetite, arid he has given you power and commandment to restrain it; and if he lessens the revenue, he will also shrink the necessity; or if he gives but a very little, he will make it go a great way; or if he sends you but a coarse diet, he will bless it and make it healthful, and can cure all the anguish of your poverty by giving you patience and the grace of contentedness. For the grace of God secures you of provisions, and yet the grace of God feeds and supports the spirit in the want of provisions; and if a thin table be apt to enfeeble the spirits of one used to feed better, yet the cheer fulness of a spirit that is blessed will make a thin table be come a delicacy, if the man was as well taught as he was fed, and learned his duty when he received the blessing. Poverty, therefore, is in some senses eligible, and to be preferred before riches; but in all senses it is very tolerable.
Death of Children, or nearest Relatives and Friends.
There are some persons, who have been noted for excel lent in their lives and passions, rarely innocent, and yet hugely penitent for indiscretions and harmless infirmities; such as was Paulina, one of the ghostly children of St. Jerome; and yet, when any of her children died, she was arrested with a sorrow so great as brought her to the margent of her grave. And the more tender our spirits are made by religion, the more easy we are to let in grief, if the cause be innocent, and be but in any sense twisted with piety and due affections; to cure which, we may consider that all the world must die, and therefore to be impatient at the death of a person concerning whom it was certain and known that he must die, is to mourn because your friend or child was not born an angel; and when you have awhile made yourself miserable by an importunate and useless grief, it may be you shall die yourself, and leave others to their choice whether they will mourn for you or no; but
by that time it will appear how impertinent that grief was which served no end of life, and ended in your own funeral. But what great matter is it if sparks fly upward, or a stone falls into a pit; if that which was combustible be burned, or that which was liquid be melted, or that which is mortal do die? It is no more than a man does every day; for every night death has gotten possession of that day, and we shall never live that day over again; and when the last day is come, there are no more days left for us to die. And what is sleeping and waking, but living and dying? what is spring and autumn, youth and old age, morning and evening, but real images of life and death, and really the same to many considerable effects and changes?
Untimely Death.
But it is not mere dying that is pretended by some as the cause of their impatient mourning; but that the child died young, before he knew good and evil, his right hand from his left, and so lost all his portion of this world, and they know not of what excellency his portion in the next shall be. If he died young, he lost but little, for he understood but little, and had not capacities of great pleasures or great cares; but yet he died innocent, and before the sweetness of his soul was deflowered and ravished from him by the flames and fol lies of a froward age; he went out from the dining-room before he had fallen into error by the intemperance of his meat, or the deluge of drink; and he has obtained this favor of God, that his soul had suffered a less imprisonment, and her load was sooner taken off, that he might, with lesser delays, go and converse with immortal spirits — and the babe is taken into paradise before he knows good and evil (for that know ledge threw our great father out, and this ignorance returns the child thither). But (as concerning your own particular) remove your thoughts back to those days in which your child was not born, and you are now but as then you was, and there is no difference, but that you had a son born; and if you reckon that for evil, you are unthankful for the blessing; if it be good, it is better that you had the blessing for awhile, than not at all; and yet, if he had never been born, this sor row had not been at all.35 But be no more displeased at God
for giving you a blessing for awhile, than you would have been if he had not given it at all; and reckon that intervening blessing for a gain, but account it not an evil; and if it be a good, turn it not into sorrow and sadness. But if we have great reason to complain of the calamities and evils of our life, then we have the less reason to grieve that those whom we love have so small portion of evil assigned to them. And it is no small advantage that our children dying young receive; for their condition of a blessed immortality is rendered to them secure by being snatched from the dangers of an evil choice, and carried to their little cells of felicity, where they can weep no more. And this the wisest of the Gentiles understood well, when they forbade any offerings or libations to be made for dead infants, as was usual for their other dead; as believing they were entered into a secure possession, to which they went with no other condition but that they passed into it through the way of mortality, and, for a few months, wore an uneasy garment. And let weeping parents say if they do not think that the evils their little babes have suffered are sufficient. If they be, why are they troubled that they were taken from those many and greater, which in succeeding years are great enough to try all the reason and religion which art, and nature, and the grace of God have produced in us, to en able us for such sad contentions? And, possibly, we may doubt concerning men and women, but we cannot suspect that to infants death can be such an evil, but that it brings to them much more good than it takes from them in this life.
Death unseasonable.
But others can well bear the death of infants; but when they have spent some years of childhood or youth, and arc entered into arts and society, when they are hopeful and provided for, when the parents are to reap the comfort of all their fears and cares, then it breaks the spirit to lose them. This is true in many; but this is not love to the dead, but to them selves; for they miss what they had flattered themselves into by hope and opinion; and if it were kindness to the dead, they may consider, that since we hope he is gone to God and to
rest, it is an ill expression of our love to them that we weep for their good fortune. For that life is not best which is longest: and when they are descended into the grave it shall not be inquired how long they have lived, but how well: and yet this shortening of their days is an evil wholly depending upon opinion.36 For if men did naturally live but twenty years, then we should be satisfied if they died about sixteen or eighteen; and yet eighteen years now are as long as eighteen years would be then: and if a man were but of a day's life, it is well if he lasts till evensong, and then says his compline an hour before the time: and we are pleased, and call not that death immature, if he lives till seventy; and yet this age is as short of the old periods before and since the flood, as this youth's age (for whom you mourn) is of the present fulness. Suppose, therefore, a decree passed upon this person, (as there have been many upon all mankind,) and God has set him a shorter period; and then we may as well bear the immature death of the young man as the death of the oldest men; for they also are immature and unseasonable in respect of the old periods of many generations. And why are we troubled that he had arts and sciences before he died? or are we troubled that he does not live to make use of them? The first is cause of joy, for they are excellent in order to certain ends; and the second cannot because of sorrow, because he has no need to use them, as the case now stands, being provided for with the provisions of an angel and the manner of eternity. However, the sons and the parents, friends and relatives, are in the world like hours and minutes to a day. The hour comes, and must pass; and some stay by minutes, and they also pass, and shall never return again. But let it be considered, that from the time in which a man is conceived, from that time forward to eternity he shall never cease to be; and let him die young or old, still he has an immortal soul, and has laid down his body only for a time, as that which was the instrument of his trouble and sorrow, and the scene of sicknesses and disease. But he is in a more noble manner of being after death than he can be here; and the child may with more reason be allowed to cry for leaving his mother's womb for this world, than a man can for changing this world for another.
Sudden Death, or Violent.
Others are yet troubled at the manner of their child's or friend's death. He was drowned, or lost his head, or died of the plague; and this is a new spring of sorrow. But no man can give a sensible account how it shall be worse for a child to die with drowning in half an hour, than to endure a fever of one-and-twenty days. And if my friend lost his head, so he did not lose his constancy and his religion, he died with huge advantage.
Being Childless.
But by this means I am left without an heir. Well, sup pose that: you have no heir, and I have no inheritance; and there are many kings and emperors that have died childless, many royal lines are extinguished, and Augustus Caesar was forced to adopt his wife's son to inherit all the Roman greatness. And there are many wise persons that never married: and we read no where that any of the children of the apostles did survive their fathers; and all that inherit any thing of Christ's kingdom come to it by adoption, not by natural inheritance: and to die without a natural heir is no intolerable evil, since it was sanctified in the person of Jesus, who died a virgin.
Evil or unfortunate Children.
And by this means we are freed from the greater sorrows of having a fool, a swine, or a goat, to rule after us in our families; and yet even this condition admits of comfort.37 For all the wild Americans are supposed to be the sons of Dodonaim; and the sons of Jacob are now the most scattered and despised people in the whole world. The son of Solomon was but a silly, weak man; and the son of Hezekiah was wicked: and all the fools and barbarous people, all the thieves and pirates, all the slaves and miserable men and women of the world, are the sons and daughters of Noah; and we must not look to be exempted from that portion of sorrow which God gave to Noah and Adam, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I pray God send us into the lot of Abraham. But if any thing happens worse to us, it is enough for us that we bear it evenly.38
Our own Death.
And how, if you were to die yourself? You know you must. Only be ready for it by the preparations of a good life;39 and then it is the greatest good that ever happened to you; else there is nothing that can comfort you. But if you have served God in a holy life, send away the women and the weepers; tell them it is as much intemperance to weep too much, as to laugh too much; and when you are alone, or with fitting company, die as you should, but do not die impatiently, and like a fox catched in a trap. For if you fear death, you shall never the more avoid it, but you make it miserable. Fannius, that killed himself for fear of death, died as certainly as Portia, that ate burning coals, or Cato, that cut his own throat. To die is necessary and natural, and it may be honorable; but to die poorly, and basely, and sinfully, that alone is it that can make a man unfortunate.40 No man can be a slave, but he that fears pain, or fears to die. To such a man nothing but chance and peaceable times can secure his duty, and he depends upon things without for his felicity; and so is well but during the pleasure of his enemy, or a thief, or a tyrant, or it may be of a dog or a wild bull.
Prayers for the several Graces and Parts of Christian Sobriety.
A Prayer against Sensuality.
O eternal Father, you that sit in heaven invested with essential glories and Divine perfections, fill my soul with so deep a sense of the excellences of spiritual and heavenly things, that, my affections being weaned from the pleasures of the world and the false allurements of sin, I may, with great se verity, and the prudence of a holy discipline and strict desires, with clear resolutions and a free spirit, have my conversation in heaven and heavenly employments; that being, in affections as in my condition, a pilgrim and a stranger here, I may covet after and labor for an abiding city, and at last may enter into and for ever dwell in the celestial Jerusalem, which is the mother of us all, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
39 Ad fines cum perveneris, ne revertito. — Pythag.
For Temperance.
O Almighty God and gracious Father of men and angels, who open your hand and fill all things with plenty, and have provided for your servant sufficient to satisfy all my needs; teach me to use your creatures soberly and temperately, that I may not, with loads of meat or drink, make the temptations of my enemy to prevail upon me, or my spirit unapt for the performance of my duty, or my body healthless, or my affections sensual and unholy. O my God, never suffer that the blessings which you give me may either minister to sin or sickness, but to health and holiness and thanksgiving; that in the strength of your provisions I may cheerfully and actively and diligently serve you; that I may worthily feast at your table here, and be accounted worthy, through your grace, to be admitted to your table hereafter, at the eternal supper of the Lamb, to sing an hallelujah to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen.
For Chastity; to be said especially by unmarried Persons.
Almighty God, our most holy and eternal Father, who are of pure eyes, and can behold no uncleanness; let your gracious and holy Spirit descend upon your servant, and reprove the spirit of fornication and uncleanness, and cast him out; that my body may be a holy temple, and my soul a sanctuary to entertain the Prince of purities, the holy and eternal Spirit of God. 0, let no impure thoughts pollute that soul which God has sanctified; no unclean words pollute that tongue which God has commanded to be an organ of his praises; no unholy and unchaste action rend the veil of that temple where the holy Jesus has been pleased to enter, and has chosen for his habitation: but seal up all my senses from all vain objects, and let them be entirely possessed with religion, and fortified with prudence, watchfulness, and mortification; that I, possessing my vessel in holiness, may lay it down with a holy hope, and receive it again in a joyful resurrecction, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A Prayer for the Love of God, to be said by Virgins and Widows, professed or resolved so to live: and may be used by any one.
O holy and purest Jesus, who were pleased to espouse
every holy soul, and join it to you with a holy union and mysterious instruments of religious society and communications: O, fill my soul with religion, and desires holy as the thoughts of cherubim, passionate beyond the love of women; that I may love you as much as ever any creature loved you, even with all my soul and all my faculties, and all the degrees of every faculty; let me know no loves but those of duty and charity, obedience and devotion; that I may for ever run after you, who are the King of virgins, and with whom whole kingdoms are in love, and for whose sake queens have died, arid at whose feet kings with joy have laid their crowns and sceptres. My soul is yours, O dearest Jesu; you are my Lord, and have bound up my eyes and heart from all stranger affections; give me for my dowry, purity and humility, modesty and devotion, charity and patience, and at last bring me into the bride-chamber to partake of the felici ties, and to lie in the bosom, of the Bridegroom to eternal ages, O holy and sweetest Savior Jesus. Amen.
A Prayer to be said by Married Persons in behalf of them selves and each other.
O eternal and gracious Father, who have consecrated the holy estate of marriage to become mysterious, and to repre sent the union of Christ and his church, let your Holy Spirit so guide me in the doing the duties of this state, that it may not become a sin to me; nor that liberty, which you have hallowed by the holy Jesus, become an occasion of licen tiousness by my own weakness and sensuality; and do you forgive all those irregularities and too sensual applications which may have, in any degree, discomposed my spirit and the severity of a Christian. Let me, in all accidents and circumstances, be severe in my duty towards you, affectionate and dear to my wife, (or husband,) a guide and good example to my family, and in all quietness, sobriety, prudence, and peace, a follower of those holy pairs, who have served you with godliness and a good testimony. And the blessings of the eternal God, blessings of the right hand and of the left, be upon the body and soul of your servant my wife, (or hus band,} and abide upon her (or him) till the end of a holy and happy life; and grant that both of us may live together for ever in the embraces of the holy and eternal Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen.
A Prayer for the Grace of Humility. O holy and most gracious Master and Savior Jesus, who by your example and by your precept, by the practice of a whole life and frequent discourses, did command us to be meek and humble, in imitation of your incomparable sweetness and great humility; be pleased to give me the grace, as you have given me the commandment; enable me to do whatso ever you command, and command whatsoever you please. O, mortify in me all proud thoughts and vain opinions of my self; let me return to you the acknowledgment and the fruits of all those good things you have given me, that, by confessing I am wholly in debt to you for them, I may not boast myself for what I have received, and for what I am highly accountable; and for what is my own teach me to be ashamed and humbled, it being nothing but sin and misery, weakness and uncleanness. Let me go before my brethren in nothing but in striving to do them honor and you glory, never to seek my own praise, never to delight in it when it is offered; that, despising myself, I may be accepted by you in the honors with which you shall crown your humble and despised servants, for Jesus' sake, in the kingdom of eternal glory. Amen.
Acts of Humility and Modesty by ivay of Prayer and Meditation.
Lord, I know that my spirit is light and thorny, my body is brutish and exposed to sickness; I am constant to folly, and inconstant in holy purposes. My labors are vain and fruitless; my fortune full of change and trouble, seldom pleasing, never perfect; my wisdom is folly; being ignorant even of the parts and passions of my own body: and what am I, 0 Lord, before you, but a miserable person, hugely in debt, not able to pay?
Lord, I am nothing, and I have nothing of myself: I am less than the least of all your mercies.
What was I before my birth? First, nothing, and then uncleanness. What during my childhood? Weakness and
folly. What in my youth? Folly still, and passion, lust, and wildness. What in my whole life? A great sinner, a deceived and an abused person. Lord, pity me; for it is your goodness that I am kept from confusion and amazement, when I consider the misery and shame of my person, and the de filements of my nature.
Lord, what am I? And, Lord, what art you? " What is man, that you are mindful of him? and the son of man, that you so regard him? "
V.
" How can man be justified with God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold, even to the moon, and it shines not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight: how much less man, that is a worm, and the son of man, which is a worm! " 41
A Prayer for a contented Spirit, and the Grace of Moderation and Patience.
O Almighty God, Father and Lord of all the creatures, who have disposed all things and all chances so as may best glorify your wisdom, and serve the ends of your justice, and magnify your mercy by secret and undiscernible ways, bringing good out of evil; I most humbly beseech you to give me wisdom from above, that I may adore you and admire your ways and footsteps, which are in the great deep and not to be searched out: teach me to submit to your providence in all things, to be content in all changes of person and condition, to be temperate in prosperity, and to read my duty in the lines of your mercy; and in adversity to be meek, patient, and resigned; and to look through the cloud, that I may wait for the consolation of the Lord and the day of redemption; in the mean time doing my duty with an unwearied diligence, and an undisturbed resolution, having no fondness for the vanities or possessions of this world, but laying up my hopes in heaven and the rewards of holy living, and being strengthened with the spirit of the inner man, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.