HEAVEN upon Earth, Or Of true Peace, and tranquillity of Mind.  
By Ios. Hall.  
LONDON. Printed by john Windet for john Porter 1606.   

TO THE Right Honourable Henry Earl of Huntingdon, Lord Hastings, Hungerford, Botreaux Molines & moils, his majesties Lieu-tenant in the Counties of Leicester and Rutland my singular good Lord all increase of true honour▪ and Heaven begun upon Earth.  
RIGHT Honourable I have undertaken a great task to teach men how to be happy in this life: I have undertaken and performed it: Wherein I have followed Seneca and gone beyond him; followed him as a Philosopher, gone beyond him as a Christian, as a Divine. Finding it a true censure of the best Moralist, that they were like to goodly ships, graced with great titles the Safeguard, the Triumph, the Good-speed, and such like, when yet they have been both extremely Seabeaten and at last wracked. The volume is little, perhaps the use more; I have ever thought according to the Greek Proverb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. What it is, even justice challengeth it to him, to whom the Author hath devoted himself: The children of the bondman are the goods of the parents Master. I humbly betake it to your honours protection, and your Honour to the protection of the highest.  
Your honours most humbly devoted in all duty and service. Ios. Hall.   

HEAVEN upon earth or of true peace of mind.  

Sect. 1.  
WHen I had studiously red over the moral writings of some wise Heathen, 
Censure of Philosophers.  especially those of the Stoical profession, I must confess I found a little envy and pity striving together within me: I envied nature in them, to see her so witty in devising such plausible refuges for doubting and troubled minds: I pitied them to see that their careful disquisition of true rest, led them in the end but to mere unquietness: Wherein me thought, they were as hounds swift of foot, but not exquisite in scent, which in an hasty pursuit take a wrong way, spending their mouths, and courses in vain. Their praise of guessing wittily they shall not lose, their hopes both they lost, and whosoever follows them. If Seneca could have had grace to his wit, what wonders would he have done in this kind? what Divine might not have yielded him the chair for precepts of tranquillity without any disparagement? As he was, this he hath gained. Never any Heathen wrote more divinely, never any Philosopher more probably. Neither would I ever desire better Master if to this purpose I needed no other mistress than nature. But this in truth is a task, which nature hath never without presumption undertaken, and never performed without much imperfection. Like to those vain and wandering Empirics which in Tables and pictures make great ostentation of cures, never approving their skill to their credulous patients. And if she could have truly effected it alone. I know not what employment in this life she should have left for grace to busy herself about, nor what privilege it should have been here below to be a Christian, since this that we seek is the noblest work of the soul, and in which alone consists the only Heaven of this world; this is the sum of all human desires, which when we have attained, then only we begin to live, and are sure we cannot thence forth live miserably. No marvel then if all the heathen have diligently sought after it, many wrote of it, none attained it. Not Athens must teach this lesson, but jerusalem.   

Sect. 2.  
YET something Grace scorneth not to learn of Nature, 
What tranquillity is, & wherein it consists.  as Moses may take good counsel of a Midianite. Nature hath ever had more skill in the end, then in the way to it, and whether she have discoursed of the good estate of the mind, which we call tranquillity or the best which is happiness hath more happily guessed at the general definition of them then of the means to compass them. She teacheth us therefore without controlment, that the tranquillity of the mind is, as of the Sea and weather, when no wind stirreth, when the waves do not tumultuously rise and fall upon each other, but when the face both of the Heaven and waters is still, fair, and equable. That it is such an even disposition of the heart, wherein the scoales of the mind neither rise up towards the boame, through their own lightness, or the overweening opinion of prosperity, nor are too much depressed with any load of sorrow; but hanging equal and unmoved betwixt both; give a man liberty in all occurrences to enjoy himself. Not that the most temperate mind can be so the master of his Passions, as not sometimes to over-ioy his grief, or over-grieve his joy, according to the contrary occasions of both, for not the evenest weights, but at their first putting into the balance somewhat sway both parts thereof, not without some show of inequality, which yet after some little motion, settle themselves in a meet poised. It is enough that after some sudden agitation, it can return to itself, and rest itself at last in a resolved peace. And this due composedness of mind we require unto our tranquillity, not for some short fits of good mood, which soon after end in discontentment, but with the condition of perpetuity. For there is no heart makes so rough weather, as not sometimes to admit of a calm, and whether for that he knoweth no present cause of his trouble, or for that he knoweth that cause of trouble is countervayled with as great an occasion of private joy, or for that the multitude of evils hath bred carelessness, the man that is most disordered finds some respites of quietness. The balances that are most ill matched in their unsteddie motions come to an equality, but stay not at it. The frantic man cannot avoid the imputation of madness, though he be sober for many moons, if he rage in one. So then the calm mind must be settled in an habitual rest, not then firm when there is nothing to shake it, but then least shaken when it is most assailed.   

Sect. 3.  
WHence easily appears how vainly it hath been sought either in such a constant estate of outward things, 
Insufficiency of human precepts.  as should give no distaste unto the mind, whiles all earthly things vary with the weather, & have no stay but in uncertainty, or in the natural temper of the soul, so ordered by humane wisdom, as that it should not be affected with any casual events to either part; since that cannot ever by natural power be held like to itself; but one while is cheerful, stirring, & ready to undertake; anotherwhile drowsy, dull, comfortless, prone to rest, weary of itself, loathing his own purposes, his own resolutions. In both which, since the wisest philosophers have grounded all the rules of their tranquillity, it is plain that they saw it a far off, as they did heaven itself with a desire and admiration, but knew not the way to it: Whereupon alas, how sleight & impotent are the remedies they prescribe for unquietness. For what is it that for the inconstancy and laziness of the mind still displeasing itself in what it doth, 
Senecaes' rules of Tranquillity abridged  and for that distemper thereof which ariseth from the fearful, unthriving, and restless desires of it, we should ever be employing ourselves in some public affairs, choosing our business according to our inclination, and prosecuting what we have chosen? wherewith being at last cloyed we should retire ourselves and we are the rest of our time in private studies; that we should make due comparative trials of our own ability; nature of our businesses; disposition of our choose friends? that in respect of Patrimony we should be but carelessly affected, so drawing it in as it may be least for show, most for use; removing all pomp, bridling our hopes, cutting off superfluities for crosses, to consider that custom will abate and mitigate them that the best things are but chains & burdens to those that have them to those that use them, that the worst things have some mixture of comfort to those that groan under them. Or leaving these lower rudiments that are given to weak and simple novices to examine those golden rules of mortality, which are commended to the most wise & able practitioners, what is it to accounted himself as a tenant at will? To fore-imagine the worst in all casual matters? To avoid all idle & impertinent businesses all pragmatical meddling with affairs of state? not so to fix ourselves upon any one estate as to be impatient of a change, to call back the mind from outward things, and draw it home into itself? to laugh at & esteem lightly of others misdemeanours? Not to depend upon others opinions but to stand on our own bottoms? to carry ourselves in an honest and simple truth, free from a curious hypocrisy, & affectation of seeming other than we are, & yet as free from a base kind of carelessness? to intermeddle retyrednes, with society, so as one may give sweetness to the other and both to us. So slackening the mind that we may not loosen it, & so bending as we may not break it? to make most of ourselves, cheering up our spirits with variety of recreations with satiety of meals, & all other bodily indulgence, saving that kennes (me thinks) can neither beseem a wise philosopher to prescribe nor a virtuous man to practise. 
Allowed ●et by Seneca ●n his last chapter of tranquillity  All these in their kinds please well, profit much, and are as sovereign for both these, as they are unable to effect that for which they are propounded. Nature teaches thee all these should be done, she cannot teach thee to do them and yet do all these and no more, 
Senecas rules rejected as unsufficient.  let me never have rest, if thou have it. For neither are here the greatest enemies of our peace so much as descried a fair off, nor those that are noted are hereby so prevented that upon most diligent practice we can promise ourselves any security: wherewith who so instructed dare confidently give challenge to all sinister events, is like to some sk●●●● fencer who stands upon his usual wards, & plays well; but if there come a strange fetch of an unwonted blow, is put besides the rules of his art, and with much shame overtaken. And for those that are known, believe me, the mind of man is too weak to bear out itself hereby against all onsets: There are light crosses that will take an easy repulse, others yet stronger, that shake the house side, but break not in upon us; others vehement, which by force make way to the heart where they find none breaking open the door of the soul that denies entiance: Others violent that lift the mind of the hendges, or rend the bars of it in pieces, others furious that tear up the very foundations from the bottom, leaving no monument behind them, but ruin. The wisest & most resolute Moralist that ever was, looked pale when he should taste of his Hemlock; & by his timorousness made sport to those that envied his speculations. The best of the heathen Emperors (that was honoured with the title of piety) justly magnified that courage of Christians which made them insult over their tormentors & by their fearelessenesse of earthquakes, 
Antonius Pius.  & deaths argued the truth of their religion. 
An epistle to the Asians concerning the persecuted christians.  It must be, it can be none but a divine power, that can uphold the mind against the rage of main afflictions & yet the greatest crosses are not the greatest enemies to inward peace. Let us therefore look up above ourselves, and from the rules of an higher air, supply the efects of natural wisdom, giving such infallible directions for tranquillity that whosoever shall-follow, cannot but live sweetly and with continual delight applauding himself at home when all the world besides him shall bee miserable. To w●ich purpose it shall be requisite, 
〈…〉 work.  first to remove all causes of unquietness, and then to set down the grounds of our happy ●est.   

Sect. 4.  
I Find on the one two universal enemies of Tranquillity, 
〈…〉  Conscience of evil done, Sense or fear of evil suffered. The former in one word we call Sins, the latter Crosses. The 1. of these must be quite taken away, the second duly tempered ere the heart can be at rest. For first, how can that man be at peace, that is at variance with God & himself? How should peace be gods gift, if it could be without him, if it could be against him? It is the profession of sin although fair spoken at the first closing, to be a perpetual makebate betwixt God and man, betwixt a man & himself. And this enmity, though it do not continually show itself, (as the mortalest enemies are not always in pitched fields one against the other) for that the conscience is not ever clamorous, but somewhile is silent, otherwhiles with still murmurings bewrais his mislikes yet doth ever more work secret unquietness to the heart. The guilty man may have a seeming truce, a true peace he cannot have. 
The torment of an evil conscience.  Look upon the face of the guilty heart, & thou shalt see it pale and ghastly; the smiles & laughters faint & heartless, the speeches doubtful, & full of abrupt stops & unseasonable turn, the purposes & motions unsteady, & savouring of much distraction, arguing plainly that sin is not so smooth at her first motions, as turbulent afterwards: hence are those vain wearying of places & companies together with ourselves, that the galled soul doth after the wont of sick patients, seek refreshing in variety, and after many to●l●d & turned sides complains of remediless and unabated torment. Nero, after so much innocent blood may change his bed chamber, but his friends ever attend him, ever are within him, and are as parts of himself. Alas what avails it to seek outward reliefs, when thou hast thine executioner within thee? If thou couldst shift from thyself thou mightest have some hope of ease; now thou shalt never want furies so long as thou hast thyself. Yea, what if thou wouldst run from thyself? Thy soul may fly from thy body, thy conscience will not fly from thy soul, nor thy sin from thy conscience. Some men indeed in the bitterness of these pangs of sin, like unto those fond impatient fishes, that leap out of the pan into the flame, have leapt out of this private hell that is in themselves, into the common pit, choosing rather to adventure upon the future pains that they have feared, rather than to endure the present horrors they have felt: wherein what have they gained, but to that hell which was within them, a second hell without. The conscience leaves not where the fiends begin, but both join together in torture. But there are some firm & obdurate foreheads, whose resolution can laugh their sins out of countenance. There are so large and able gorges as that they can swallow and digest bloody murders, without complaint, who with the same hands which they have since their last meal imbrued in blood can freely carve to themselves large mor sells at the next sitting. 
The joy and peace of the guilty but dissembled.  Believest thou that such a man's heart laughs with his face? will not he dare to be an hypocrite that durst be a villain? These glow-worms when a night of sorrow compasses them, make a lightsome and fiery show of joy, when if thou press them thou findest nothing but a cold & crude moisture. Knowest thou not that there are those, which count it no shame to sin, yet count it a shame to be checked with remorse especially so as others eyes may descry? to whom repentance seems base-mindedness, unworthy of him that professes wisdom and valour. Such a man can grieve when none sees it but himself can laugh when others see it himself feels not. Assure thyself that man's heart bleedeth when his face counterfeits a smile, he wears out many waking hours when thou thinkst he resteth, yea as his thoughts afford him not sleep, so his very sleep affords him not rest: but while his senses are tied up, his sin is loose, representing itself to him in his ugliest shape & frighting him with horrible and hellish dreams. And if perhaps custom hath bred a carelessness in him, (as we see that usual whipping makes the child not care for the rod) yet an unwonted extremity of the blow shall fetch blood of the soul, and make the back that is most hardened, 〈◊〉 of smart: and the further the blow is fetched through intermission of remorse, the harder it must needs alight. Therefore I may confidently tell the careless sinner as that bold Tragedian said to his great Pompey. the time shall come wherein thou shalt fetch deep sighs, and therefore shalt sorrow desperately, because thou sorrowedst not sooner. The fire of the conscience may lie for a time smothered with a pile of green wood, that it cannot be discerned, whose moisture when once it hath mastered, it sends up so much greater flame by how much it had greater resistance. Hope not than to stop the mouth of thy Conscience from exclaiming whiles thy sin continues, that endeavour is both vain & hurtful; so I have seen them that have stopped the nostril for bleeding in hope to stay the issue when the blood hindered in his former course hath broken out of the mouth, or found way down into the stomach. The conscience is not pacifiable while sin is within to vex it. no more than an angry swelling can cease throbbing and aching while the thorn or the corrupted matter lies rotting underneath. Time that remedies all other evils of the mind increaseth this, which like to bodily diseases proves worse with continuance, and grows upon us with our age.   

Sect. 5.  
THere can be therefore no peace without reconciliation, 
The remedy 〈…〉 Conscience  thou canst not be friends with thyself, till wi●h God▪ for thy conscience (which is thy best friend while thou sinnest not) like an honest servant takes his Master's part against thee when thou hast sinned; and will not look strait upon thee, till thou upon God; not daring to be so kind to thee, as to be unfaithful to his maker: There can be no reconciliation without remission. God can neither forget the injury of sin, nor dissemble hatred. It is for men, & those of hollow hearts, to make pretences contrary to their affections: soothe, and smiles, & embracements where we mean not love, are from weakness. Either for that we fear our insufficiency of present revenge, or hope for a fitter opportunity afterwards, or for that we desire to make our further advantage of him to whom we mean evil. These courses are not incident into an almighty power, who having the command of all vengeance can smite where he list without all doubtings or delays. There can be no remission without satisfaction, neither dealeth God with us as we men with some desperate debtor, whom after long dilation of payments and many days broken we altogether let go for disability, or at least dismiss them upon an easy composition. All sins are debts; all God's debts must be discharged. It is b●lde word but a true. God should not be just if any of his debts should pass un 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. The conceit of the profane vulgar makes God all of mercies, and thereupon hopes for pardon without payment. Fo●d and ignorant presumption to disjoin mercy & justice in him to whom they are both essential to make mercy exceed justice in him, in whom both are infinite. Darest thou hope God can be so kind to thee as to be unjust to himself? God will be just go thou on to presume and perish. There can be no satisfaction by any recompense of ours, an infinite justice is offended, an infinite punishment is deserved by every sin, & every man's sins are as near to infinite as number can make them. Our best endeavour is worse than finite, imperfect, & faulty. If it could be perfect we owe it all in present, what we are bound to do in present cannot make amends for what we have not done in time past, which while we offer to God as good payment, we do with the profane traveler think to please him with empty dateshelles in am of preservation Where shall we then find a payment of infinite value but in him which is only and all infinite. The dignity of whose person being infinite gave such worth to his satisfaction that what he suffered in short time was proportionable to what we should have suffered beyond all times. He did all, suffered all, paid all, he did it for us, we in him. Where shall I begin to wonder at thee O thou divine & eternal peacemaker, the saviour of men, the amnointed of God, mediator between God & man, in whom there is nothing which doth not exceed not only the conceit, but the very wonder of Angels, who saw thee in thine humiliation with silence, & adore thee in thy glory with perpetual praises and rejoicings. Thou wast for ever of thyself as God, of the father as the son; the eternal Son of an eternal Father, not later in being, not less in dignity, not other in substance. Begotten without diminotion of him that begot thee while he communicated that wholly to thee, which he retained wholly in himself, because both were infinite without inequality of nature, without division of essence when being in this estate thine infinite love and mercy to deperate mankind caused thee O Saviour to empty thyself of thy glory, that thou mightst put on our shame and misery. Wherefore not ceasing to be God as thou wert, thou beganst to be what thou wert not, man; to the end that thou mightst be a perfect mediator betwixt God & man, which wert both in one person; God that thou mightst satisfy, man that thou mightst suffer, that since man had sinned God was offended, thou which wert God and man, mightst satisfy God for man. None but thyself which art the eternal word, can express the depth of this mystery that God should be clothed with flesh, come down to men, and become man, that man might be exalted into the highest heavens; and that our nature might be taken into the fellowship of the deity. That he to whom all powers in heaven bowed, and thought it their honour to be serviceable, should come down to be a servant to his slaves, a ransom for his enemies; together with our nature taking up our very infirmities, our shame, our torments, and bearing our sins without sin. That thou whom the heavens were too straight to contain, shouldst lay thyself in an obscure cratch, thou which wert attended of Angels, shouldst be derided of men, rejected of thine own, persecuted by Tyrants, tempted with Devils, betrayed of thy servant, crucified among thieves, and (which was worse than all these) in thine own apprehension for the time as forsaken of thy father; That thou whom our sins had pierced shouldst for our sins both sweat drops of blood in the Garden, and power out streams of blood upon the Cross. O the invaluable purchase of our peace. O ransom enough for more worlds! Thou which wert in the counsel of thy Father the Lamb slain from the beginning of time, camest now in fullness of time to be slain by man, for man; Being at once the sacrifice offered, the priest that did offer; and the God to whom it was offered. How graciously didst thou both proclaim our peace as a prophet in the time of thy life upon earth, and purchase it by thy blood as a priest at thy death, and now confirmest and applvest it as a King in heaven? By thee only it was procured, by thee it is proffered. O mercy without example, without measure! God offers peace to man, the holy seeks to the unjust, the potter to the clay, the King to the traitor. We are unworthy that we should be received to peace though we desired it; what are we then that we should have peace offered for the receiving? An easy condition of so great a benefit, he requires us not to earn it, but to accept it of him, what could he give more? what could he require less of us?   

Sect. 6.  
THE purchase therefore of our peace was paid at once, 
The receipt of our peace offered by Faith.  yet must be seve rally reckoned to every soul, whom it shall benefit. If we have not an hand to take what Christ's hand doth either hold, or offer, what is sufficient in him, cannot be effectual to us. The spiritual hand whereby we apprehend the sweet offers of our saviour is faith, which in short is no other than an affiance in the mediator receive peace & be happy believe & thou hast received. From hence it is that we are interessed in all that either God hath promised, or Christ hath performed. Hence have we from God both forgiveness & love the ground of all either peace or glory. Hence of enemies we become more than friends sons, and as sons may both expect and challenge not only careful provision and safe protection on earth, but an everlasting patrimony above. This field is so spacious, that it were easy for a man to lose himself in it, and if I should spend all my pilgrimage in this walk, my time would sooner end then my way, wherein I would have measured more paces, were it not that our scope is not so much to magnify the benefit of our peace, as to seek how to obtain it.  
Behold now, 
A corollary of the benefit of this receipt.  after we have sought heaven and earth where only the wearied Dove may find an Olive of Peace. The apprehending of this all-sufficient satisfaction makes it ours, upon our satisfaction we have remission; upon remission follows reconciliation; upon our reconciliation, peace. When therefore thy Conscience like a stern Sergeant shall catch thee by the throat, and arrest thee upon God's debt, let thy only plea be that thou hast already paid it; Bring forth that bloody acquittance sealed to thee from heaven upon thy true Faith, strait way thou shalt see the fierce and terrible look of thy conscience changed into friendly smiles, and that rough and violent hand that was ready to drag thee to prison, shall now lovingly embrace thee, & fight for thee against all the wrongful attempts of any spiritual adversary. O heavenly Peace and more than peace, Friendship, whereby alone we are leagued with ourselves and God with us, which who ever wants shall find a sad remembrance in the midst of his dissembled jollity, and after all vain strifes sha●l fall into many secret dumps, from which his guilty heart shall deny to be cheered, though all the world were his minstrel. Oh pleasure worthy to be pitied, & laughter worthy of tears, that is without this! 
The vain shifts of the guilty  Go then foolish man, and when thou feelest any check of thy sin, seek after thy iocondest companions, deceive the time and thyself with merry purposes, with busy games, feast away thy cares, bury them and thyself in wine and sleep, after all these frivolous differings, it will return upon thee, when thou wakest, perhaps ere thou wakest, nor will be repelled till it have showed thee thy hell, nor when it hath showed thee, will yet be repelled; So the strooken Dear having received a deadly arrow, whose shaft shaken out hath left the head behind it, runes from one thicket to another, not able to change his pain with his places, but finding his wounds still the worse with continuance. Ah fool, thy soul festereth within, and is affected so much more dangerously by how much less it appeareth. Thou mayst while thyself with variety, thou canst not ease thee. Sin owes thee a spite, & will pay it thee, perhaps when thou art in worst case to sustain it. This flitting doth but provide for a further violence at last. I have seen a little stream of no noise which upon his stoppage hath swelled up, & with a loud gushing hath borne over the heap of turfs wherewith it was resisted. Thy deathbed shall smart for these wilful adiournings of repentance; whereon how many have we heard raving of their old neglected sins, and fearfully despairing when they have had most need of comfort? In sum there is no way but this. Thy conscience must have either satisfaction or torment. Discharge thy sin betimes and be at peace. He never breaks his sleep for debt, that pays when he takes up.   

Sect. 7.  
NEither can it suffice for peace, 
Solicitation of sin remedied.  to have crossed the old scroll of our sins if we prevent not the future, yea the present; very importunity of tentation breeds unquietness. Sin where it hath got an haunt looketh for more, as humours that fall towards their old issue, & if it be not strongly repelled doth near as much vex us with soliciting as with yielding. Let others envy their happiness I shall never think their life so much quiet, whose doors are continual beaten, and their morning sleep broken with early clients, whose entries are daily thronged with suitors pressing near for the next audience; much less that through the remiss answers are daily haunted with traitors or other instruments of villainy, offering their mischievous service & inciting them to some pestilent enterprise. Such are temptations to the soul. Whereof it cannot be rid so long as it holds them in any hope of entertainment and so long they will hope to prevail, while we give them but a cold and timorous denial; Suitors are drawn on with an easy repulse; counting that as half granted which is but faintly gainsaid: Peremptory answers can only put sin out of heart for any second attempts. It is ever impudent when it meets not with a bold heart; hoping to prevail by wearying us, & wearying us by entreaties. Let all suggestions therefore find thee resolute so shall thy soul find itself at rest for as the Devil, so sin his natural brood flies away with resistance. To which purpose all our heady & disordered affections, 
The ordering of affections.  which are the secret factors of sin & Satan, must be restrained by a strong and yet temperate command of reason and Religion; these, if they find the reins lose in their necks (like to the wild horses of that chaste hunter, in the Tragedy) carry us over hills and rocks, and never leave us till we be disincombred, and they breathless; but contrarily if they be pulled in with the sudden violence of a strait hand, they fall to plunging, and careering, and never leave till their saddle be empty, & even then dangerously strike at their prostrate rider. If there be any exercise of Christian wisdom, it is in the managing of these unruly affections, which are not more necessary in their best use, then pernicious in their mis-governance. Reason hath always been busy in undertaking this so necessary a moderation, wherein although she have prevailed with some of colder temper, yet those which have been of more stub borne metal, like unto grown scholars, which scorn the ferula that ruled their minority, have still despised her weak endeavours. Only christianity hath this power which with our second birth gives us a new nature, so that now, if excess of passions be natural to us as men, the order of them is natural to us as Christians. Reason bids the angry man lay over his Alphabet ere he give his answer; hoping by this intermission of time to gain the mitigation of his rage. He was never thoroughly angry that can endure the recital of so many idle letters. Christianity gives not rules, but power to avoid this short madness. It was a wise speech that is reported of our best and last Cardinal I hope, that this Island either did or shall see, who when a skilful ginger upon the calculation of his nativity had foretold him some specialties, concerning his future estate, answered: such perhaps I was borne, but since that time I have been borne again & my second nativity hath crossed my first. The power of nature is a good plea for those that acknowledge nothing above nature. But for a Christian to excuse his intemperateness by his natural inclination, and to say I am borne choleric, sullen, amorous, is an Apology worse than the fault. Wherefore serves religion but to subdue or govern nature? We are so much Christians as we can rule ourselves, the rest is but form, and speculation. Yea the very thought of our profession is so powerful that (like unto that precious stone) being cast into this sea it asswayeth those inward tempests, that were raised by the affections. The unregenerate mind is not capable of this power, and therefore through the continual mutinies of his passions cannot but be subject to perpetual unquietness. There is neither remedy nor hope in this estate: But the christian soul that hath enured itself to the awe of God, & the exercises of true mortification, by the only looking up at his holy profession cureth the burning venom of these fiery serpents that lurk within him. Hast thou nothing but nature? resolve to look for no peace. God is not prodigal to cast away his best blessings on so unworthy subjects. Art thou a christian? Do but remember thou art so: and then if thou darest if thou canst, yield to the excess of Passions.   

Sect. 8.  
HItherto the most inward and dangerous enemy of our Peace which if we have once mastered, 
The second pain enemy to peace Crosses.  the other field shall be fought & won with less blood. Crosses disquiet us either in their present feeling, or their expectation. Both of them when they meet with weak minds, so extremely distempering them, that the Patient for the time is not himself: How many have we known which through a lingering disease, weary of their pain, weary of their lives have made their own hands their executioners? How many meeting with an headstrong grief which they could not menage, have by the violence of it been carried quite from their wits? How many million what for incurable maladies, what forlosses, what for defamations, what for sad accidents to their children rub out their lives in perpetual discontentment, therefore living because they cannot yet die, not for that they like to live. If there could be any human receipt prescribed to avoid evils, it would be purchased at an high rate; But both it is impossible that earth should redress that which is sent from heaven & if it could be done, even the want of miseries would prove miserable; For the mind cloyed with continu alfelicity would grow aburden to itself, loathing that at last which intermission would have made pleasant Give a free horse the full rains & he will soon tyre. Summer is the sweetest season by all consents, where in the earth is both most rich with increase, & most gorgeous for ornament, yet if it were not received with enterchanges of cold frosts & piercing winds, who could live. Summer would be no summer, if winter did not both lead it in & follow it we may not therefore either hope or strive to escape all crosses, some we may, what thou canst, fly from; what thou canst not, allay & mitigat; in crosses universally let this be thy rule, make thyself none, escape some bear the rest, sweeten al.   

Sect. 9  
Apprehension gives life to crosses, 
Of crosses that arise from conceit.  & if some be simply most are as they are taken. I have seen many which when God hath meant them no hurt have framed themselves crosses out of imagination & have found that insupportable for weight, which in truth never was, neither had ever any but a fancied being. Others again laughing out heavy afflictions, for which they were bemoaned of the beholders. One receives a deadly wound; & looks not so much as pale at the smart another hears of main losses, & like Zeno after news of his shipwreck, (as altogether passionlesse goes to his rest, not breaking an hours sleep for that, which would break the heart of some others. Greenham that S. of ours (whom it cannot disparaged that he was reserved for our so loose an age) can lie spread quietly upon the form looking for the Chirurgeons knife, binding himself as fast with a resolved patience, as others with strongest cords, abiding his flesh carved and his bowels rifled, and not stirring more than if he felt not, while others tremble to expect, & shrink to feel but the pricking of a vain. There can be no remedy for imaginary crosses but wisdom, which shall teach us to esteem of all events as they are, like a true glass representing all things to our minds in their due proportion. So as Crosses may not seem that are not, nor little & gentle ones seem great and intolerable. Give thy body Elsebore, thy mind good Counsel, thine ear to thy friend, and these fantastical evils shall vanish away like themselves.   

Sect. 10.  
IT were idle advise to bid men avoid evils. 
Of true & r●all cros●es.  Nature hath by a secret instinct taught brute creatures so much, whether wit or sagacity: & ourself love making the best advantage of reason will easily make us so wise & careful; it is more worth our labour, since our life is so open to calamities, & nature to impatience, to teach men to bear what evils they cannot avoid, & how by a well-disposednesse of mind, we may correct the iniquity of all hard events. Wherein it is hardly credible how much good art, and precepts of resolution may avail us. I have seen one man by the help of a little engine lift up that weight alone which forty helping hands by their clear strength might have endeavoured in vain We live here in an Ocean of troubles, wherein we can see no firm land. One wave falling upon another ere the former have wrought all his spite. mischiefs strive for places, as if they feared to lose their room if they hasted not: so many good things as we have, so many evils arise from their privation; besides no fewer real and positive evils that afflict us; To prescribe & apply receits to every particular cross were to write a Salmeron-like commentary upon petrarch's remedies, & I doubt whether so the work would be perfect, a life would be too little to write it, & but enough to read it.   

Sect. 11.  
THe same medicines cannot help all diseases of the body, 
The first remedy of Crosses.  of the soul they may. 
Before they come.  We see fencers give their scholars the same common rules of position of warding and wielding their weapon for offence for defence against all comers: such universal precepts there are for Crosses. In the first whereof, I would prescribe Expectation, that either killeth or abateth evils. For Crosses after the nature of the Cockatrice, die if they be foreseen: Whether this providence makes us more strong to resist or by some secret power makes them more unable to assault us. It is not credible what a fore-resolued mind can do, can suffer. Could our english Milo, of whom Spain yet speaketh since their last peace, have overthrown that furious beast, made now more violent through the rage of his baiting, if he had not settled himself in his station, and expected? The frighted multitude ran away from that over-earnest sport, which begun in pleasure, ended in terror, if he had turned his back with the rest, where had been his safety, where his glory, and reward? Now he stood still, expected, overcame, by one fact he at once preserved, honoured, enriched himself. Evils will come never the sooner for that thou lookest for them, they will come the easier; it is a labour well lost if they come not, & well bestowed if they do come. We are sure the worst may come, why should we be secure that it will not? Suddenness finds weak minds secure makes them miserable, leaves them desperate. The best way therefore is to make things present in conceit before they come, that they may be half passed in their violence when they do come: Even with wooden wasters we learn at the sharp. As therefore good soldiers exercise themselves long at the pale, & there use those activities which afterwards they shall practise upon a true adversary so must we present to ourselves imaginary crosses & menage them in our mind before god sends them in event. Now I eat, sleep, digest, all sound without complaint; what if a lanquishing disease should bereave me of my appetite & rest? that I should see dainties & loathe them, surfeiting of the very smell, of the thought of the best dishes? that I should count the lingering hours and think Ezechias long day returned wearying myself with changing sides, and wishing any thing but what I am. How could I take this distemper? Now I have (if not what I would) yet what I need, as not abounding with idle superfluities, so not straightened with penury of necessary things. What if poverty should rush upon me as an armed man, spoiling me of all my little, that I had, and send me to the fountain for my best cellar? to the ground for my bed, for my bread to another's cupboard, for my clothes to the broker's shop, or my friends wardrobe? How could I brook this want, I am now at home walking in my own grounds, looking on my young plants the hope of posterity, considering the nature, advantages or fears of my soil, enjoying the patrimony of my fathers; What if for my religion, or the malicious sentence of sun great one, I should be exiled from my country, wandering amongst those whose habit, language, fashion my ignorance shall make me wonder at; where the solitude of places, and strangeness of persons shall make my life uncomfortable. How could I abide the smell of foreign smoke? how should I take the contempt & hard usage that waits upon strangers? Thy prosperity is Idle, & il spent if it be not meddled with such forecasting and wisely suspicious thoughts, if it be wholly bestowed in enjoying, no whit in preventing: Like unto a foolish City which notwithstanding a dangerous situation, spends all her wealth in rich furniturs of chambers, & state-houses; While they bestow not one shovel-full of earth on outward Bulwarks to their defence: this is but to make our enemies the happier and ourselves the more readily miserable: If thou wilt not therefore be oppressed with evils; Expect, and Exercise; Exercise thyself with conceit of evils; Expect the evils themselves; Yea exercise thyself in expectation; so while the mind pleasetth itself in thinking, yet I am not thus, it prepareth itself against it may be so: And if some that have been good at the foils, have proved cowardly at the sharp, yet on the contrary who ever durst point a single combat in the field, that hath not been somewhat trained in the sense school?   

Sect. 12.  
NEither doth it a little blunt the edge of evils to consider that they come from a divine hand, 
The next remedy of crosses when they are come.  Whose almighty power is guided by a most wise providence and tempered with a fatherly love. 
From their Author;  Ever the savage creatures will be smitten of their keeper, & repine not; if of a stranger, they tear him in pieces. He strikes me that made me, that moderats the world, Why struggle, I with him, why with myself? Am I a fool, or a rebel? A fool if I be ignorant whence my crosses come; A rebel if I know it, and be impatient? My sufferings are from a God, from my God, he hath destined me every dram of sorrow that I feel: Thus much thou shalt abide, & here shall thy miseries be stinted: All worldly helps cannot abate them; all powers of hell cannot add one scruple to their weight, that he hath allotted me: I must therefore either blaspheme God in my heart, detracting from his infinite justice, wisdom, power, mercy which all shall stand inviolable, when million of such worms as I am are gone to dust. Or else confess that I ought to be patient And if I profess I should be that I will not, I befool myself and bewray miserable impotency. But, (as impatience is full of excuses) it was thine own rash improvidence, or the spite of thine enemy that impoverished, that defamed thee, it was the malignity of some unholesomedish, or some gross corrupted air that hath distempered thee? Ah foolish curte, why dost thou bite at the stone, which could never have hurt thee but from the hand that threw it? If I wound thee what matters it whether with mine own sword, or thine, or another's. God strikes some immediately from heaven with his own arm, or with the arm of Angels: Others be buffetes with their own hands, some by the revenging sword of an enemy, others with the sister of his dumb creatures God strikes in all; His hand moves theirs. If thou see it not, blame thy carnal eyes: why dost thou fault the instrument while thou knowest the agent? Ever the dying thief pardons the executioner, exclaims on his unjust judge or his malicious accusers. Either then blame the first mover, or discharge the means, which as they could not have touched thee but as from him; so from him they have afflicted thee justly, wrongfully perhaps as in themselves.   

Sect. 13.  
BUT neither seemeth it enough to be patient in crosses if we be not thankful also: 
The third antidote of crosses.  Good things challenge more than bare contentment. Crosses (unjustly termed evils) as they are sent of him that is all goodness so they are sent for good and his end cannot be frustrate. What greater good can be to the diseased man then fit and proper Physic to recure him? Crosses are the only medicines of sick minds. Thy sound body carries within it a sick soul; thou feelest it not perhaps so much more art thou sick and so much more dangerously: Perhaps thou labourest of some plethorie of pride, or of some dropsy of Covetousness, or the Staggers of inconstancy, or some fever of luxury, or consumption of envy, or perhaps of the lethargy of idleness, or of the frenzy of anger: It is a rare soul that hath not some notable disease: Only crosses are thy remedies: What if they be unpleasant? They are Physic It is enough if they be wholesome; Not pleasant taste, but the secret virtue commends medicines; If they cure thee, they shall please thee even in displeasing, or else thou lovest thy palate above thy soul. What madness is this? when thou complainest of a bodily disease, thou sendest to the Physician, that he may send thee not savoury but wholesome potions; Thou receivest them in spite of thine abhorring stomach, and withal both thankest & rewardest the Physician. Thy soul is sick; Thy heavenly Physician sees it, and pities thee ere thou thyself, and unsent to, sends thee not a plausible but a sovereign remedy, thou loathest the savour, and rather wilt hazard thy life, then offend thy palate; and in steed of thanks repinest at, revilest the Physician. How comes it that we love ourselves so little (if at least we count our souls the best or any part) as that we had rather undergo death then pain; choosing rather wilful sickness than an harsh remedy? surely we men are mere fools in the estimation of our own good like children our choice is led altogether by show no whit by substance. We cry after every well-seeming toy, and put from us solid proffers of good things: The wise arbitrator of all things sees our folly and corrects it, with holding our idle desires and forcing upon us the sound good we refuse: It is second folly in us if we thank him not: The foolish babe cries for his father's bright knife or gilded pills; The wiser father knows that they can but hurt him; & therfore-holdes them after all his tears; the child thinks he is used but unkindly: Every wise man, & himself at more years can say it was but childish folly, in desiring it, in complaining that he miss it. The loss of wealth, friends, health is sometimes gain to us, thy body, thy estate, is worse thy soul is better, why complainest thou?   

Sect. 14.  
NAy, 
The 4. and last part from their issue  it shall not be enough (me thinks) if only we be but contented & thankful, if not also cheerful in afflictions; If that as we feel their pain, so we look to their end; although indeed this is not more requisite then rarely found, as being proper only to the good heart; Every bird can sing in a clear heaven in a temperate spring, that one as most familiar so is most commended that sings merry notes in the midst of a shower, or the dead of winter; Every Epicure can enlarge his heart to mirth in the midst of his cups, and dalliance; Only the three children can sing in the furnace, Paul & Silas in the stocks, Martyrs at the stake: It is from heaven, that this joy comes so contrary to all earthly occasions, bred in the faithful heart through a serious & feeling respect to the issue of what he feels; the quiet and untroubled fruit of his righteousness, glory, the crown after his fight after his minute of pain eternity of joy He never looked over the threshold of heaven that cannot more rejoice that he shall be glorious, then mourn in present that he is miserable.   

Sect. 15.  
YEa this consideration is so powerful, 
Of the importunity & terror of Death.  that it alone is able to make apart against the fear or sense of the last and greatest of all terribles, Death itself; which in the Conscience of his own dreadfulness, justly laughs at all the vain human precepts of tranquillity, appalling the most resolute and vexing the most cheerful minds. Neither profane Lucretius, with all his Epicurean rules of confidence, nor drunken Anacreon, with all his wanton Odes, can shift of the importunate, and violent horror of this adversary. Seest thou the Chaldean Tyrant beset with the sacred bowls of jerusalem, the late spoils of God's Temple, and in contempt of their owner's carousing healths to his Queens, Concubines, Peers; singing amids his cups triumphant carols of praise to his molten & carved Gods? Wouldst thou ever suspect that this high courage could be abated, or that this sumptuous & presumptuous banquet after so royal and rocond continuance should have any other conclusion but pleasure? Stay but one hour longer, and thou shalt see that face, that now shines with a ruddy gloss according to the colour of his liquor, look pale and ghastly, stained with the colours of fear and death, and that proud hand, which now lifts up his Ma●sie Goblet's in defiance of God, tremble like a leaf in a storm; and those strong knees which never stooped to the burden of their laden body, now notable to bear up themselves: but loosened with a sudden palsy of fear, one knocking against the other. And all this, for that death writes him a letter of summons to appear that night before him; and accordingly ere the next Sun, sent two eunuchs for his honourable conveyance into an other world; where now are those delicate morsels, those deep draughts, those merry ditties, wherewith the palate & ear so pleased themselves? What is now become of all those cheerful looks, loose laughters, stately port, revels, triumphs of the feasting court? Why doth none of his gallant nobles revive the fainted courage of their Lord with a new cup? or with some stirring jest shake him out of this unseasonable Melancholy? O death how imperious art thou to carnal minds? aggravating their misery not only by expectation of future pain, but by the remembrance of the wont causes of their joy? and not suffering them to see aught but what may torment them? Even that monster of Caesar's, that had been so well acquainted with blood & never had found better sport them in cutting of throats when no wit came to his own ruane how effeminate, how desperately cowardous did he show himself? to the wonder of all readers, that he which was ever so valiant in killing should be so womanishly hartelesse in dying.   

Sect. 16.  
THere are that fear not so much to be dead, 
The grounds of the fear of Death.  as to die; the very act of dissolution frighting them with a tormenting expectation of a short, but intolerable painfulness, which let, if the wisdom of God had not interposed to timorous nature, there would have been many more Lucreces, Cleopatra's, Achitophles; & good laws should have found little opportunity of execution, through the wilful funerals of malefactors For the soul that comes into the body without any (at least sensible) pleasure departs not from it without an extremity of pain; which varying according to the manner and means of separation yet in all violent deaths especially, retaineth a violence not to be avoided, hard to be endured and if diseases, which are destined towards death as their end, be so painful, what must the end and perfection of diseases be? Since as diseases are the maladies of the body, so death is the malady of diseases: There are that fear not so much to die as to be dead. If the pang be bitter, yet it is but short; the comfortless state of the dead strikes some that could well resolve for the act of their passage. 
HADRIAN Animula Vagula Blandula.  Not the worst of the heathen Emperors, made that moanful ditty on his deathbed, wherein he bewrayeth to all memory, much feeling pity of his soul, for her doubtful and impotent condition after her parture. How doth Plato's worldling bewail the misery of the grave, 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. etc.  besides all respect of pain? Woe is me that I shall lie alone rotting in the silent earth, amongst the crawling worms not seeing ought above, not seen. Very not being is sufficiently abhorred of nature, if death had no more to make it fearful: But those that have lived under light enough, to show them the gates of hell, after their passage through the gates of death, and have learned that death is not only horrible for our not being here, but for being infinitely, eternally miserable in a future world, nor so much for the dissolution of life, as the beginning of torment those cannot without the certain hope of their immunity, but carnally fear to die, and hellishly fear to be dead: For if it be such pain to die, what is it to be ever dying? & if the straining or luxation of one joint, can so afflict us, what shall the racking of the whole body and the torturing of the soul, whose animation alone makes the body to feel and complain of smart? and if men have devised such exquisite torments, what can spirits, more subtle more malicious? and if our momentany suffering seem long, how long shall that be that is eternal? and if the sorrows i● differently incident to God's dear ones upon earth be so extreme as sometimes to drive them within sight of despairing, what shall those be that are reserved only for those that hate him, and that he hateth? None but those who have heard the desperate complaints of some guilty Spyra, or whose souls have been a little scorched with these flames, can enough conceive of the horror of this estate; it being the policy of our common enemy to conceal it so long, that we may see and feel it at once: lest we should fear it, before it be too late to be avoided.   

Sect. 17.  
NOw when this great adversary, 
Remedy of the last & greatest breach of peace, arising from Death.  ●ike a proud Giant comes stalking out in his fearful shape, and insults over our frail mortality, daring the world to match him with an equal champion, whiles a whole host of worldlings show him their backs for fear, the true Christian armed only with confidence and resolution of his future happiness dares boldly encounter him, and can wound him in the forehead (the wont seat of terror) and trampling upon him can cut off his head with his own sword & victoriously returning, can sing in Triumph Oh death where is thy s●ing! An happy victory! we die & are not foiled: yea we are conquerors in dying: we could not over come death, if we died not: That dissolution is well bestowed, that parts the soul from the body that it may unite both to God: All our life here (as that heavenvly Doctor well terms it) is but a vital death how advantageous is that death that determines this false & dying life, 
Augustine.  and begins a true one, above all the titles of happiness? The Epicure or Saducee, dare not die for fear of not being; The guilty and loose worldling dare not die for fear of being miserable; The distrustful and doubting semi-christian dare not die, because he knows not, whether he shall be, or be miserable, or not be at all; The resolved Christian dare and would die, because he knows he shall be happy, and looking merrily towards heaven the place of his rest can unfeignedly say, I desire to be dissolved: I see thee, my home, I see thee; A sweet and glorious home, after a weary pilgrimage; I see thee and now after many lingering hopes, I aspire to thee: How oft have I looked up at thee with admiration & ravishment of soul; & by the goodly beams that I have seen guessed at the glory that is above them? How oft have I scorned these dead and unpleasant pleasures of earth, in comparison of thine? I come now my joys, I come to possess you: I come through pain and death; Yea, if hell itself were in the way betwixt you and me, I would passed through hell itself to enjoy you. 
Tull. Tuscul. Cal●imach. Epigram.  And in truth if that heathen Cleombrotus a follower of the ancient Academy, but upon only reading of his Master Plato's discourses of the immortality of the soul, could cast down himself headlong from an high rock, and wilfully break his neck, that he might be possessed of that immortality which he believed to follow upon death, how contented should they be to die that know they shall be more than immortal glorious? 
August. de Heres.  He went, not in an hate of the flesh as the Patrician heretics of old, but in a blind love to his soul out of bare opinion: We upon an holy love grounded upon assured knowledge: He upon an opinion of future life, we on knowledge of future glory. He went unsent for, we called for by our maker: Why should his courage exceed ours, since our ground, our estate so far exceeds his; Even this age, within the reach of our memory, bred that peremptory▪ Italian which in imitation of the old Roman courage (lest in that degenerated nation, there should be no step left of the qualities of their Ancestors) entering upon his torment for killing a Tyrant, cheered himself with this confidence. 
Mor● acerba, Fama perpetua.  My death is sharp my fame shall be everlasting: The voice of a Roman, not of a christian; My fame shallbe eternal; An idle comfort: My fame shall live, not my soul live to see it: What shall it avail thee to be talked of while thou art not: Then fame only is precious when a man lives to enjoy it; The fame that survives the soul, is bootless; Yet even this hope cheered him against the violence of his death; what should it do us that not our fame but our life, our glory after death cannot die? He that hath Stephen's eyes to look into heaven cannot but have the tongue of the Saints Come Lord. How long? That man seeing the glory of the end, cannot but contemn the hardness of the way; But who wants those eyes, if he say and swear that he fears not death, believe him not If he protest his Tranquillity, & yet fear death, believe him not; Believe him not if he say he is not miserable.   

Sect. 18.  
THese are enemies on the left hand. 
The second rank of the enemies of Peace.  There want not some on the right; Which with less profession of hostility, hurt no less; Not so easily perceived, because they distemper the mind not without some kind of pleasure. Surfeit kills more than famine. These are the over-desiring and overioying of these earthly things. 
Hippocr. Aphons.  All immoderations are enemies, as to health so to peace. He that desires, wants as much, as he that hath nothing. The drunken man is as thirsty, as the sweeting traveler: Hence are the studies, cares, fears, jealousies, hopes griefs, envies, wishes, platforms of achieving, alterations of purposes, and a thousand like, whereof each one is enough to make the life troublesome. One is sick of his neighbour field, whose misshapen angels disfigure his, and hinder his Lordship of entireness: what he hath is not regarded, for the want of what he cannot have. Another feeds on crusts to purchase what he must leave perhaps to a fool, or (which is not much better) to a prodigal heir. Another, in the extremity of covetous folly, chooses to die an unpitied death, hanging himself for the fall of the market, while the commons laugh at that loss, & in their speeches Epitaph upon him, as on that Pope. He lived as a wolf, & died as a dog. One cares not what attendance he dances at all hours, on whose stairs he sits, what vices he soothes, deformities he imitates, what servile offices he doth, in an hope to rise. Another stomachs the covered head, and stiff knee of his inferior; angry that other men think him not so good as he thinks himself. Another eats his own heart with envy at the richer furniture, and better estate, or more honour of his neighbour thinking his own not good, because another hath better: Another vexeth himself with a word of disgrace, passed from the mouth of an enemy, which he neither can digest nor cast up, resolving because another will be his enemy, to be his own, These humours are as manifold, 
The first remedy of an over prosperous estate.  as there are men that seem prosperous: For the avoiding of all which ridiculous and yet spiteful inconveniences; 
The vanity & unprofitableness of Riches.  the mind must be settled in a persuasion of the worthlessness of these outward things; Let it know, 
The first enemy on the right hand.  that these riches have made many prouder, none better; That as never man was, so never wise man thought himself better for enjoying them. 
Socrates.  Would that wise Philosopher, have cast his gold into the sea, if he had not known he should live more happily without it? 
A proof that with Christians deserves no credit, but with heathens commands it.  If he knew not the use of riches he was no wise man; if he knew not the best way to quietness, he was no philosopher; now even by the voice of their oracle he was confessed to be both, yet cast away his gold that he might be happy. Would that wise prophet have prayed aswell against riches, as poverty? Would so many great men (whereof our little Island hath yielded 9 crowned kings, while it was held of old by the Saxons) after they had continued their life in the throne, have ended it in the cell, and changed their sceptre for a book, if they could have found as much felicity in the highest estate, as security in the lowest? I hear Peter and john, the eldest and dearest Apostles, say Gold and silver have I none, I hear the Devil say All these will I give thee, and they are mine to give; Whether shall I desire to be in the state of these saints, or that devil? He was therefore a better husband, than a philosopher, that first termed riches, Goods, and he mended the title well, that adding a fit epithet, called them goods of Fortune, False goods, ascribed to a false Patron, there is no fortune to give or guide riches; there is no true goodness in riches to be guided; His meaning then was (as I can interpret it) to teach us in this title; that it is a chance if ever riches were good to any. In sum, who would account those as riches, or those riches as goods, which hurt the owner, disquiet others which the worst have, which the best have not, which those that have, not, want not; which those want that have them, which are lost in a night and a man is not worse when he hath lost them? It is true of them that we say of Fire and water, they are good servants, ill masters. Make them thy slave, they shall be goods indeed, in use if not in nature; good to thyself, good to others by thee: But if they be thy masters, thou hast condemned thyself to thine own Galleys; If a servant rule, he proves a Tyrant; What madness is this, thou hast made thyself at once, a slave and a fool? What if thy chains be of gold, or if with Heliogabalus thou hast made thee silken haliers? thy servitude may be more glorious, it is no less miserable.   

Sect. 19  
HOnour perhaps is yet better; 
The second enemy on the right hand Honour.  such is the confused opinion of those that know little; but a distinct and curious head shall find an hard task to define in what point the goodness thereof consisteth: Is it in high descent of blood? I would think so, if nature were tied by any law to produce children like qualitied to their parents: But although in the brute creatures she be ever thus regular, that ye shall never find a young pigeon hatched in an eagle's nest, neither can I think that true (or if true it was monstruous) that Nicippus his sheep should yeane a Lion, yet in the best creature (which hath his form & her attending qualities from above) with a likeness of face and features, is commonly found an unlikeness of disposition: Only the earthly part follows the seed, wisdom, valour; virtue are of another beginning: Shall I bow to a molten calf because it was made of golden ear-rings? Shall I condemn all honour of the first head (though upon never so noble deserving) because it can show nothing before itself but a white shield? If Cesar or Agathocles be a Potter's son shall I contemn him? Or if wise Bion be the son of an infamous Courtesan, 
Olympia. Diog. Lae●●.  shall the censorious lawyer raze him of the Catalogue with partus sequitur ventrem? Lastly shall I account that good which is incident to the worst? Either therefore greatness must show some charter wherein it is privileged with succession of virtue, or else the goodness of honour cannot consist in blood: Is it then in the admiration and high opinion that others have conceived of thee, which draws all dutiful respect and humble offices from them to thee? Ofickle good that is ever in the keeping of others especially of the unstable vulgar, that beast of many heads, whose divided tongues, as they never agree with each other, so seldom when ever agree long with themselves. Do we not see the superstitious Listrians, that erewhile would needs make Paul a God against his will, & in devout zeal drew crowned Bulls to the altars, of their new jupiter, & Mercury? violence can scarce hold them from sacrificing unto him: Now not many hours after gather up stones against him; having in their conceits turned him from a God into a malefactor; and are ready to kill him in steed of killing a sacrifice to him: Such is the multitude & such the steddines of their honour: there then only is true honour where blood and virtue meet together, the greatness whereof is from blood, the goodness from virtue; Rejoice ye great men; that your blood is ennobled with the virtues and deserts of your Ancestors? this only is yours, this only challenges all unfeigned respect of your inferiors, count it praiseworthy not that you have, but that you deserve honour. Blood may be tainted, the opinion of the vulgar cannot be constant only virtue is ever like itself; & only wins reverence even of those that hath it; without which, greatness is as a Beacon of vice, to draw men's eyes the more to behold it; and those that see it, dare loath it; though they dare not censure it: so while the knee bendeth, the mind abhorreth, and telleth the body it honours an unworthy subject, within itself secretly comparing that vicious great man, on whom his submiss courtesy is cast away, to some goodly fair bound Seneca●s Tragedies, 
Lucian  that is curiously gilded without; which if a man open he shall find Thyestes the tomb of his own children; or Oedipus the husband of his own mother or some such monstrous part, which he at once reads and hates.   

Sect. 20.  
LET him think that not only these outward things are not in themselves good, 
The second remedy of overjoyed prosperity.  but that they expose their owners to misery, for besides that God usually punishes our overloving them with their loss (because he thinks then unworthy rivals to himself, who challengeth all height of love as his only right) so that the way to lose is to love much, the largeness moreover either of affection, or estate, makes an open way to ruin; while a man walks on plain ground he falls not, or if he fall he doth but measure his length on the ground, & rise again with out harm, but he that climbeth high is in danger of falling, & if he fall of killing. All the sails hoist give vantage to a tempest which by the mariners foresight giving timely room thereto by their fall deliver the vessel from the danger of that gust whose rage now passes over with only beating her with waves, for anger that he was prevented; So the larger our estate is, the fairer mark hath mischief given to it; and which is worse, that which makes us so easy to hit, makes our wound more deep and grievous: 
Inuen. sat. 4.  If poor Codrus his house burn, he stands by, and warms him with the flame, because he knows it is but the loss of an outside, which by gathering some few sticks, straw, and clay, may with little labour, and no cost be repaired: But when the many lostes of the rich man do one give fire to another, be cries out one while of his Countinghouse, another while of his wardrobe, then of some noted chest, and strait of some rich Cabinet, and lamenting both the frame and the furniture, is therefore impatient because he had something.   

Sect. 21.  
But if there be any sorceress upon earth, 
The vanity of Pleasure the third enemy on the right hand.  it is pleasure, which so enchanteth the minds of men, and worketh the disturbance of our Peace, with such secret delight, that foolish men think this want of Tranquillity, happiness. She turneth men into swine, with such sweet charms, that they would not change their brutish nature for their former reason. It is a good unquietness (say they) that contenteth it is a good enemy that profiteth; Is it any wonder that men should be sortish, when their reason is mastered with sensuality? Thou fool, thy pleasure contents thee: How much? How long? If she have not more befriended thee then ever she did any earthly favourite, yea if she have not given thee more than she hath herself thy best delight hath had some mixture of discontentment; for either some circumstance crosseth thy desire, or the inward distaste of thy conscience checking thine appetite, permits thee not any entire fruition of thy joy. Even the sweetest of all flowers hath his thorns; and who can determine whether the sent be more delectable, or the pricks more irksome? It is enough for heaven to have absolute pleasures; which if they could be found here below, certainly that heaven which is now not enough desired, would then be feared: God will have our pleasures here, according to the fashion of ourselves, compounded So as the best delights, may still savour of their earth. See how that great King which never had any match for wisdom, searce ever any superior forwealth, traversed over all this inferior world with diligent inquiry, & observation, and all to find out that goodness of the children of men which they enjoy under the Sun; abridging himself of nothing, that either his eyes, or his heart could suggest to him; (as what is it, that he could not either know or purchase?) and now coming home to himself, after the disquisition of all natural and human things, complains, that Behold, all is not only vanity, but vexation. Go then thou wise scholar of experience, and make a more accurate search for that which he sought and miss. Perhaps somewhere betwixt the tallest Cedar in Lebanon, and the shrubby Hissop upon the wall? Pleasure shrouded herself that she could not be descried of him, whether through ignorance or negligence; Thine insight may be more piercing, thy means more commodious, thy success happier; If it were possible for any man to entertain such hopes, his vain experience could not make him a greater fool; it could but teach him what he is, and knoweth not And yet so imperfect as our pleasures are, they have their satiety: and as their continuance is not good, so their conclusion is worse. Look to their end, and see how sudden, how bitter it is. Their only courtesy is to salute us with a farewell, and such a one as makes their salutation uncomfortable. This Dalila shows and speaks fair but in the end she will bereave thee of thy strength, of thy sight, yea of thyself. These gnats fly about thine ears, and make thee Music awhile but evermore they sting ere they part: Sorrow & repentance is the best end of pleasure, pain is yet worse, but the worst is despa●re. 〈…〉 of the ●●rst of these, one of the latter shall 〈◊〉 thee, perhaps both. How much better is it for thee to want a little honey them to be swollen up with a venomous sting?  
Thus than the mind resolved that these earthly things, Honours, wealth Pleasures are casual, unstable, deceitful, imperfect dangerous must learn to use them without trust & to want them without grief; thinking still if I have them I have some benefit with a great charge, if I have them not with little respect of others I have much security and ease in myself, which once obtained we cannot far amiss in either estate, and without-which we cannot but miscarry in both.   

Sect. 22.  
ALL the enemies of our inward peace are thus descried and discomfited which done, 
Positive rules of our peace.  we have enough to preserve us from misery, but since we moreover seek how to be well and happily, there yet remain those positive rules whereby our Tranquillity may be both had continued and confirmed: Wherein I fear not lest I should seem over-divine, in casting the anchor of Quietness so deep as heaven, the only seat of constancy, whiles it can find no hold at all upon earth: All earthly things are full of variableness, & therefore having no stay in themselves, can give none to us. He that will have and hold right Tranquillity must find in himself a sweet fruition of God and a 〈◊〉 apprehension of his presence. That when he finds manifold occasions of vexation in these earthly things he overlooking them all, and having recourse his comforter may find in him such matter of contentment, that he may pass over all these petrye grievances with contempt; which whose ever wants, may be secure, cannot be quiet. The mind of man cannot want some refuge▪ & (as we say of the Elephant) cannot rest unless it have something toleane upon: The covetous man, whose heaven is his chest, when he hears himself rated and cursed for oppression, comes home and seeing his bags safe, applauds himself against all censures: The glutton when he looseth friends or good name; yet joys in his full furnished table, & the laughter of his wine; more pleasing himself in some one dish; then he can be grieved with all the worlds miscarriage: The needy scholar whose wealth lies all in his brain, cheers himself against iniquity of times, with the conceit of his knowledge. These starting holes the mind cannot want when it is hard driven: Now when as, like to some chased Sisera it shrouds itself under the harbour of these jaels although they give it house-room, and milk for a time, yet at last either they entertain it with a nail in the temples, or being guilty to their own impotency, send it out of themselves; for safety and peace. For if the Cross light in that which it made his refuge as if the covetous man be crossed in his riches what earthly thing can stay him from a desperate frenzy? Or if the cross fall in a degree above the height of his stay, as if the rich man be sick or dying (wherein all wealth is either contemned; or remembered with anguish) how do all his comforts (like vermin from an house on fire) run away from him, and leave him over to his ruin? While the soul, that hath placed his refuge above, is sure that the ground of his comfort cannot be matched with an earthly sorrow, cannot be made variable by the change of any event but is infinitely above all casualties, & without all uncertainties. What state is there wherein this heavenly stay shall not afford me not only peace but joy? Am I in prison? or in the hell of prisons, in some dark, low, and desolate dungeon? Lo there, 
Pompon. Alger. Fox. Martyr.  Algerius that sweet Martyr finds more light than above, and pities the darkness of our liberty we have but a Sun to enlighten our world, which every cloud dimmeth, and hideth from our eyes, but the father of lights (in respect of whom all the bright stars of heaven, are but as the snaffe of a dim candle) shines into his pit, & the presence of his glorious Angels make that an heaven to him, which the world purposed as an hell of discomfort. What walls can keep out that infinite spirit, that fills all things? What darkness can be where the God of this sun dwelleth? what sorrow where he comforteth? Am I wandering in banishment? Can I go whither God is not? what sea can divide betwixt him and me? then would I fear exile if I could be driven away as well from God, as my country. Now he is as much in all earths; His title is alike to all places, and mine in him: His sun shines to me, his sea or earth bears me up, his presence cheereth me, whethersoever I go. He cannot be said to flit that never changeth his host. He alone is a thousand companions, he alone is a world of friends; that man never knew what it was to be familiar with God that complains of the want of home; of friends of companions while God is with him. Am I contemned of the world It is enough for me that I am honoured of God, of both I cannot: The world love me more, if I were less friends with God: It cannot hate me so much as God hates it: what care I to be hated of them, whom God hateth. He is unworthy of God's favour that cannot think it happiness enough with out the worlds? How easy is it for such a man▪ whiles the world disgraces him at once to scorn and pity it, that it cannot think nothing more contemptible than itself? I am impoverished with losses: That was never thoroughly good, that may be lost: My riches will not lose me yea, though I forego all to my skin, yet have I not lost any part of my wealth For if he be rich that hath something, how rich is he that hath the maker and owner of all things? I am weak and diseased in body; He cannot miscarry that hath his maker for his Physician: Yet my soul, the better part is sound, for that cannot be weak, whose strength God is: How many are sick in that & complain not: I can be content to be let blood in the arm or foot, for the curing of the head or heart; The health of the principal part is more joy to me than it is trouble to be distempered in the inferior. Let me know that God favours me, then I have liberty in prison, home in banishment, honour in contempt, in losses wealth, health in infirmity, life in death, and in all these happiness: And surely if our perfect fruition of God be our complete heaven, it must needs be, that our inchoate conversing with him is our heaven imperfectly; & the entrance into the other▪ which (me thinks) differs from this, not in the kind of it, but in degree: For the continuation of which happy society (sith strangeness loseth acquaintance, and breedeth neglect) on our part must be a daily renewing of heavenly familiarity, by seeking him up, even with the contempt of all inferior distraction; by talking with him in our secret invocations, by hearing his conference with us; and by mutual entertainment of each other in the sweet discourses of our daily meditations; He is a sullen & unsociable friend that wants words: God shall take no pleasure in us if we be silent: The heart that is full of love cannot but have a busy tongue: All our talk with God is either Suits or Thanks: In them the christian heart pours out itself to his maker, and would not change this privilege for a world: All his annoyances, all his wants, all his dislikes are poured into the bosom of his invisible friend who likes us still so much more as we ask more, as we complain more; Oh the easy and happy recourse▪ that the poor soul hath to the high throne of heaven▪ We stay not for the holding out of a golden sceptre, to warn our admission, before which our presence should be presumption and death; No hour is unseasonable, no person too base, no words too homely, no fact too hard, no importunity too great: we speak familiarly we are heard, answered, comforted: Anotherwhile God interchangeably speaks unto us by the secret voice or his spirit; or by the audible sound of his word, we hear, adore, answer him; By both which the mind so communicates itself to God, and hath God so plentifully communicated unto it, that hereby it grows to such an habit of heavenlinesse, as that now it wants nothing but dissolution of full glory.   

Sect. 23.  
Out of this main ground once settled in the heart (like as so many rivers from one common sea) flow those subordinate resolutions, 
The subordinate rules of tranquillity.  which we require as necessary to our peace, whether in respect of our actions, or our estate. 
1. For actions.  For our actions there must be a secret vow passed in the soul both of constant refraining from what soever may offend that majesty we rest upon; and above this, of true and Canonical obedience to God, without all care of difficulty, and in spite of all contradictions of nature: Not out of the confidence of our own power: Impotent men, who are we, that we should either vow or perform? But as he said; Give what thou bid'st, and bid what thou wilt: Hence the courage of Moses durst venture his hand to take up the crawling and hissing Serpent; Hence Peter durst walk upon the Pavement of the waves; Hence that Heroical spirit of Luther (a man made of metal fit for so great a work) durst resolve and profess to enter into that forewarned city, though there had been as many devils in their streets as tiles on their houses: Both these vows as we once solemnly made by others, so for our peace must we renew in ourselves. Thus the experienced mind both knowing that it hath met with a good friend, & withal what the price of a friend is; cannot but be careful to retain him, and wary of displeasing & therefore to cut off all dangers of variance, voluntarily takes a double oath of allegiance of itself to God; which neither benefit shall induce us to break, if we might gain a world, nor fear urge us thereto, though we must lose ourselves: The wavering heart that finds continual combats in itself betwixt Pleasure & Conscience▪ so equally matched that neither gets the day, is not yet capable of peace; and whether ever over cometh, is troubled both with resistance & victory. Barren Rebecca found more ease, then when her twins struggled in her womb: If jacob had been there alone, she had not complained of that painful contention: One while Pleasure holds the fort, and Conscience assaults it, which when it hath entered at last by strong hand, after many batteries of judgements denounced, ere long pleasure either corrupteth the watch, or by some cunning stratagem, finds way to recover her first hold; so our part is ever attempting, and ever resisting, betwixt both, the heart cannot have peace, because it resolves not; For while the soul is held in suspense, it cannot enjoy the pleasure it useth, because it is half taken up with fear; Only a strong and resolute repulse of pleasure is truly pleasant; For therein the Conscience filling us with heavenly delight, maketh sweet Triumphs in itself; as being now the Lord of his own dominions & knowing what to trust to No man knows the pleasure of this thought, I have done well, but he that hath felt it: & he that hath felt it, contemns all pleasure to it. It is a false slander raised on Christianity, that it makes men dampish and melancholic; for therefore are we heavy, because we are not enough Christians. We have religion enough to mislike pleasures, not enough to overcome them; But if we be once conquerors over ourselves and have devoted ourselves wholly to God, there can be nothing but heavenly mirth in the soul. Lo here ye philosophers, the true Music of heaven, which the good heart continually heareth, and answers it in the just measures of joy Others may talk of mirth as a thing they have hard of, or vainly fancied; Only the Christian feels it; and in comparison thereof scorneth the idle ribaldish, and scurrilous mirth of the profane.   

Sect. 24.  
AND this resolution which we call for, 
2. Rule for our actions.  must not only exclude manifestly evil actions, but also doubting and suspension of mind in actions suspected, and questionable; wherein the judgement must ever give confident determination one way: For this Tranquillity consists in a steddines of the mind; and how can that vessel which is beaten upon, by contrary waves and winds, and tottereth to either part, be said to keep a steady course? Resolution is the only mother of security. For instance; I see that Usury, which was wont to be condemned for no better than a Legal theft, hath now obtained with many, the the reputation of an honest trade: & is both used by many, & by some defended. It is pity that a bad practice should find any learned or religious Patron: The sum of my patrimony lieth dead by me, sealed up in the bag of my father; my thriftier friends advise me to this easy & sure improvement; Their counsel & my gain prevail; my yearly sums come in with no cost, but of time, wax, parchment; My estate likes it well: better than my conscience; which tells me still he doubts my trade is too easy to be honest; Yet I continued my illiberal course not without some scruple and contradiction; so as my fear of offence hinders the joy of my profit, & the pleasure of my game, heartens me against the fear of: injustice; I would be rich with case, and yet I would not be uncharitable, I would not be unjust All the while I live in unquiet doubts, and distraction; Others are not so much entangled in my bonds, as I in my own. At last that I may be both just and quiet, I conclude to refer this case wholly to the sentence of my inward judge, the Conscience, the Advocates, Gain and justice plead on either part at this bar with doubtful success. gain informs the judge of a new and nice distinction of toothless and biting interest, & brings precedents of particular cases of usury so far from any breach of charity or justice, that both parts therein confess themselves advantaged: justice pleads even the most toothless usury to have sharp gums; & finds in the most harmless and profitable, practise of it and insensible wrong to the common body; besides the infinite wracks of private estates; The weak judge suspends in such probable allegations, & demurreth; as being overcome of both, and of neither part: & leaves me yet no whit more quiet, no whit less uncertain: I suspend my practice accordingly, being sure it is good not to do, what I am not sure is good to be done; and now Gain▪ solicits me as much as justice did before▪ Betwixt both I live troublesomely: Nor ever shall do other, till in a resolute detestation I have whipped this evil merchant out of the Temple of my heart: This rigour is my peace; Before I could not be well, either full or fasting: Vncertainetie is much pain, even in a more tolerable action: Neither is it (I think) easy to determine, whether it be worse to do a lawful act with doubting, or an evil with resolution: since that within itself is good, is made evil to me by my doubt, and! what is in nature evil, is in this one point not evil to me, that I do it upon a verdict of a Conscience, so now my judgement offends in not following the truth I offend not in that I follow my judgement: Wherein if the most wise God had left us to rove only according to the aim of our own conjectures, it should have been less faulty to be Sceptickes in our actions, and either not to judge at all, or to judge amiss: but how that he hath given his a perfit rule of eternal equity, and truth: whereby to direct the sentences of our judgement, that uncertainty which alloweth no peace to us, will afford us no excuse before the tribunal of heaven: wherefore, then only is the heart quiet, when our actions are grounded▪ upon judgement & our judgement upon Truth.   

Sect. 25.  
FOR his estate the quiet mind must first roll itself upon the providence of the highest: 
Rules for estate.  For whosoever so casts himself upon these outward things that in their prosperous estate here ioyceth▪ 
1. Reliance upon the providence of God.  & contrarily is cast down in their miscarriage, I know not whether he shall find more uncertainty of rest, or more certainty of unquietness: since he must needs be like a light unballanced vessel, that rises and falls with every wave, and depends only on the mercy of wind & water: But who relies on the inevitable decree, & all-seeing providence of God, which can neither be crossed with second thoughts, nor with events unlooked for, lays a sure ground of Tranquillity, Let the world toss how it list, and vary itself (as it ever doth) in storms & calms, his rest is pitched alo●t, above the sphere of changeable mortality. To begin is harder than to prosecute▪ What counsel had God in the first moulding of thee in the womb of thy mother? what aid shall he have in repairing thee from the womb of the earth? & if he could make, & shall restore thee without thee why shall he not much more (not without thy in devor) dispose of thee? Is God wise enough to guide the heavens & to produce all creatures in their kinds: and seasons and shall he not be able to order thee alone? Thou sayst I have friends, and (which is my best friend I have wealth, to make both them, and me; and wit to put both to best use. O the broken reeds of humane confidence! Who ever trusted on friends that could trust to himself? Who ever was so wise, as not sometimes to be a fool in his own conceit, oft times in the conceit of others? Who was ever more discontent than the wealthy? Friends may be false, wealth cannot but be deceitful, wit hath made many fools; Trust thou to that, which if thou wouldst cannot fail thee. Not that thou desirest shall come to pass; but that which God hath decreed: Neither thy fears nor thy hopes, nor vows shall either for slow or alter it. The unexperienced passenger when he sees the vessel go amiss or too far, lays fast hold on the contrary part, or on the mast for remedy, the Pilot laughs at his folly, knowing that (what ever ●e labours) the bark will go which way the wind and his stern directeth it. Thy goods are embarked; Now thou wishest a direct north-wind to drive thee to the straits▪ and then a West to run in; and now, when thou hast emptied and laded again, thou callst as earnestly for the South, and Southeast to return; and lourest if all these answer thee not: As if heaven and earth had nothing else to do but to wait upon thy pleasure, and served only to be commanded service by thee: Another that hath contrary occasions asks for winds quite opposite to thine: He that sits in heaven, neither fits thy fancy nor his, but bids his winds spit sometimes in thy face, sometimes to favour thee with a sideblast, sometimes to be boisterous otherwhiles to be silent at his own pleasure. Whether the mariner sing or curse, it shall go whither it is sent; Strive or lie still, thy destiny shall run on, & what must be, shallbe; Not that we should hence exclude benefit of means (which are always necessarily included in this wise pre-ordination of all things) but perplexity of cares, and wrestling with providence. Oh the idle & ill spent cares of curious men, that consult with stars, and spirits for their destinies, under colour of prevention; if it be not thy destiny, why wouldst thou know it, what needs thou resist it? If it be thy destiny, why wouldst thou know that thou canst not prevent? That which God hath decreed is already done in heaven, and must be done on earth. This kind of expectation doth but hasten slow evils, & prolong them in their continuance; hasten them not in their event but in our conceit: Shortly then if thou swimmest against the stream of this providence, thou canst not escape drowning, every wave turns thee over like a Porckpose before a tempest; but if thou swim'st with the stream, do but cast thine arms abroad thou passest with safety, and with ease; it both bears thee up, and carries thee on to the haven, whither God hath determined thine arrival in peace.   

Sect. 26.  
NExt to this the mind of the Quiet man must be to wrought by these former resolutions, 
The second rule for estate.  that it be throughly persuaded the estate wherein he is, 
A persuasion of the goodness and fitness of it for us.  is best of all; if not in itself, yet to him: Not out of pride, but out of contentment: Which who ever wanteth, cannot but be continually vexed with envy▪ & racked with ambition: Yea if it were possible to be in heaven without this, he could not be happy: For it is as impossible to the mind at once to long after, and enjoy, as for a man to feed and sleep at once. And this is the more to be striven for, because we are all naturally prone to afflict ourselves with our own frowardness, ingratefully contemning all we have, for what we would have Even the best of the patriarchs could say, O Lord what wilt thou give me, since I go childless: The bond man desires now and control nature. Ovaine fools whither doth our restless ambition climb? What shall be at length, the period of our wishes? I could not blame these desires, if contentment consisted in having much, but now that he only hath much that hath contentment, and that is as easily obtained in a low estate; I can account of these thoughts no better then proudly foolish. Thou art poor? What difference is there betwixt a greater man and thee save that he doth his businesses by others, thou dost them thyself? He hath Caters, Cooks, Baylives, stewards, Secretaries, and all other offices for his several services, thou providest, dressest, gatherest, receivest, expendest, writest for thyself: His patrimony is large, thine earnings small. If Briareus feed fifty bellies with his hundredth hands, what is he the better, than he that with two hands feedeth one: He is served in silver, thou in vessel of the same colour, of lesser price; as good for use, though nothing but liberty, that alone would make him happy: Once free forgetting his former thought, he wishes some wealth to make use of his freedom, & says it were as good be straited in place as in ability; Once rich, he longeth after nobility, thinking it no praise to be a wealthy peasant. Once noble he begins to deem it a base matter to be subject▪ nothing can now content him but a croshn Than it is a small matter to rule, so long as he hath but little dominions, and greater neighbours; he would therefore be an universal Monarch; Whither then? surely it vexes him as much, that the earth is so small a globe, so little a molehill; and that there are no more worlds to conquer; and now that he hath attained the highest dignity among men, he would needs be a God, conceits his immortality, erects temples to his own name commands his dead statues to be adored: And not thus contented, is angry that he cannot command heaven in to solace himself; The weight whereof varies according to our estimation of them: One hath much wealth, but no child to inherit it, he envies at the poor man's fruitfulness, which hath many heirs and no lands and could be content with all his abundance to purchase a successor of his own loins. Another hath many children, little maintenance he commendeth the careless quietness of the barren & thinks fewer mouths and more meat would do better; The labouring man hath the blessing of a strong body fit to digest any fare, to endure any labour; yet he wisheth himself weaker, on condition he might be wealthier; The man of nice education hath a feeble stomach, and rasping since his last meal, doubts whether he should eat of his best dish, or nothing; this man repines at nothing more them to see his hungry ploughman feed on a crust; and wisheth to change estates on condition he might change bodies with him: Say that God should give thee thy wish, what not for value: His dishes are more dainty, thine as well relished to thee, and no less wholesome: He eats olives, thou garlic, he mislikes not more the smell of thy sauce, than thou dost the taste of his, Thou wantest somewhat that he hath, he wisheth something which thou hast, and regardest not: Thou couldst be content to have the rich man's purse, but his gout thou wouldst not have; He would have thy health, but not thy fare: If we might pick out of all men's estates that which is laudable, omitting the inconveniences we would make ourselves complete; but if we must take altogether, we should perhaps little advantage ourselves with the change. For the most wise God hath so proportioned out every man's condition, that he hath some just cause of sorrow inseparably mixed with other contentments; and hath allotted to no man living, an absolute happiness without some grievances; nor to any man such an exquisite misery, as that he findeth not somewhat wherein wouldst thou desire? Let me (thou sayest) be wise healthful, rich, honourable, strong, learned, beautiful immortal: I know thou lovest thyself so well, that thou canst wish all these, and more; But say that God hath so shared out all these gifts by a most wise and just distribution, that thou canst have but some of these, perhaps but one; Which wouldst thou single out for thyself? Any thing beside what thou hast: If learned, thou wouldst be strong, if strong honourable, if honourable long-lived; Some of these thou art already. Thou fool; Cannot God choose better for thee, than thou for thyself? In other matches thou trustest the choice of a skillfuller chapman; when thou seest a goodly horse in the fair (though his shape please thine eye well) yet thou darest not buy him, if a cunning horsemaister shall tell thee he is faulty and art willing to take a plainer & sounder, on his commendation against thy fancy: How much more should we in this case allow his choice that cannot deceive us; that cannot be deceived? But thou knowest that other thou desirest, better then what thou hast; Better perhaps for him that hath it, not better for thee: Liberty is sweet and profitable to those that can use it; But fetters are better for the frantic man: Wine is good nourishment for the healthful, poison to the aguish; It is good for a sound body to sleep in a whole skin, but he that complains of swelling sores cannot sleep till it be broken: Hemlock to the goat, & spiders to the monkey turn to good sustenance, which to other creatures are accounted deadly; As in diets so in estimation of good & evil, of greater and lesser good; there is much variety: All palates commend not one dish, and what one commends for most delicate, another rejects for unsavoury. And if thou know what dish is most pleasant to thee, thy Physician knows best which is wholesome: Thou wouldst follow thine appetite too much and (as the French have in their proverb) wouldst dig thy own grave with thy teeth; thy wise physician oversees & overrules thee: He sees if thou wert more esteemed, thou wouldst be proud, if more strong, licentious, if richer, covetous, if health fuller, more secure; But thou thinkest not thus hardly of thyself Fond man, what knowest thou futur things? believe thou him that only knows what would be, what will be; Thou wouldst willingly go to heaven, what better guide canst thou have, then him that dwells there? If he lead thee through deep sloughs, and brackie thickets, know that he knows this the nearer way though more cumbersome: can there be in him any want of wisdom not to foresee the best? Can there be any want of power not to effect the best? Any want of love not to give thee what he knows is best? How canst thou then fail of the best? Since what his power can do, and what his wisdom sees should be done, his love hath done, because all are infinite: He willeth not things because they are good, but they are good because he wills them: Yea if aught had been better, this had not been; God willeth what he doth, and if thy will accord not with his, whether wilt thou condemn of imperfection?   

Sect. ult.  
I Have chalked out the way of peace; 
The conclusion of the whole  what remains▪ but that we walk along in it. I have conducted my reader to the mine, yea to the mint of happiness, & showed him those glorious heaps, which may eternally enrich him. If now he shall go away with his hands and skirt empty; how is he but worthy of a miserable want? who shall pity us while we have no mercy on ourselves? wilful distress hath neither remedy nor compassion: And to speak freely, I have oft wondered at this painful folly of us men, which in the open view of our peace, as if we were condemned to a necessary & fatal unquietness, live upon our own rack, finding no more joy than if we were under no other hands, but our executioners. One droupeth under a feigned evil, another augments a small sorrow through impatience, another draws upon himself an uncertain evil through fear; one seeks true contentment, but not enough; another hath just cause of joy, and perceives it not: One is vexed for that his grounds of joy are matched with equal grievances; another cannot complain of any present occasion of sorrow, yet lives sullenly, because he finds not any present cause of comfort; One is haunted with his sin, another distracted with his passion: Amongst all which, he is a miracle of men, that lives not some way discontented. So we live not while we do live, only for that we want either wisdom, or will, to husband our lives to our own best advantage. O the inequality of our cares! Let riches or honour be in question; we sue to them, we seek for them with importunity, with servile ambition: Our pains need no solicitor; Yea there is no way wrong that leads to this end: We abhor the patience to stay till they inquire for us. And if ever (as it rarely happens) our desert and worthiness wins us the favour of this proffer, we meet it with both hands, not daring with our modest denyalles to whet the instancy, and double the entreaties of so welcome suitors; Yet lo, here the only true and precious riches, the highest advancement of the soul, peace and happiness, seeks for us, sues to us for acceptation; our answers are coy and overly, such as we give to those clients that look to gain by our favours. If our want were through the scarcity of good, we might yet hope for pity to ease us, but now that it is through negligence, and that we perish with our hands in our bosom, we are rather worthy of stripes for the wrong we do ourselves, then of pity for what we suffer. That we may and will not, in opportunity of hurting others▪ is noble and Christian but in our own benefit sluggish, and savouring of the worst kind of unthriftiness.  
Sayest thou then this peace is good to have, but hard to get? It were a shameful neglect that hath no pretence: Is difficulty sufficient excuse to hinder thee from the pursuit of riches, of preferment, of learning, of bodily pleasures? Art thou content to sit shrugging in a base cottage, ragged, affamished, because house, clothes, and food will neither be had without money, nor money without labour, nor labour without trouble and painfulness? Who is so merciful, as not to say that a whip is the best alms for so lazy and wilful need? Peace should not be good, if it were not hard: Go, and by this excuse shut thyself out of heaven at thy death and live miserabely till thy death, because the good of both worlds is hard to compass. There is nothing but misery on earth and hell below, that thou canst come to without labour; And if we can be content to cast away such immoderate and unseasonable pains upon these earthly trifles, as to wear our bodies with violence, and to encroach upon the night for tim● to get them; what madness shall it seem in us not to afford a less labour to that which is infinitely be●ter, and which only gives worth & goodness unto the other? wherefore if we have not vowed enmity with ourselves if we be not in love with misery and vexation, if we be not obstinately careless of our own good; let us shake off this unthrifty, dangerous & desperate negligence, and quicken these dull hearts to a lively and effectual search of what only can yield them sweet and abiding contentment; which once attained; How shall we insult over evils, and bid them do their worst? How shall we under this calm & quiet bay laugh at the rough weather & unsteady motions of the world? How shall heaven and earth smile upon us, and we on them; commanding the one; aspiring to the other? How pleasant shall our life be, while neither joys nor sorrows can distemper it with excess? yea while the matter of joy that is within us, turns all the most sad occurrences into pleasure? How dear & welcome shall our death be that shall but lead us from one heaven to another, from peace to glory? Go now ye vaye and idle worldlings, and please yourselves in the large extent of your rich Manors, or in the homage of those whom baseness of mind hath made slaves to your greatness, or in the price and fashions of your full wardrobe; or in the wanton varieties of your delicate gardens; or in your coffers full of red and white earth, or if there be any other earthly thing more alluring, more precious, enjoy it, possess it, and let it possess you: Let me have only my peace & let me never want it, till I envy you.  
FINIS.    

The Errata.  
Read Moralists pag, 2, of the epist. Morality p. 15 l. pen. Antoninus p. 21. margin. on the one hand p. 2●. l. 8. fiends p. 26. l. 10. Remembrancer. p. 52. l. 17. differring p. 53. l. pen. their remiss p. 58, l. 9, dismembered p. 60. l. pen. ferule. p. 62 l, 8. say ou●● p. 62, l. ult. assuageth. p. 65. l. 10, languishing, p. 83, l, 14. even p. 87. l. 5. even p. 90. l. 18. now it p. 106. l. ●. hate it p. 139. l. 1. lofts p. 143. l. 5 wall pleasure p. 148. l. 18. world would love me p. 161. l. 10. one part. p. 172. l. pen. my gain p. 178. l. 7. an insensible p. 180 l. 2. which in itself p. 181. l. ult. kinds & seasons p. 186. l. 15.