Instructions TO A Nobleman's Daughter CONCERNING RELIGION.  
At first designed for One, now directed to all of that Rank, and useful young Persons of Quality, and others of that Sex.  
WITH Sacramental, and other suitable DEVOTIONS.  
By John Provoste. M. A.  
LONDON, Printed by W. R. for D. Brown at the Black Swan and Bible without Temple-bar, and L. Stokey at the Golden-key over against the Muse-gate at Charing-cross. 1700.   

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TO THE Right Honourable THE LADY—  
Madam,  
I Hope your Ladyship has all the Satisfaction which the Country can give to any one, or your own Expectation promised to yourself, and whereas Expectation is often raised above Enjoyment, I hope Enjoyment now rises high, and surmounts all your gay Notions of it▪ I know, and methinks at this very Instant I have a sense and a share of that Joy which your Ladyship is affected with upon your Retreat from the Town: Let that Joy increase, and in the Country, and in every Place, and in every thing let it still be greater and so much rather, because it 〈…〉 greater than you deserve, 〈…〉 same Virtue and Prudence, which make you deserve it, will be sure to make your J●y, and all Things very Innocent. I have sometimes exercised your Ladyship's Condescension; and with that easy Mildness, which you show ●n all Occasions, and with which you have already learned to bear all Evils, you have seemed to bear the Trouble of Reading my Instructions: But you never had so much Advantage from my Writing, as now, to satisfy for the Trouble, nor I so good Occasion to give it. I doubt not but you will have the same Thought of the Occasion, I have myself; and so I may hope for an Effect equal to it. I have often beheld your growing Piety with a secret and rising Satisfaction, and I cannot but endeavour to continue and improve my own Satisfaction, by Exhorting, Advising, Entreating your Ladyship to continue and improve your Piety. Seeing I have so great a pleasure in the View, I am become a Party, and my own Interest, that I may have it still, engages me to do all I can for the enlargement of a thing which gives it: A thing which is so good in itself, and so advantageous to you, and which you seem to Repay and Reward for all its Advantage by the graceful Light and Beauty you reflect upon it; when like a well-set Diamond, it appears in you and borrows from you. I have with so much Pleasure observed that Piety, which was your own original Growth; and then with how much more shall I observe, and with how Innocent a Pride, any part of your piety hereafter, which has been planted in your Mind by my Endeavour, and which being placed in so Rich, and Noble Ground, must there be to a Wonder fruitful by your own. I shall see it with a Joy refined and high, with a greater than that of the King in History, when he saw the fair and goodly Tree, his own Hand had set, and then his Delight in Surveying the Growth of the Tree scarce was equal to this of remembering that he had set it. I should think myself to do Service to the World, in doing this to your Ladyship, who may be so useful to the World; and to Religion, by the Influence of your Example; by the Authority of your Interest, and by the Prudence of your Zeal to make use of both, as of every thing, to the best and most worthy Purposes. So shall I have, in this my Writing, that glorious Hope of doing the greatest Good by the shortest way, to many in one; as when the chief City is taken, all the Neighbouring Country very often comes in by an easy Surrender, or is Conquered with it: And surely the thing will as much become your Quality as it will be promoted by your Zeal, that there should be a numerous Train to attend you in your Course of Virtue, and in your Journey towards Heaven. All the Religious Things, when carried on by you to others, will at the same time be improved, and become more inviting by their passing through your Hands, as Liquors take a fragrant, and more grateful taste from the Vessel through which they pass. When there have been already such shining Effects of your Virtue, and when the Cause is so fruitful and sure, so generous and always ready to produce them, I may oblige myself and the World by all my pleasing and most agreeable Presages, and yet my Gift of Foretelling may not be, like those Effects, extraordinary; as they who pretend to the Faculty of declaring things to come, do little more than argue from the same Causes to the same Effects. The Country gives you leisure, and you want nothing for the raising a , to read such things as this before you; and the Country gives not only leisure, but a new Argument for Religion, because there the invisible things of God are understood by the things which are made, By every Flower you gather, and every Fruit you eat, by the meanest Herb you tread on, and the least thing you see in the Garden, or in the Field. The Country has already no little part in your Favour, it has so large a Place in your Affections, that it could lend some even to things less Grateful; the most disagreeable things would cease to be so, when this should recommend them to you: But surely the Country will have new Endearments, and more lively Charms, when you shall begin to apprehend it, as having all the convenience, not only to breath, but to think more freely too, and as having at the Leisure, and Liberty, and Enlargement, not only for many other Purposes, but for one thing which you love more than the Country, and then all things, for Religion. Thus I have frankly declared the Design of these Papers, and your Ladyship will generously pardon the length of them, and all their Faults; whereof I think myself to be guilty with Authority; because the Design is such as gives the highest Authority to this, and to any other Action, and to all the harmless Errors of it. When I have freely confessed the Purpose of my Writing, (and this no worse than what you hear) your Ladyship will give me leave to speak freely upon it, with all that plainness which good Designs always covet, and well-meant Instructions choose, and the true Ends of both require. Then may I be allowed to speak without the Ceremony of Address to your Sex, and your Quality; that I may thus teach you to forget your Greatness, which you seem already to know so little of, and to be yourself almost a stranger to: The nice Consideration of it is to be laid aside for the Time by me in Writing, and by you in Reading. This Boon I ask at the opening of my Discourse, as the Great Council asks (at the first opening of it,) Freedom of Access and of Speech in Debates upon Things of public Good. As to the Grandeur of Birth, you have so much of the Nobility which Virtue gives, that the other is almost sunk in this, and the greater Light scarce allows the less to be seen. As to the gaudy Honours of the solemn Regard which such a Birth does always claim, your Ladyship is to leave this part to others; as that is not, like Virtue, your own, so the esteem which it should have is not to be from yourself; and yet to that an Esteem is due: Indeed Moses would never have refused to be called the Son of Pharaoh 's Daughter, and the Grandson of a King, if he had been the thing which he was called, he would not have Renounced the innocent Glories of such a Relation, as he did not despise the inglorious Reproach of Christ, if the Pretence would not have been false Heraldry, and the Advantage only the enjoying the Pleasures of Sin for a Season. But so great, Madam, is your share, and so rich you are, in higher Things, that you may reserve enough for yourself, if you resign your Claim of Birth to them who have nothing besides it, to them who are contented to be still what they were born, and, as if they were only overgrown infants of one Days Age, have made no Progress since the first Minutes of Life. I now beg leave to tell strangers, that they are not to take the length of your Understanding from that of your Age, and to tell yourself, that I have so great an Opinion of your Understanding, and so little of my own, as to think I could not easily Writ any thing upon such a Subject above your reach: So great is my Opinion too of your Piety, as to think I could not easily prescribe any thing above your Practice. I am sure, nothing which can have any part in your Religious well-being, though never so high, can be above my Wishes, and it is no more beyond my Attempts to enforce it, than beyond yours to do it. I am sure again, if you are to have every thing I wish, you cannot have too much of that Wisdom, which (according to the Wise, though Apocryphal Writers) reaches from one end to another mightily, and sweetly order all things.  
My willing Consent is always ready for all your Inclinations, and my joining with you as ready for all your Service. But I would, of all things, carry on the pleasing Harmony of your good Actions in Consort with you; in nothing so much you desire, in nothing so much you shall have the Concurrence and united Force of,  
Madam, Your Ladyship's most Humble Servant. J. P.   

Madam,  
I Have asked your leave to direct Instructions to you, and now I presently take it, as ready to make use of it as you are, I am sure, to grant it, who, as you are too generous to deny any thing which should advance the Good of others, so are too wise to refuse that which would promote your own.  
The First Advice which I shall offer to you, shall be in the first thing which Religion taught you.  
Let the Catechism never be forgotten: Though it is learned in Childhood, it is to be remembered still in all the other parts of our Age; therefore indeed learned in Childhood, that it may not be forgotten, and that it may be useful ever afterwards: As when the Pilot has Sailed very far, and very often, yet he is not to throw away his Compass, nor to Sail without it. Religion gins thus in Childhood; if in that Age it gins, much more in our Age of Understanding it is to be continued, and to be improved, as other things are not less, but they become greater and stronger too by Time. Religion is much more to be continued in all the Scenes of Life beyond our Childhood, because we afterwards come to the Age of Practice, which is its chief design, and because our Understanding is more accomplished afterwards, and so we are then more capable of Advancements in that which is the most noble Exercise of our Understanding, in Religion. Indeed the first use of our Reason, the first opening of it is to be in that, because it will be more prepared for a Progress in Knowledge, and the Child, the yet imperfect Creature, for Attainments in Perfection, by making the first steps in the Understanding of Him who is the Fountain of Knowledge, and of all Perfection. A particular right He has to the first Fruits of our Reason, because it is more particularly derived from God, and it is more the Image of Him from whom it comes, and because the Being of him from whom it derives its own, is a Principle our Reason is acquainted with as soon as any, and therefore it should be as soon acquainted with the Worship and the Knowledge of Him. If our Childhood, amongst its many Pastimes, is to have Religion for its Business; if that Light and thoughtless Age is in this alone to become serious and wisely Active, this much more should be our Exercise, when our Age has all the steady Thought and Reflection, and when all our Thought is directed to Business, and Things of high and serious Importance, and when the more we think, we are carried still farther into Religion. If our Reason at the first glimmering and dawning of it is to begin its day, as we should every one of our Life, with Religion, much more is this to have enlargement with our Reason, and to be the greater Light to rule the Day; the Worship of the Father of Lights, is surely to be much more than our Exercise, when we are in so much better condition to perform it.  
I speak thus of Religious Knowledge, that, when gained in the former, it is not to be lost in the following part of our Age, because too many think it may then well be lost, and it was intended only for our Childhood, and when we were children, we were in Bondage under Rudiments, we spoke as Children, understood as Children, thought as Children, but we are to put away afterwards childish things. How great, alas, the Misunderstanding, and how fatal the effect, if there be no recovery from it! How much do they, who thus misunderstand, seem Industrious to prove themselves Children still? How much happier would they be, if they were so indeed? They would then have something like Excuse; now they have not.  
All that we did, and learned in the more serious Undertake of our Childhood was only designed for Discipline and Method to dispose us for the doing and learning more hereafter, as he can never be Rich, who keeps not that which he has gained, and he can never be Skilful in any Art or Science, who forgets the first Notions of it he once was taught. A Father of the Church said upon a like Occasion, nothing is to be despised by those who are to be instructed, and led into the knowledge of things; for if they look upon the first Elements as little things, how shall they attain the perfect and great things in knowledge? These early things which the Church has taught us, are not Scaffold work, to be taken down again, but Foundation, and he that would take away the Foundation, when the House is near the being, finished, would only undermine it, and never finish it. Whoever discards the knowledge of the Catechism, when he is no more a Child, he either at the same time renounces all knowledge of Religion, (but surely, if that knowledge were necessary in Childhood, it is much more necessary afterwards) or he at the same time designs a much higher Knowledge in Religion; and because he is still going forward, he leaves the first behind him, not as too heavy, but as too light, or little to carry with him. Indeed he must not here forget those things which are be hind, if he will reach forth to those things which Are before, if he will press towards the Mark of the Prize of the high Calling. The more he values those other things he would understand, the more he is to value these first things, without which he cannot understand the other, and the more Knowledge he has attained, the more humble he is, or should be, and so not apt to despise the meanest Truth as well as Person; be owes the greater regard to these original Truths, to which he owes all his highest Improvements. Indeed they are not the meanest Truths, they are the first in Order and Dignity, as well as in Time and Place, because they are the Doctrines of things necessary to Salvation, and no Good so great as Salvation, no Truth so great, as that which teaches things necessary to it. The other Doctrines are the Issues of these by a natural Consequence, and so they cannot be nobler than these, till the Offspring shall claim more Honour than Parents, from whom they derive all they have. The other parts of Religion are but so many several Streams that flow from these, which therefore should have all the Reverence from us, as Fountains had so much from the Heathens, were Sacred, and were Adored.  
The Doctrines of the Catechism are very far from being those of the lowest Rank, they have so much the Character of the Scripture from whence we received them (as Fruits have the Nature of the Soil wherein they grow) that however there are things in the Catechism for the lowest, there are also many for the highest and most manly Understanding: The things are so high, that they are subjects more of Belief, then of Enquiry, and yet when they have Mystery enough to puzzle the Enquirer, they have at the same time Evidence enough to baffle the Unbeliever; Evidence, like that of Witnesses against a Malefactor, to Condemn him. The Doctrines still are great, however the style of the Catechism, like that of the Scripture, be very plain, as the greatest Person may appear in the plainest Dress: There is so much more of the nicer Art, to reduce sublime and awful things to easy and familiar Words, and there is more Authority in such a Language, as there is often a more prevailing Authority in a condescending and lowly Behaviour. That Noble Person had a very just Opinion 
† The Lady Catherine Manners, afterwards Marchioness of Buckingham.  of our Catechism, who acknowledged it to be a plain Summary of saving Truth, and being of a Roman-Catholick Family, and Education, she seemed in this Acknowledgement to give a generous Pledge, that there should be Success to their Endeavours, who were Zealous to teach her new and better Principles. The Religious Beginnings of Childhood are in things necessary to Salvation, that our happy End, the End of our Faith may be in Salvation itself, our Christian Beginning is in things more necessary, as in the first part of a Feast we find the Meats which have more substance, and nourish more. Our first entrance is in the needful things of Belief and Knowledge, both because this Belief and Knowledge are the Root to all the goodly Branches of Religion, and there must be first a Root, before there can be an enlargement of the Tree into spreading Branches, and useful Fruit, and because the former Time of our Age is not so capable of, nor has such Occasion and Exercise for the several good Works, which are the other chief parts of Christian Duty; but it is already capable of Knowledge, which should prepare us for them.  
That being planted in the House of the Lord, you may flourish in the Courts of the House of our God, in His Church, and you my bring forth more Fruit in your Age, that you may grow in Grace, and in the Knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, your reading over the Catechism once every Month of your Life, and your reading it with all the Wisdom, and careful Observation of your more perfect Age, would be a most useful Office; when you may be above the giving an account of it to others, you can never, in a Life of all those Years I wish you, outlive the Necessity of giving it to yourself, and to God. There is a Precept to all, even to the oldest Christians, for the being ready always to give account to others, to give an Answer to every Man that asks a Reason of the Hope which is in them. So needful is the continuance of this first Knowledge, that you cannot know any thing else aright, without having still an Eye to this, and then steering by it; you are to take it with you wherever you go, in whatever you do: It is the Standard, by which all your Knowledge is to be tried, and it is the Rule, to which all your Practice hereafter is to be reconciled.  
As the Catechism is always to be well remembered, so is it to be well considered by you. No part of it you are to consider more, than your Vow in Baptism, and the Explaining of the Commandments in the Catechism; the Performance of which Commandments (so explained) is one great part of the Performance of that Vow, and the great, the principal Exercise of your wisest Age, and of the best Endeavours in all the Time which is to come, and I hope with a long Train after it of Days and Blessings upon your doing that which you were not only Baptised, but you were born to the Performance of.  
I know you already understand very much in Religion, and often have I observed, and always rejoiced in observing how much you understood. But now, That the former Age of your Life, as the first was of the World, may be a Golden one, That your Knowledge may rise to Practice in the Commandments, and your Practice may advance to Perfection; that you may not be discouraged in the Practice (especially in the beginning of it.) I beg leave to advise you, who understand already so much of Religion, not to misunderstand the Design thereof, as if Melancholy were a natural Effect of Religion, or were a necessary Duty of it, as if it denied us a moderate Liberty in worldly Enjoyments, and required that we should deny ourselves this Liberty. Were such a Notion of Religion a true one, and embraced as true, it might have a dismal Consequence, that nothing of Religion, besides this Notion, might be embraced by Persons of your Age, and Sex, and Quality. Your Age, as well as Sex, may be supposed to love things less difficult or severe, and not to abhor Diversion and Mirth; your Quality gives a Right, almost a Birthright to that, to which your other Circumstances may give some Inclination, to Pleasure, and harmless Enjoyment. Melancholy is very far from being commanded, it is forbidden by Religion; Excess of that, as much forbidden, as the Excess of Mirth. Religion forbids not Enjoyment, but abuse, which is no part of the Enjoyment, which indeed does lessen it, that, and not Religion hinders all. So far Religion is from hindering, that in its Design it promotes, and in its Practice, in the present Act it gives a cheerful Mind, and this is one great, this is one present Reward to the Practice of it: Surely none has so much cause as the Pious Man for a cheerful Mind, and O let him ever have it, let there be no Pretence or Bar against his having that which is thus his right, and which God himself desires he should have. As there was a famous Master who would have Pictures of Joy to be placed round his School, that his Scholars might have Images of Delight in their Minds, and Knowledge might become a more inviting Figure to those who came thither to make Addresses to it. Religion is a thing of great delight in its Nature, and it is never otherwise, but when it is made otherwise by us, as the most pleasing Wines by our ill Management, or ill Keeping may become sour, and very unpleasant. The Fear of the Lord maketh a merry Heart, and giveth Joy and Gladness, Ecclus 1.2. So much Religion is a thing of the noblest Joy, that it gives no little Joy, not only to those who sincerely Profess, and sincerely Practise it themselves; but even to those who behold it, when thus Professed and Practised, in others. I am sure the thing which is very delightful in its Nature, much more is made so by your Ladyship; Religion has often appeared to me as having a particular and surprising Delight, when I have beheld it in your Deportment. The French Philosopher told one of your Sex, that no Beauty was equal to that of Truth, and the Writer of his Life makes this Remark, that the Saying was no Compliment, and he talked more like a Philosopher than a Courtier. I am sure, this saying, that the Beauty of Virtue is above all other, can be no Affront to a Person, who has a large share of Virtue, and so in the Praises of it. There was a Sect of Philosophers, which so many of the Noble Youth resorted to in the Time of Epicus, as to a Court, and which pretended to all the Artful Refinement of Wit; but here their Wit did not show itself, nor do them Service, when they professed the Study and Advancement of Pleasure, and yet admitted not any settled thought of Religion into their Debates upon it: The Epicureans pursuing Pleasure, and not carrying this along with them, went out of their way all the time, and the unhappy Men, the farther still they went, still were farther off from Pleasure, and when there was so much of the Name in their Books and Harangues, there was little of the thing in their Mind or Condition. It is the end of a Man, of a wise Man so to order every thing, that he may find a Pleasure in every thing he does, in all things belonging to him: A wise Man he cannot be, he has no true Light in his Mind, who with all his busy search can think of finding Pleasure by any other Light than that of Religion. May every thing your Ladyship does entertain you with Joy, especially Religion, and this so much more, because this will give an high taste of Joy to all other things. The chief delight of Piety is in itself a Delight of the Mind, and not therefore less, the Pleasures of the Mind are the greatest: But indeed, that the Mind may be capable of the Religious Pleasure, it must be prepared with a particular Frame of Spirit, a true and suitable Disposition towards it, as the Body itself his very little Sense of bodily Enjoyments, if Indisposed. Some complain they find not that lofty Satisfaction, that Rapture we talk of: But we never said, there was such a Delight, unless upon a most hearty Trial, and Religion is not therefore to be blamed, because they are very ; nor is there any want in Religion, because they never found what they never sought.  
May your Ladyship find a Joy in every Act of Religion, especially in Prayer, which procures strength for the doing all the other Acts thereof, and increase of Satisfaction in the doing them, and which is itself so pleasant, that it has a foretaste of Heaven, where is fullness of Joy and Pleasure for evermore. Well may Prayer give us a foretaste of Heaven, seeing it carries us thither every time we Pray as when St. Paul was caught up into the third Heaven; he not only heard the words which are not to be uttered, but perhaps he tasted the Enjoyments which are not to be conceived. Prayer carries us up to Heaven, and then in the return, (as Angels do to those, to whom they give a friendly Conveyance) it sets us down again gently upon the Earth, and makes Earth itself more pleasant, when thus it has brought us back from Heaven: The Man who goes so often thither, must needs return with something of the Pleasures, and the Riches of the Place, as the Merchant, who Travels often to the Country of Gold and Silver, and precious Stones, does as often bring from thence some of the gaudy, and admired, and dazzling Goods.  
That you may be prepared for the devout Offices of Prayer, and for all the exalted Satisfactions of it, be pleased to compose that Mind, which indeed is seldom discomposed, to fix your Soul for an Attention to the pious Work, and so God himself will attend, and have a kind regard to the Work, and to the Person. Before you begin to Pray, you may prepare and fix your Mind by some good Thoughts, as short as may be, of the Duty you are undertaking, and of the God you are to Address to in the Duty, and cast off for the Time all your common Thoughts of worldly Things, that you may think more, and better of the Duty, and of God. Your Thoughts are always harmless, but they may not so easily be always useful, nor always Pious in that degree of Elevation, when they are exercised upon worldly Things, they are form and fashioned for the time into a likeness with them; your Mind then complies and condescends to an unaffected Debasement, it submits and bows down, with a generous Regret, to the Meanness of the Subject; as the Eagle, with all its greatness, and lofty Flights, vouchsafes sometimes to lower itself and come down, when its Quarry is near the Earth. As to the Work you are to undertake in Praying, you may be pleased to consider, that you intent to ask Blessings for Soul and Body, and particular Blessings; such, and such things for both; and you may consider particularly, what things they are you intent to ask. You may not forget, that not only Prayer is a most holy Work, but if you would obtain what you ask, you are also to be Holy, before and afterwards: Pure Hands should be lift up; if there be not Purity, there will not be Strength in those Hands, nor in the Prayer. As to the God you Address to in Prayer, you may consider, that as you are a weak and needy Creature to want the things you Pray for, so he is a great God, and able, a bountiful God, and willing to give them: That He may be moved to give them, you are at all times, but especially in the Praying time, to pay all the Reverence to your Maker, and the Maker of all the World, to Him who dwells in Heaven, and Governs on Earth; to Him who dwells in the highest Heavens, knows, and preserves, and governs all things to the jowest Earth. You may again consider, that having retired from your ordinary Company, you are now to Converse with an higher Being. Indeed the remove from our common Business and Conversation to Prayer is so great, that we cannot in such a sudden Motion, without some preparing Thoughts, take off our Mind from things of ordinary Exercise, and place it on those of Devotion: The distance between these things is so wide, that however Spirits are said to be very nimble in their Motions, the Soul cannot pass the next Minute from the one to the other. Nothing more apt than Conversation to engage our Mind, and after the withdrawing of our Body from it, the remembrance of its Transactions, whether pleasant or unpleasant, seems to place us still in the midst of our Company, and detain us with them: In respect of this Conversation, that with God is a thing altogether new, it is more refined and excellent, and therefore we cannot so very soon be capable of it, as he who has Conversed with Peasants and the meanest Persons, does not thus become the most Accomplished Man for the higher approach to the Presence and Thrones of Princes. Very narrow and imperfect is all our Correspondence with Spirits, and even with those who, as some imagine, have a nearer Alliance to Matter, and so to us: Our Eyes sees nothing, our Understandings very little of them; no Sense or Faculty is satisfied in the enquiry into them; whenever we perceive their being near us, we almost covet to be farther from them, we entertain them with a Reverence very like Amazement and Horror. If our Disadvantages be such in all our Intercourse with Spirits, much more in that with the Father of Spirits: And then should not Israel in the softer meaning, prepare to meet his God? And thus we shall make those Disadvantages as little as may be to us; at least we shall be so prepared for our attending God, as Men put on the best Dress they have, when they are to wait on Persons much above them.  
I have here allowed myself so much more enlargement on the necessity of forming our Minds into a suitable Frame, before our Praying, because otherwise there can be little Thought in our Prayer, and less Affection, and the Prayer which wants either, must want Success: Therefore is there so extraordinary Success to so many Prayers; they may well not have it, when they do not deserve it, & they cannot deserve what they seem not to desire.  
If your other Engagements will comply with so many Times; let your Prayers be thrice in a Day, in the Morning the first Business, at Night the last, and at Noon before your Dinner; because a Work so Carnal as Eating, would make you less disposed for a Work so Spiritual as Praying; and because this deserves a place before every other Business, and it is to be our Meat thus to do the Will of Him who sent us, and thus to pray for Grace that we may do the Will of him that sent us into the World. Your Prayers are to be Public and Private, not only private, but public upon every Opportunity, not only public, but private too, and you constant in the Seasons of both. As to public Prayers, the Church has prescribed, and who has a better Right to prescribe? Who could have better Success? As to private, your own Devotion will soon be skilful, and the Advice of Pious Books will give you Laws: Such Laws your Books will be ready to give, and you to obey.  
I would advise your having not only particular Times, but a particular Place for your Private Devotion, and so, if the Place be not reserved for this use alone, yet the Duty itself should be always performed in that place, reserved for that alone: Then as often as you come near this Religious Apartment, some good Thought will come near you too, when you shall remember the Business you have there often done, and you are now to do: There may well be some Virtue in that Air, which has been made fragrant and so often sweet with the Incense of your Prayers.  
The Grace of God is the chief thing you are to pray for, because all other things will follow this. You are to pray for Grace, that it may instruct you in all such things in which a Christian is to be instructed, and may turn your Thoughts towards Religion, and your Inclinations to a Desire for the Benefits thereof. You are to pray for Grace, that it may direct and move you to enter upon a solemn Course of Religion, direct and give Strength to the whole Practice of it, guard your Age so tender against the many Temptations of the World, and fix it against the several Misfortunes thereof upon the true Foundations of Religion and Prudence, and give it a true Notion of the World: Then will you know that this gaudy World is a place of Vanity, and that nothing but Religion can make it a place of Satisfaction, and so you will know the wisest thing which can be known by Man in the whole Circle of his boasted Learning: Pity it is that we do not know it sooner, that only many Years and many Misfortunes should teach it, more Years than have yet past over your Head, and worse Misfortunes then (I hope) will ever come near your Condition; though indeed the being above Misfortunes is not one of those peculiar Privileges belonging to Birth and Quality. Let my Experience be yours, let not this be one of the dear bought things your Sex is said to covet: But as the Complaisance of our Sex delights to present costly things to yours, may the Experience be purchased only at my Cost, and teach us both. And as the Gallantry of our Sex very often exposes itself for the Safety and the Interest of yours, so let the Danger and the Evil be only mine.  
Dear bought Experience taught me what it true,  
And Friendship bids me tell that Truth to you.  
You are to pray for Grace, that it may now betimes prevent your being guilty of those Sins, which many young Persons begin too soon to be guilty of and which sooner or later are to have a Repentance, and the Repentance is to have so much cost, in Tears and Sighs, in painful Thought and unpleasant Remembrance: Surely those Sins are Diseases of the most Dangerous Kind, which we should rather choose to prevent then to remove, and when they have entertainment from our Youth, they are like that forward Fruit which is very unwholesome and will soon be rotten. You are to pray for Grace, that it may guide you through this Life to a better; as happy as I wish your present Life, there is yet one far more happy, which I doubt not, you wish yourself; and which that Grace is to guide you to, and moreover it is to guide you through the several parts of your present Life with all the Success and Blessing in all the Management of it. As you are to pray for yourself, so for those next to yourself, your near Relations, and for all good things to them, Spiritual and Temporal. The Advice you are ready to prevent, because the Office, I know, is very pleasing to you, who pay so much Duty, where you owe it, and so much Love to your other Relations, more (I had almost said) than you can be supposed to owe. You are not only to pray for what you want, but to give thanks for your not having wanted many things, for those you have enjoyed from the first day of your Life unto this, for your Noble Birth, and wealthy Fortune, and Virtuous Education. Such a Thanksgiving to God will require a Prayer to him for all the Endowments of Mind suitable to such a Birth, and Fortune and Education, and for the making these his Favours useful to the Glory of him you pray to; and him who gave them. You are to pray for a low Opinion of all this World, and of one part of it more than all, of yourself, that your heart may not be haughty, nor your Eyes lofty, and you may not exercise yourself in great matters, nor in things too high for you, Moreover you may pray, that to your other, to your many earthly Goods may be added that of Health, in order to your being more capable of making the best use of all, your doing more service to God, more good to others. You may pray that in this your walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death God would make you to fear no Evil, and make his Goodness and Mercy to follow you all the Days of your Life, that so you may dwell in the House of the Lord for ever, dwell in his House here, and in that other not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens. Your prayers upon these several occasions are to be short, and then may be more servant, and what is wanting in length may be supplied in a more warm Devotion, which is to God more pleasing; a warm Devotion more pleasing to God, than a Burning Sacrifice. The Force of our Prayers, when more close and united, in a narrower Room, in less Time and fewer Words, may be stronger, and as that Force is stronger, the Prayers will be more earnest. The Orator must weep himself, if he will be sure to have his hearers weep: Much more we must be earnest in praying if we expect that God will be moved in hearing, that he will show to us a part of the strange Affection he has to Mankind which the Prophets have told us of, and which only their Flights can describe. It is one design of Prayer to unite us to God, and so much it does unite us to him, that our Affections and his are almost to the same; as we are affected more or less in the presenting our Prayer so is he in the receiving it.  
I pretend not here to have given all the Rules which are necessary for Prayer, but some more particular to to your Ladyship's Quality and Age I have designed to give, and then to recommend your Learning of other more general Rules for Prayer and for all things from the Books of Religious Wisdom, those which you are not a Stranger to, and which, I am sure, you will be every Day more acquainted with. The Books are to be few and chosen, and so much the rather should yours be chosen, because in every Kind you deserve the best: Few Books, that they may be read, and chosen, that the reading may be useful.  
At the same time you read the Writings of others, let this of all things be written upon your mind, that whereas there are several parts of Religion, the chief part is practice, and a living in obedience to the Commands of God, and that all pretending to Religion is trifling without it, and that still the Older you are, the more Practice is required.  
In order to your being moved to live in a Religious Method of all this Practice, you may be assured that your Life can never be happy without Religion, and then what is to make your whole Life happy, is to be itself a greater part of it, is to be indeed begun in the first Seasons of Life, and so continued to the last. If the beginning afterwards were not late and ineffectual, yet it would be less certain and more difficult, the beginning sooner will by the long and early custom make Religion that which I so much desire it may be to you, and may be accounted by you, a delightful thing, the most delightful in the World. Religion I have declared before to be a thing which has all the Refinement and Delicacy of Pleasure; and then why should we lose so much Pleasure all the time we are not engaged in the Interests of Religion? Youth is the time, in which we think we have a Claim to Pleasu e; and then, if it covet all other Pleasure, why not the truest and highest Joy, and why not Religion, which alone can give this, which alone can secure the other? We can no more be happy too soon then too much; and all the Wit and all the Power of Man cannot order an happy Life without ordering the Life to be first Religious.  
This Truth is as great as evident; O that all those would consider it, to whom the considering of it would be useful, that is, all Mankind. And seeing it is the Desire of every Man to be happy, there should be this other Desire of the Good and the Wise, that every Man would consider and every Man would do what is necessary to make him, as he desires to be, very happy.  
Be pleased to remember that high degree in the World does not make Virtue a lower or a needless thing; and that Riches make Religion still more needful, because Riches have many Dangers, against which Religion only can give Security, and because when there is such a plenty of other things, it is pity there should be a want of that alone. Riches are coveted too much, Religion too little; and yet this should be more desired, if not for its own sake, at least for the sake of Riches, which, if they are never so much desired, never so much possessed, are yet no Blessing without Religion. You may remember also that Noble Blood, a Body Highborn does not make us so great as that Nobler sort of Mind, which shows its heavenly Birth in heavenly Actions. You may not forget that no Beauty does so charm, no Dress so adorn, as Virtue always does, no Conversation is so truly delightful, as a devout Communion in God's worship, no Behaviour and Accomplishment has so lovely a Grace, as that of Reverence in the Worship of him who cannot have too much: Happy we, if from the best of us he could have enough; but we must be contented, as God is satisfied, with our being Servants, though unprofitable. Noble Birth, and Beauty, the Arts of Conversation and Behaviour, and all the Glories of Dress, which are things very much admired, will deserve much more to be so, when joined to Religion, and when they have the great Advantages which Religion gives them: Indeed this gives the greatest, because it is greater, it is better than all things. All the things you can desire (or others can desire, can Love in you) are not to be compared unto it, the gain thereof is better than fine Gold, it is more precious than Rubies, and its ways are ways of pleasantness. So says Solomon, and the same Author says, a Gracious Woman retaineth Honour. He had high Birth himself, and so much of it, that the Haughty Aethiopian Emperors; amongst all their Bulky and noisy Titles, are proud of nothing more than that they have (as they pretend) Royal Blood flowing from him. Solomon had a King his Father, and his Father the chief Head of a Family of Kings, the first and last settled Royal Family in Israel; Solomon was a King himself, and as he had Riches and Greatness, to make him awful, so he had Beauty and Wisdom, and all the Charms of Wit and Conversation and Language to make him lovely to Mankind: Grace was poured into his Lips, and he was fairer than the Children of Men, he dwelled in Ivory Palaces, and his Garments were perfumed with Myrrh and Aloes and Cassia, and Kings-Daughters were among his Honourable Women. In the same Psalm his Queen too is described, and in vain had she been brought unto the King in Raiment of Needlework, and in vain she had stood at his right hand in Gold of Ophir, and her clothing of wrought Gold, if she the Daughter as well as Wife of a King had not been all glorious within as well as she was without in all her Egyptian Glory; the King would never have so much desired her Beauty, if she had not harkened and considered, inclined her Ear and Worshipped.  
A Writer of your Sex brings in the Shepherd professing all the Rapture of Esteem, and something more the Passion to the Sheperdels, not for those Endowments, which are commonly treated with all the softer Language and respectful Names, but for other and greater things.  

Yet not for these do I Alinda Love,  
Hear then what 'tis that does my Passion move:  
That thou still earliest at the Temple art  
And still the last that does from thence departed,  
Pan 's Altar is by thee the ofinest pressed,  
Thine's still the fairest Offering and the best;  
And all thy other Action seem to be  
The true Result of unfeign d Piety.   
These Perfections shined through all the shade of that Meaness which Poetry had dressed her in, and her own Humility was ready to put on; and they discovered to every admiring Eye the Noble Lady (for so she was) under the borrowed Disguise of a Shepherdess.  
I have spoken so much more upon Noble Birth, because as that is a very great Blessing in itself, so it has been to some a very great Evil, to those who have so valued themselves, or have been taught by others, attending them, so to value themselves upon it, as to imagine they wanted nothing else, and were above the being good, above that very thing which would make them still more Noble, and would give them an higher Rank than Birth had given them, would place them above all things besides itself. I have all the high regard to Noble Birth, especially to that which your Ladyship derives from a Family I have so peculiar an Honour for: I would only advise all Persons who are born in Greatness not to have too high a Regard for it in one Sense, and scarce high enough in another. The general Precept of the Philosopher seems to be particular to them in its design, that men should reverence themselves: Surely they should teach others to pay Honour to them by doing Honour to themselves, they should have a Reverence for the Memories and the Venerable Ghosts of their Ancestors, in not embezzling the Honour as well as the Estate which they bequeathed, and in acting so that their Ashes may not be disturbed, nor they dead once more in those whom they left behind to represent them. Virtue did first give Honour and Title; and that is still necessary to preserve it. Honour acquired by Virtue is greater than that of Inheritance, and when the Honour which was first the Reward of Virtue is carried down to others as the Gift of Inheritance, these indeed are Noble once, the first Day of their Birth: But, if they continue and enlarge those virtuous Actions of their Ancestors, they make themselves Noble anew, every Day of their Life, confirm and enlarge their original Right to the Honour they received from others, and then begin to make it their own. Jehu could not choose but pay a regard to Birth, in the midst of all his Holy Rage, and the Wickedness of Jezebel, in whom there was but one thing to give her any claim to a regard, and for the sake of that one thing she had it, she was to suffer less Dishonour in her Death, because she had so much honour in her Birth, Go, bury her, for she is a King's Daughter. The Son of God, who vouchsafed to be born, as Man, in all the Forms of Meanness, chose a Noble man's Daughter for the Subject of a Miracle to raise her when dead, and so a Nobleman's Son, to rescue him from Death. I have not designed one word to lessen Birth, but all to make it greater, by Virtue added to it, and adorning it.  
With the same design I have spoken of Riches and Pleasures, and all the desirable Advantages of the World, and which are only of this World: I would not have them excluded, I would have those who possess them not to love them better than themselves, and not to exclude Religion, and then Happiness too, which never goes in to any Place, but where Religion goes in before it. The Things of the World have too much wrought on many Aged, and not Imprudent Persons: Much more than is there need of Caution to one of your Age, and your Quality, when too many of the same greater Figure have abused their worldly Advantages, being first abused themselves by the ill Counsels of those who have been too near them. Indeed your Ladyship gives me no occasion to suspect that you had ever any to Misguide you, or that you are to be Misguided, when I by a delightful Experience have viewed so much Virtue, as should either make me think you had never been attacked by ill Counsels, or you had always Virtue, Strong and Wise, to conquer them. There are Persons in the World, (and may you be always one of those) upon whom Ill Advice is no less ineffectual than Good is very often on others, ill things cannot stand before them, and, as no venomous Beast can live in some Climates, they die as soon as they come near them, or within the fatal Air of this so mighty Innocence. There is a Serpent to every Daughter of Eve, as well as there was to Eve herself, and so to every Son of Adam: But however the Serpent be more subtle than any Beast of the Field, there are those who will be innocent, be he never so Crafty, and they will not eat of the Fruit, and without eating of it their Eyes are opened, and they know Good and Evil, and so as to pursue, and to avoid. Every good Person has something of an Exorcist, in him the Apostolical Power of casting out Devils is hot lost, to him it is continued, the evil Spirit cannot bear his Presence, as he could not bear that of Christ, when he sell down before him, and cried out, I beseech thee torment me not. Besides the many Temptations from others, there is a Tempter within ourselves, there is a Principle of Vanity in the Nature of Man, in this too earthly Nature, which carries us on to these Vain Earthly Things with a fierce Desire, as fierce alas, as if they were not Vain: From this Principle, which seems to be almost as old as our Nature, rise all the Sins of our following Life, these are only so many irregular ways into which our Inclinations divide themselves for the Pursuit of earthly Things. From this Principle of Corruption in our Souls, rise all our Sins, as from another of natural Corruption in our Bodies do rise the several Diseases of them. The best of us therefore may have need to be upon our Guard against the Things of the World, and good Reason there is to keep low, and to correct betimes that prevailing Cause of Corruption by Advice, and by Endeavour.  
In order to your successful Progress in this Course of Religion, you will, (I am sure) be easily, and soon Exhorted to have (shall I say?) Or to continue a suitable and devout Regard to that Day of the Week, which is particularly designed for Religious Offices. The Day, which is set apart, and for something, and that can be no other than holy Duty; the Day, which we call the Lord's Day in a profane Jest, if we do not keep it to the Lord, if our use of it be Profane, that is, not Religious. He who regardeth a Day, regardeth it unto the Lord. Man is Born to Labour, (as Job has told us) he is designed by God to be always in Action, and that Action as much as may be worthy of himself, and useful to himself, or others: They who have the lowest Respect for this Day, pretend not then to do the Business of their particular Calling; and therefore should they not do that of their general Calling, as they are Christians? This one Day was not set apart, only to be a Blank, a void Space in our Time, and to have nothing written upon it: If we could be contented to lose one Day, as to our own Interest, in every Week of so short a Life, yet God is not willing to allow the loss of one, as to his Service, we complain, says a Learned Heathen, that Life is short, and Time is swift, and yet like Men, very Unthrifty, and very Poor, we misspend our too little time, as if we had too much. Whatever time we misspend, we should take care, like Men luxurious in their Expenses, and yet still just in their Principles, to misspend none but our own Indeed, if we should take this Care, we should misspend no Time, because none is ours, much less that which God has made His more than any other, His in a peculiar manner: Not only God, but Man; all the Authority of Man, that of the Church, and that of the State has made it God's own Time: And if any Sacred Thing, which one Man gave to God, another cannot take away but with the blackest Gild, much less that which God has given to himself, and Man gave to God. Our using well this part of our Time will prevent our abusing every other part, because it will advance us to such a State of Mind, it will lead us into such Rules of Life, that we shall learn to be always careful, and resolve to be always good. Surely we shall be so, if we remember an Apostles Saying, that we are not our own; and then not our Time; because if we ourselves are not our own, than not any thing belonging to us, which can be held no otherwise than our Being is, and must pass over with ourselves to the great Sovereign Lord.  
You are ready, (I know) to keep this Day with all the solemn Care, and you are to perform the Duties of it with all the solemn Reverence. The fixed and ordinary Duties of it are Praying, and Hearing, Meditation, and Reading, and Acts of Charity; and moreover there is an extraordinary Duty, the receiving the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, seeing your Years now meet, and come up to your devout Inclinations, and Time now almost overtakes your Piety and Prudence, which (as swift as Time is) have been so much before it. Since this is so great which now we see, how great must that be, which we may expect; the good Things we view at a distance, though so far off, yet appear not little, they already entertain our Eyes with a pleasing Prospect, and fill our Minds with amusing Thought and the brightest Image, when we look forward to the Seasons of full and ripe Perfection, of which we have the first Fruits now already. That the Sacrament of Perfection may give you a large share thereof, and hasten it upon you, and so gratify your eager Zeal and our swelling Expectation, you will not fail to receive the Sacrament as often as you have Opportunity to receive it. No mean believe me, between not receiving, and refusing; if you do not receive it, you refuse it; and be pleased to consider how heinous the Crime must be to refuse, when God does offer, not to come, when God invites. Every time the Sacrament is to be administered, it is offered to all the Persons of the Place, as much to each of them, as if it were offered in express words, and by name to every single Person only and not to the rest, for him only provided. And then you may begin to think how condescending a thing it is for a great Man, for one much greater than ourselves to order a particular entertainment for us, and how indecent a thing to deny our Presence.  
That you may hereafter receive this Sacrament with advantage, and now perform with advantage the other Duties of Worship, which already you are not more capable of then zealous for, I would propose few things more and sooner than a Constancy to the Church of England, in which the Performance of all those Duties is so strictly required, and the manner of performing them so well prescribed. A Church it is, which cannot fail to be agreeable to you, because it so well instructs you in Religion, in no part whereof you would be ignorant, it is so ready to promote your Knowledge in every part, which you are so eager to improve: A Church, which the more you understand, is still the better satisfied, and her Satisfaction is still made greater by yours, instead of envying you your own Knowledge, or denying you a share in that of others by Instruction. I would recommend a Constancy to the Communion of the Church with full Judgement of your Mind, and sincere  of your Soul, that Soul, which is to have so much Advantage from that Communion. When I give this Advice, I offer it with all the Sincerity which becomes the Subject of Advice, Religion, and which becomes a Man who has all the Zeal for the well-being of the Person to whom he offers it, for this well-being in every thing, especially in Religion. I would be sure to be thus sincere, when I propose this (I am sure) wholesome Counsel, and therefore in that very Instant I for the time endeavour to forget my own being a Member of this Church, I separate in my Thoughts my being so from my Advice to you to be so forever. I do not exhort you to this Communion, because I live within it, but because it is the best for your Eternal Welfare, and for my own. And so I am not partial to myself in my inviting you to my own Church, as some are fond of every thing they meet with at their own House. But I should be indeed very partial, if I should reserve good things to myself, if I should not exhort you to a Communion with that Church, which is, and which upon all my Experience and all my Consideration I have found to be the best, and which I therefore chose at first, therefore now continue in. As Christ's Disciples said upon a like occasion, Whither shall we go? So may I say, if we are not to continue in this Church, to what other shall we go? What necessary thing for the Souls of Men can any other give, which we have not here? Surely if Men will be hearty in any Religion, they will not fail of embracing ours, when they have hearty enquired what it is, and they truly know, how much it deserves to be embraced. Therefore perhaps so many Atheists oppose our Church with a particular Fury, and so many, when they have revolted from it, have soon become Atheists afterwards, their denying all Religion has been the next Step to the denying one, of which a less thing can scarce be said, then that is as good as any. Others going from it have indeed not known whither to go, they have roved about in a Circle of Error, have gone backward and forward in an endless Maze of Religions, and whereas once there was a Promise to move the Earth, if there were but found a Place to stand on, the Religious world turns round with them, because they have not such a place. When Cain went out from the Presence of the Lord, he became a Fugitive and a Vagabond in the Earth, and his Punishment in this Sense too was greater than he could bear: The Spirits of ill Men some imagine to have their wand'ring in the air for a part of Punishment, the worst of Spirits and the Prince of the Air gave this Account of himself, that he went to and fro in the Earth, and walked up and down in it. So the departing from our Church has been punished in many with their being never fixed, who would not be fixed where they might, where they should have been very steady. Never indeed shall they find the Truth, who are always seeking, and will never believe, they have found it, as they cannot be long in a right way, who will change their way every Minute and every step. The pursuing as well as the renouncing every Religion is an ill extreme; the seeking thus for ever is one ill extreme as well as the not seeking any is another. There can be no reason at any time to forsake our Church; no reason to be always forsaking one, and running into another.  
I insist so much more on this Plea for our Communion, not only because the Subject is very pleasing to myself, but also very advantageous it is to you. Indeed to your thoughts of this best Church I would give the best Impressions, that you might be above the Danger of receiving any of the worse kind hereafter, that you might be fixed before at this your Age, which is so capable of Good, and so liable to Ill, and besides the Tenderness of your Age there is the Softness of your Sex to make you the more disposed for the taking of any sort of Stamp or Impression. You will forgive this my troublesome, however zealous, Industry to see you settled in true Principles, and in strong conviction of that Truth, because Inconstancy (as you read before) in Religion is a thing so Dangerous, and Constancy in a false one is a thing so fatal.  
Moreover Attempts have been very often made upon those of just Sex for the betraying of them into a false Religion, and too often those attempts have been successful. My desires are so much more importunate for your continuing in a Religion (which has so much reason for it) in a good Religion upon very good Reason, because they who at first took Religion by that handle, and afterwards held it there are said in Scripture to be Noble; the doing so was a mark of a Generous Spirit, and such a Spirit is very suitable to such a Quality as yours, and no less suitable to Religion.  
Many are the Arguments I could urge to prove the Necessity and the Advantage of your being a Daughter of the Church, as well as of your Noble Parents. But all such Arguments would as much be lost upon you, who have little need to be convinced, as they are too often upon others in a worse Sense, who resolve not to be so. I shall offer no more Arguments, than two, and those, as very peculiar to your Quality and more exalted State: one I borrow from him who had no such Zeal for the Church as should make him partial to it, but approaching Death, which makes so many wise, and many sincere, taught him to confess, that the People of England being naturally inclined to Freedom, and bred in Riches and Plenty can hardly be induced to embrace any Religious Discipline which may abridge their Liberty, and Pleasures: That is, any other Discipline than this of the Church, which at the same Time it allows us Liberty and Riches and Pleasures, does prefcribe our not abusing them to our own greatest Disadvantage, and moreover our using them to the Advantage of others, and of Religion. I now may add my other Argument, the Order and Decency of our Worship, which makes it very natural to Persons of your Nobler Rank, who are distinguished from others by order (that of High and Low in the different Figures of the World) and by Decency, their having so much of it in their appearance: They have all the Forms of Address paid to them, wherever they vouchsafe to appear, and therefore something is to be paid by them to the Prince of the Kings of the Earth. So K. David argued, and that generous Devotion, which was so much his Virtue and his Glory, made him, apt to argue, See now I dwell in a house of Cedar, and the Ark of God dwelleth within Curtains. And so God himself did argue, offer it now unto thy Prince, will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy Person?  
From this my naming of order in Worship I will take occasion to recommend it in all other things: And so much rather, because if there be a Rule for all other things, much more will there be one for Religion, and when all things are done in order, they will be done with ease, and be finished each of them in very good time, and so there will not be a want of time, and a want of Thought free and disengaged, for Prayer and other Works of Religion. To do things in order, even those of our Busy and common Life, is so far a part of Religion, as we thus imitate God, who is not the Author of Confusion, who made, and who preserves all things still, in number weight and measure, who has fixed the times for Night and Day, for Summer and Winter, and for every thing, who has taught those Creatures Order which know little else: He hath appointed the Men for Seasons, and the S●● knoweth his going down, the Stork in the Heaven knoweth her appointed Time, and the Turtle and the Cra●e, and the Swallow observe the time of 〈…〉 That Wisdom of Solution, the Fame whereof was in all Nation's rou●●●● bout, not only showed itself in Reigning so as that Judah and Israel dwelled safely, every Man under his Vine, and under his Figtree; not only in speaking Three Thousand Proverbs, and in speaking of Trees, and Beasts, and Fowl; his Wisdom also appeared in the Order of his private Business, that of his Family, and the Queen of Sheba admired it in this Order, as well as in greater Things. His Wisdom taught him to prescribe, as always to himself, so to others fixed Times for all things, and then to declare that, To every thing there is a Season, and a Time to every purpose under Heaven. But here some may be ready to say, that when each Affair is performed in all this Method, and at allotted Times, the Man becomes a Slave (and no worse Slave than he who is his own) the Rule is a Chain, and Life is a Toil, as he who observes the strict Rules of Physic is very far from being happy, or being easy. I intent not the observing of Order with this Anxious Care, and as if the thing must be done in this very manner, and not otherwise, whatever happens, but only that it be for the most part observed, and when it may be so with little trouble, and with the common Foresight of every prudent Person; and then there will be something of Order, even in the not observing of it. Otherwise Order would be a thing too Nice for the State of Man, as some things are too fine to be used, or to last. Our present State will not be so regular as a good Man would have it, nor so Uniform; and all of a piece, and colour, as a wise Man would make it, our whole Condition, when on Earth, is uneven, like the Earth itself, which is divided into Hills and Plains, and rough Way as well as smooth. No Rule of Acting can pretend to a greater Name than that of a Law, nor to greater Authority; and seeing we live not under Persian Emperors, every Law upon a new overruling Occasion may be Repealed, or be Suspended. Order is not to be Superstition and Caprice, like that of the Orator, who made use of his angry Eloquence in a Lawsuit, Commenced against the innocent Roman that ruffled and discomposed his Gown. We are not to be Martyrs for our Rule, as the Man in the Grecian Commonwealth was to die for the new Law which he proposed; and we are not to observe the Rules of our appointed Order, as a Pedant those of his Grammar, or as a Monk professes to observe those of his Society. Living in method, without the Severity of living thus, will be so far from being a Toil, that it will make every thing else to cease from being so; there will be Ease in every Business, and the greatest in the Mind; when 〈◊〉 is no Hurry without, there will be none within. Not only Use will make Order so familiar, but it will make itself so pleasant, that we shall not be afraid of it, we shall choose and covet it, as we choose the Travelling in an open Road, and find it much more easy, and we covet the Sailing by a Compass, and find it much more safe. Indeed a Physician of elder Times prescribed this Rule of Health, that none should be observed: But if none, than not his own, and then not his against every Rule.  
That the Order, which I know to be so useful in all our Life, and to be so needful in the best part of Life, in Religion, you may be sure to observe in this better part; when you enter upon any Action, consider, first, whether the thing you would do be Lawful, whether God has not forbidden it, and whether the best, and the wisest Men would not forbid it, and advise against it. Very great Reason there is to consider thus, because you will otherwise have no Blessing from that God, from whom, I hope, you will have an overflowing Plenty of it; no Blessing so as to finish the Action you begin, or no Blessing afterwards, so as to have any good Effect rising from it: And surely all that Prudence, which your present Behaviour gives us a Promise of, will not give you leave to think of doing any one thing in vain, much less that which should be worse than Vain, should be hurtful. Be pleased to consider first, whether the Thing have any sinful part, and not first, what Pleasure it may have, and what Profit; because our greatest Profit is in Religion, and in Religion should be our greatest Pleasure; and because Religion should be the governing Principle of all our Actions, and should be always at the Helm to guide them, and is always the most faithful Oracle to be consulted upon the Issues of them. So a great Man says, a Prince, as Pious as Great, I have set the Lord always before me, therefore I shall not be moved, Psalms 16. I shall neither do, nor suffer Ill, I shall be sure in my Actions, and safe in my whole Condition. The not considering in our first Steps of Action, whether it be such as we should go any farther in it, whether it be good or not, is an ill Thing itself, much worse than at first sight it seems to be, it leads us into Profaneness, and a Contempt of Religion; and therefore in Scripture it is a Mark hereof: Indeed so much rather it is a Mark of Profaneness; because this very thing is a first Principle of Religion, that our Actions should begin from Him, from whom all Creatures had their beginning, and because, if Religion does not come in at first, it comes in seldom afterwards; either that withdraws upon the contempt, or we make the first contempt greater still, and we hardened Men too soon learn to forget what before too boldly we had despised. The Action gins in disorder, which gives the first place to Profit or Pleasure, and it cannot but end as it began.  
Remember always your Confirmation, that is, this your Dedication of yourself to God (as the Jews had an yearly Remembrance of the Dedication of the Temple) your taking the Vow upon yourself which in your Baptism you made by others; and that you always may remember it, be pleased to read the Form of Confirmation once every Quarter of the Year. This was a Sacred tye, and the first with which you by your own act bound the first and tender part of your Life, and, I know, the Bond was not uneasy or too stiff for the tenderness of it, but, in Solomon's Language, an Ornament of Grace unto your Head, and a Chain about your neck; and to be bound continually upon your heart. This was one of the most awful, the greatest Acts of Religion, you ever yet performed, because it was the sealing of a Covenant between God and yourself in most awful manner, the Covenant made in Baptism, but sealed in Confirmation. You then declared what you would do, and you obliged yourself to the doing of it in your whole following life, and the Bishop declared what God would do at the same time he prayed to God for it, that he would assist you in, and reward you for the performing your pious part. How great and solemn was the Engagement, when the Bishop asked you with others, Do ye here in the presence of God and of this Congregation renew the solemn Promise and Vow that was made in your Name at your Baptism, ratifying and confirming the same in your own Persons and acknowledging yourselves bound to believe and to do all those things which your Godfathers and Godmothers than undertook for you. How great and solemn was the Bishop's Prayer, when the Venerable Man invested with heavenly Power, and with all things to give commanding Authority to his Person, and a Religious Grandeur to the performance, laid his hand upon you; as if he would convey a part of that precious spiritual Ointment, which had been poured on his Head, to yours, like the Oil running down from Aaron 's head, and so spreading farther to the parts below. At the same time the Bishop laid one hand upon your Head, he lift up another to that Heaven from whence his Power was derived, in Prayer for you, Defend, O Lord, this thy Servant with thy heavenly Grace, that she may continue thine for ever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more; until she come into thy everlasting Kingdom, Amen. I have indeed a particular reason for recommending all the nice and serious respects to your Confirmation, not only because of the useful Greatness of the thing itself, but also because of the extraordinary regard I owe it, as well as you, seeing I bore a part therein, had the Honour to attend you in it, and present you to it.  
My Lord your Father, as he observed me to be always, so upon this occasion save me to be most particularly concerned for your Spiritual Interests, he did me the Honour to think favourably of me, and was willing to believe that this my zeal (for your Confirmation) had a Knowledge with it, and at the same time to wish (I may suppose) that in order to the having such a Zeal, others might have such a Knowledge, and therefore he asked me what Proof I had from Scripture for the practice of Confirmation: My Answer was to this purpose, that 1. however it is Sacrament to some, it is not to us, but indeed it follows one, and being not essential, but very useful in Religion, like many other useful and yet not absolutely necessary things, it might not be expressly commanded, and not so expressly found in Scripture, which is a particular and a standing Rule only for things absolutely necessary to Salvation. In other things the Church may know that they advance the great ends of Religion, and then it wants for their use no other Command besides its own. But 2dly. Confirmation has a proof from Scripture, Acts 8. The first Christians of Samaria were baptised upon the preaching of Philip, v. 12, and after their Baptism the Apostles sent Peter and Johh to pray for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost. v. 14.15. then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost, v. 17. that is, were Confirmed.  
Your Baptism placed you in the Christian Church; but your being there was declared, and you engaged yourself to the abiding there, in your Confirmation: As an Ambassador may be sometime unknown in the Kingdom he is sent to, but he is not supposed, or declared to be there, till his public Entry, and then he gins public Action. When you were to be Confirmed, your Age made your beginning of Religious Action very seasonable, and your Confirmation made your going on therein very necessary, has given it all the obliging Circumstances. Go on therefore, as you have begun, and do, as you are obliged, and go forth in the strength of the Lord God, and pray for a double Portion of that his Strength, and say; Give me, O my God, a zealous and steady Piety, a most devout and flaming Love of thee, O my Creator, whom I ought to remember now in the Days of my Youth, and the Days of my Pleasure, and I am also to remember those other Evil Days, which as far they are from me now, yet will come, and the years will draw nigh, in which I shall say I have no Pleasure. So shall your Confirmation be repeated upon you from God every day of your Life, and, in the Strength he gives, you shall become great in Religion, and go so far therein, as only those have gone, whose shining Example was a Light in your way, and taught you to go forth betimes, as they did before you, and as too few do after them. Our Virtue and our Age, in the common View of Mankind, pass through the same degrees, and their Progress often is the same, as there is not ripe and well grown Fruit without a Bloom before, which pleases so much at present, and promises so much hereafter. We have often had a surprising Account of some younger Saints, what good and excellent things they said, what great and excellent things they did. Indeed we have heard wonderful Descriptions of the Virtues of the blessed Virgin in the first part of her Age, and so the Life of the Mother almost becomes as much a Miracle as the Birth of the Son: That such particular relations were true we have no proof, and they have no credit; but the foundation of them is not without its truth, that she whose Piety was so eminent afterwards, it is most likely, could never have attained those glorious improvements, without beginning sooner than others too often do; she could never have been so highly favoured of God, if God had not been highly and early beloved of her, if she had not been a Virgin as much in her Mind, as otherwise, if her Purity had not been great in the first outgoings of her Life, though her first Conception was not undefiled.  
Your Confirmation leads you to Prayer, because you are afterwards to beg Grace of God for your being able to answer all those holy ends of your Confirmation, and because this leads you into Religion, the first Act whereof is Prayer. Seeing Prayer is the first Act of Religion, that your beginning may not be an Error, and seeing it is an immediate Address to God, that it may be with all the Caution and Reverence of Approach, I would direct you here, and I now propose the use of Three Prayers to you, which have a particular Respect to your own Condition, and may be added one of them still to your other Prayers, at your three daily Times of Praying.  

A Thanksgiving for Great Birth, and a great share of Earthly Goods.  
O Merciful Father, and the God of all the Families of Israel, thou didst make me to hope when I was yet upon the Breasts, I was cast upon thee from my Birth, and from my first Hours thou wast my God. Thy Blessings in that my Birth were some of them common to me with others, and I praise thee for them; But some thou gavest me, O my gracious God, more peculiar to myself, and for these too I praise thee. For my noble Birth, and for all the following Advantages of it, those of Fortune, and those of Education, for all I praise thee, and make me to praise thee in all those Advantages, by directing and improving them all to thy Glory, and not admiring my own therein. Thou hast called me to Glory and Virtue, and to no Virtue more than to Humility: May I be humble always before thee, and always consider, that all Flesh is Grass, and all the Goodliness thereof is as the Flower of the Field, the Grass withereth the Flower fadeth, and the Fashion of this World, as Gaudy and Beautiful as it is, passeth away. So, when I thus consider, and when I am thus humble, may I have a Name better than that of Sons and Daughters, an everlasting Name which shall not be put out, that in Heaven itself, through him who had his Birth from thee, and was thy firstborn Son, through Christ my Saviour. Amen.   

A Prayer for a lively Sense of Religion, and a sincere Love thereof.  
LET thy Tabernacles be amiable to me, O Lord of Hosts, let my Soul long, and even faint for the Courts of the Lord, and my Heart and my Flesh rejoice in God. Make my Soul to thirst for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God? Make thou the Mighty to give unto the Lord, to give unto the Lord Glory and Strength, to give unto the Lord the Glory due unto his Name, to Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness. As the Heart panteth after the Water-brooks, so let my Soul pant after thee, O God. Whom have I in Heaven but thee, and is there any thing upon Earth that I desire in comparison of thee? O let thy Desire be also to the Work of thine own Hands, to Crown me with Mercy and loving Kindness, in this, and in another Life; through Christ our Lord. Amen.   

A Prayer for other Graces and Virtues, and Religious Accomplishments.  
I Acknowledge, O Lord, that every good Gift, and every perfect Gift is from above; and seeing thou art so ready to give it, I rejoice that it is from thee; and because it is all from above, I therefore here below lift up mine Eyes unto the Hills, from whence cometh my Help. Bless me with all those Virtues, which are suitable to my Sex, and and my Condition, and my Age, and which are to make my Passage through this World easy, and that into another safe. With the many Goods of this World, by thy Grace give me a wise Contempt of it, and the lowest Opinion of all Earthly Things, as thou hast given me by thy Bounty, a very high Portion of them: Grant me Prudence, and innocence, and Success in all my Actions concerning them, and yet Meekness and Patience hereafter in all the Evils which thou may'st design for my Trial, and which may disturb my Enjoyment. Give me Vigour of Understanding, and all the goodly Endowments of it, instruct and improve my Soul in a daily Increase of all useful Knowledge: Enlighten it with the Knowledge of thyself, the Father of Lights, and the only true God, the Knowledge of whom is eternal Lise; that I may thus go from Strength to Strength, till I appear before the God of God's Zion, and then appear in the Glory and the Purity of Souls which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, and are the first Fruits to God, and to the Lamb, and are without spot before the Throne of God: O grant me a place before thy Throne, for the sake of him thy Lamb, and my Redeemer Jesus Christ. Amen.  
Let your Life be divided, the Religious part of Life, betwixt Prayer and Practice, and let no Variety divert you more than the daily Returns of Duty in passing from the one to the other: Neither is to exclude, but each is still to bring in the other; because by Prayer you gain a Power for holy Actions, and that Power is executed by Practice, and any such Power is like a Law, without Execution very Fruitless. A Virtuous Woman, with the Addition of Greatness, is a public Good, and her Influence is boundless, and so as to make Virtue a public and common Good in the best Sense, by making others like herself: In your being one of the Virtuous Number, how much Honour shall you add to your Honourable Family? How much Happiness to that other Family, into which hereafter Marriage shall Transplant you? To both Families, and to yourself a greater Happiness I cannot wish, than the Enlargement of those Virtues which shine forth already, nor to myself a nobler Satisfaction, than that Success of all this my Advice, which is not doubted by him who gives it. How great a Blessing is such a Woman I spoke of? Her Price is far above Rubies, above those she is adorned with. How great Things are said of her by a mighty King, and a Wise one, by Lemuel, who could not choose but be a skilful Judge of Virtue, when he had so much Experience in Vice; as skilful a Judge in the Perfections of the Sex, as when two contended for the Child, he shown himself in the Rights thereof. That Description, Prov. 1. is a part of the Prophecy his Mother taught him, vers. 1. whose particular Conversation with her own Sex, must needs make her learned in the Accomplishments of it? The Woman there described is a Person of Honour and Wealth, and so great enough to have her Picture drawn by a King, and the Colours to be given him by the Mother of a King: Honour her Clothing first, and then Silk and Purple, her Covering of Tapestry, and all her Household Clothed with Scarlet, her works praise her in the Gates, and her Husband is known in the Gates, (a Place of Judgement, and Authority, and Greatness) when he sitteth among the Elders (or Governors) of the Land, 22, 23.31, 25. Nor is her Greatness made therefore doubtful, because her Industry so active in all Kind's of Work is a part of her Character and her 〈…〉 for the greatest Persons of that Age chose the same Industry for their Exercise. That when many Daughters have done Virtuously, you may, if not excel them all, as Verse 29, yet imitate the Virtues they excel in; your Practice is to be a Copy from that charming Picture in one part more than all, and that one Work in which her Hands were exercised I would recommend to you more than all the rest, in which she used them, she stretcheth forth her Hand to the Poor, yea, she reacheth forth her Hands to the Needy, v. 20.  
And here I would make it one part of my Counsels, that amongst other Books of Scripture, you would read not only the last Chapter of this Book, but would begin at the first, and so go on and read all the Book, which has not only, as other Proverbs, shortness and Wit in the Language, but great Wisdom, and profound Thought in the Sense, and such as would direct the several Motions of your Life in the use. However it was Written by a King, who as such, had greater Advantage from the high Throne he sat on to view all Affairs, and to advise upon them, yet was it not Written to Kings alone, but to all their Subjects, and to all Mankind. When there has been so much Care and Expense to teach you every thing of common Behaviour, you should much more learn those higher Arts of prudent Conduct, and those which will give you true Accomplishment, will make you agreeable, not only to others, in your outward Deportment, but to yourself, in your inward satisfaction. As you should observe a regular Method in all things you are to do, so should you at all times have something to be done. A Thought it is most worthy of a great Person to think herself made for Action, because as Happiness, the highest State to which Mankind can be advanced, is in Action, so Greatness is more in Action then in Condition: The latter kind of Greatness does follow the other, and is only an unfinished Piece without it. When I speak of Action, I intent not your being always exercised in things high and serious, but only your being always in some Exercise, and so when the thing itself may not be of such a solemn Importance, yet it may have this Praise at least, that it is very Innocent: Then your being employed therein will preserve you also Innocent, and if sometimes little good be done to others, or yourself, yet your doing great Evil may be prevented. I intent not any sort of Exercise which should have Toil to Body or Mind, but only that which should be advantageous to both without oppressing either. Amongst the many sorts of Exercise, Reading deserves a place, indeed it should have the chief, because you will then do right to the principal part, to your Understanding, in improving that which I know is so capable of Improvement; and because your Reading will furnish you with so many useful Notions to make you happy in your Life, Wise in your Deportment, and both Wise and Happy in Religion. Some good Thought of the Book will have a second Printing within your Mind: Be your Reading never so unconcerned and easy, it will be sure to leave some Impression, as often our Motion, be it never so nimble and light, will yet leave a Mark behind it. And thus like her whom our Prince of Poets describes (and as he seems so be in love with her Perfections, so every one would be with his Description of them) you will have  
In your Mind the wisest Books,  
As in your Face the fairest looks.  
A modern Writer, in his Remarks upon a neighbouring Nation, observes the Conduct of its great Ladies to be such, that he never heard of any one there who had been accused of Vice; he supposes this steady Virtue to have no other Cause, than that they are always busy, and so they are not at leisure for Thinking, and less for doing Ill, and then too they give no occasion to others to think Ill, not of them. A Nobleman of this Kingdom, and lately a Minister of State, advised his Daughter to Read, or to hear Reading two or three Hours every Day: And surely, if he always gave as good Advice to his Prince, for the Management of Public Affairs, as here he did to his Daughter, for the Advancement of her Virtue, and private Wisdom, he was one of the best Statesmen in the World. I have seen a Collection of Prayers, and Spiritual Rules, Written by a very great Person of your Sex, and of our Nation, when very young, from the Books she Read, not only to make the Writing an Exercise, and Action of the better sort, but that she might fix what she Read with the greater Force upon her Mind, and that the best part of what she had found in other Books, she might always find again in her own, it might be always ready for her View, and for her Use. And here I cannot choose but wish that the young Nobility of the other Sex would make Reading much more their Practice; they would find it very useful to them, and themselves more useful to their Country. At the same time I beg leave to offer an humble Proposal, and well designed Request to their Parents, that they would make the Education of their Sons one great part of their Care, and their Improvement in Learning one great part of their Education. I know the Failure in the present Method of Education, I have often declared against it, and often bewail it. Never did any Nation understand Greatness more than the Romans, and in that Glorious Age when Rome had the largest share of it, her Emperors and Noblemen esteemed themselves greater as they were more learned. They never thought there was any Attainder in Knowledge, nor did that, which was to exalt their Soul, debase their Blood. So high was their Ambition to excel in Letters as well as in War and Policy, that one of their Emperors resented his Boldness as a Crime of High treason, who pretended to a more refined Skill in one sort of Learning, which was the darling Inclination the Mistress of his Prince, and in which he would not admit a Rival as well as not a Partner in his Empire. It has been often said, that those of our Sex have no Advantage above the other, in respect of Learning, but what Education gives them: I hope they will not in flaming Complaisance renounce one advantage that of Learning, by denying themselves another, this of Education, nor think it a mark of good Breeding to neglect a chief part thereof. Let there be no occasion for the other Sex to upbraid our own, none for ours to be conquered by them as much in understanding as in Love: And at the Weapon which we have called our own, that of Knowledge. If we are conquered, let us like vanquished Forces rally again, and retrieve our Honour, as Armies have sometime done, when the Women have met them in their Flight, upbraiding and insulting over them more than their Enemies, and yet at the same time less angry with them, for not acting like Men; then with themselves for not being so.  
Let the doing good to others, and in them to yourself as to the welfare of your Soul be the chief end of your Life, as you will find it one of the chief Delights thereof. In every Action consider how far in the course thereof you may do good to others, and be sure to follow it on that side of it, in which it leads you to the doing good, and as more is to be done, so much more pursue it. Every one is Born for the doing this, much more those of such a Birth as yours: They are born and placed on higher ground above others, that they may have a free and boundless prospect of the wants of others, and that all the kind effects may in a gentle stream flow down to those beneath them, as the Springs first rise in the highest places to refresh the Country all around, and the humble Valleys are enriched by what flows down from the Hills above them. The Great and the Noble are not more distinguished from the common Orders of Mankind by their Condition, then by this privilege of it, the imparting all the generous advantages to others, and as their condition is better than that of others, so they are to make the condition of others too better than they found it. They are distinguished by the greatness of their Fortune, as they are able, & by the greatness of their Mind, as they are ready for all useful Offices. They are like the Stars which have their lofty and glittering place in the World, not to be admired by the other lowly Creatures, not to dazzle all things under them with their brighter Glory, but to guide and cherish them with their Light and Influence. The esteem which they receive from Men, they are to give to God, they are tun convey it farther still, and carry it up to Him who is indeed the Fountain of Honour, who is higher than the highest, to Him whose Stewards they are as well in the Honour they receive as in the Riches they possess. When the late Earl of Rochester began to have very solemn apprehensions of another State, and very zealous thoughts of a Soul and of Spiritual things in this, when with all the flaming Piety of a Saint, and all the careful Tenderness of a Father he began to be concerned for himself, and for those next to himself, his Children, he wished that his Son might become an honest and religious Man, and so what he never could be otherwise, a Blessing and Support to his Family, that he might never be a wit, that is, one of those wretched Creatures, who value themselves upon their despising God and Religion, his Being and his Providence: This Nobleman complained, that his Children were brought into a vicious world, and declared, that no Fortunes or Honours were equal to their possessing the Love and Favour of God. If there could be need to urge your willing Virtue with new Engagements, I should tell you that you may think yourself still more engaged to adorn your Birth, and each prerogative of it with good Actions, to enlarge your Interest, which is so great already, in the World by doing them, because your Sex has no other way to raise its Interest, no other passage to Esteem and Power: Our Sex has many advantageous ways, as many as there are ingenuous Professions, yours does seem to be so much designed for Virtue, that it almost seems to be your Profession, and you to have no other, that you might be at free leisure for it, and be devoted to it. There should be the same standard of Nobility in the thoughts of those who have it, which there was in China for many hundred years, where as the Emperor himself (who was called the Son of Heaven) was very learned and good, so the Nobility of those under him and deriving from him was not from Birth, but from a likeness to him in great advancements of Knowledge and Virtue. It is a Notion which often returns upon me, that when I look round the World, amongst the many entertaining Objects I meet with there I find none that comes near my eye with so much delight as a Person very Great and very Good. Virtue and Beauty are often said to make a Masterpiece in the mixture: But Virtue and Greatness, when joined together, make up something yet more perfect; Virtue, when placed so high, is not only seen better, it is seen more Glorious. We now behold, with too much evidence, Christian Piety in a great Decay, which yet, while it is so great in some, is lamented by others; If Religion must not live, there are Surviving Friends to attend the Funeral, and to bewail the Death: But then how importunate are to be their Prayers, how Serious are to be their endeavours, that Christian Religion now in its lower state of decay and corruption may have at least one advantage, which it had not in its first sat of purity and perfection, that many Mighty and many Noble may be called, and they not only for their own sake, but for the sake of others, that by the prevailing force of their Example and their Power many others may be called as well as they.  
There is an argument for Religion not only from your Quality, but from your Sex. The Religious engagements are so much stronger upon your Sex, because that tenderness of mind, which is so natural to it, is no less natural to the Particular Spirit of Devotion, and to the general Spirit of Christ's Religion, and because while Men are engaged in the business and noise of the World, and many in the most noisy part thereof, in War, you may enjoy a devout rest at home, your Closet knows nothing of tumult, there at least is peace and leisure. All who have a passion for Piety have at the same time another, they are concerned with zeal that it may flourish in your Sex, and so may spread itself and flourish in the World, that the famous Saying upon Truth may have its accomplishment in Piety, and this, when appearing in a Form so beautiful, may strike the eyes and charm the affections of all who behold it. Christian Religion, in the first Ages of it, did sometimes owe the multiplying of its Numbers to the Zeal of your Sex: And so may still the Holiness so much designed and promoted by that Religion have a Glorious enlargement from it. Not only the Believing Wife then did sanctify the unbelieving Husband, but the Pious Woman now may sanctify the less pious Man, and her Example not only reproach him for not being good, but invite him to the being so hereafter. St. Hierom declared that the propagation of Virtue as much as that of the World itself was due to your Sex, and therefore, when dissatisfied with the general corruption of Mankind he fled into retirements from them, and instead of an abode with them chose to dwell with the Wild beasts of the Desert, he still continued a Religious correspondence with many of your Sex. The reformation of that World, which now so fiercely we complain of, may be expected now from such as those whom St. Hierom then conversed with, and by a soft conveyance of all things pious from their hands: According to the argument of the Chinese Philosopher the World consists of Kingdoms, and Kingdoms consist of Families; And each Family is more in the continual view of its Governess, and more to be fashioned by her. Not only the Philosopher of China but the other of Greece, he who gave Laws to the World in Learning, as his Scholar did in War, had the same wise Notion, that the good management of Kingdoms is to follow this of Families. Indeed the influence of the Mother is great upon the Mind, as her share is great in the bodily Constitution, of the Children; and then in this sense too, If the Root be holy, so may be the Branches. Especially those, in the Family, of her own Sex, who are so much more within her view and her management, and whom her experience, in respect of her own Education, and then her particular knowledge of all things peculiar to her Sex do give her a more natural capacity to manage with the best success. The saying of a Bishop to a Courtier was no less suitable, in its Wisdom, to his Character from whom it came, then useful, in its influence, to him it was directed to, When you choose a Wife, make your strict inquiries into the qualifications, not of the Father, but of the Mother, and then you have found those of the Daughter at the same time and in one discovery. And therefore, as it was the ambition of a Jewish Woman, to be a Mother, so it should be that of a Christian, to be a good one.  
Amongst the several things I have offered to your practice, Fasting I have not named, much less prescribed, because if that can be useful in any part of your Age, some may think it not to be so necessary in this part thereof. But surely there will be a time, when Fasting will be very useful, for the withdrawing ourselves from the World, and fuel from the fire, that meat from our desires, which does often nourish them more than us, as it often feeds an ulcer more than a sounder part. Fasting will be useful for the making Spiritual Objects familiar to us, and for a particular enquiry into our Spiritual state like that into our weekly expenses, for the remembrance and the repentance of our sins, and the appointing all the methods of suitable Provision against them, for the considering not only our Sins, in order to the forsaking them, but our Graces too, in order to the continuance and improvement of them. When a great Soldier was to retire from the World, who had seldom retired from his Enemy, he declared it to be very needful, that there should be some space between the affairs of life and the day of death: Indeed there should be some between Life and Life, there should be a Truce with the World, in order to a Peace with God, there should be a Time of Respite, not only for the sense of Tasting, but for those of seeing and hearing, and all the Senses; so we may seem to die, though not daily, yet one Day at least in the Week, and to better Purposes than Charles the Fifth, we may thus act Death itself, the chief Parts whereof are the Silence of the Condition, and want of Sense. And so Retirement is, like Death, a silent and quiet State, and a remove from sensible Things, and it has something too of the Happiness which follows Death, in the Religious Enjoyments of it.  
A Method it were of great Advantage to the making you that which you so much desire to be, and which all others nope to see you, a finished Work of Prudence & Virtue, if you would choose one eminent for both, known to be so by all who know her, one of the like Quality and Condition with yourself, whom you may observe, and imitate in both. You may place her Actions before you in the fairest Light, make her a daily Example to you in her Behaviour, that you may afterwards rise to be an Example in yours to others. Indeed the Learned Heathen has taught us another use of such a Method, not only to place the Actions in our sight, that we may imitate the Good, but the Person too in our Presence, that we may avoid all Evil, be overawed against it, in a very innocent Magic, to carry always the Excellent Person with us, to suppose him standing before us, wherever we are, and reading moranl Lectures to us. For the latter use of this Method you have less occasion; for the being Overawed by an imagined Presence against all Evil, because this always is at so great a distance from you, and very much out of sight: Your Innocence is such, and your Conversation so well chosen, that you almost see as little Evil in others, as others can see in you; there is a continual Presence within yourself, to Overaw, and to Control, that of pious Thoughts, and a far greater than what the Heathen did propose, there is that of God. However your Innocence is so great, yet should you be always on your Guard, to defend and preserve it, as the greatest City deserves and requires so much more Art and Care to keep and defend it: no Innocence is too great to be Assaulted, and, without a prudent Care, to be conquered. Not only Lot's Wise is to be remembered, but Adam's too, the first that ever was; and were your Innocence as perfect, as in all my Raptures of Wishing, I could desire, yet would it not be more perfect than Hers, and that, we know, was no more above a Conquest than above a Temptation. I have all the vigorous Hope, (and surely my Hope will not deceive me here) that the early Appearance of your Understanding, which others admire, and which you are happy in, will give you very much a Capacity of one kind, that of doing good, and will place you in a Condition, not so much of committing any greater Sin, as of avoiding it.  
You are now Madam, a Flower of the Fairest Kind, in all the blooming Graces, and lively Perfections of a beautiful Appearance. I would take some Care, and I would desire some from yourself, that there may be one part of you, which may not be too much like a Flower, and which may not whither. As I would exhort you to the securing one part, which may not be frail, and which should make the rest of you lasting to your great Advantage, so I would Exhort you to nothing more, than to remember that all things upon Earth besides are not lasting, are very frail: However you can make something not to be so, which has a Relation to yourself, yet you can never make earthly Things otherwise by all your Art: They will not cease to be such, though you never cease to desire them, and to love them, they will only Infect you with their own Weakness, and you will be so much more frail yourself, as you more desire them, and love them more, nor will their just Value be raised by your raising your Affections towards them. Seeing the Things of the World are such, you may begin to argue what little Reason there will be to have a value for yourself upon things which have very little in themselves; and than what they have not, they cannot give. So you will be moved to the not desiring a greater share in this World than you have, when, if you had a greater, you would only have a more bulky heap of Frailty, which surely is not a thing desirable. As you will not covet more than you possess, so you will neither esteem yourself, upon that which you enjoy, more than you ought, nor will you esteem it more than it deserves: And then the eager Passion we commonly have for things, when they are going from us, will have no place in your Mind, when you lose them, you will not look upon things with a fond admiring Eye, which you cannot so much as look on long, but the fleeting Goods will soon be out of sight, and out of reach. You will pay no high regard to these Enjoyments, which are every hour passing from you, and which, as soon as they are gone, you will see, could not claim any such regard, when to you nothing of them shall remain, nothing but an empty waist, and the wild and melancholy Prospect of it. You were not more charmed with their Face, when they were coming towards you, than you shall be frighted with their back parts, so Deformed and Monstrous, when they are gone away beyond you. Your Disdain will be a generous Revenge to their Inconstancy; they fly from you, and at the same time you no less fly from them; you are forsaken by them, and they abhorred by you. This true Judgement of the World will make you a true Friend to, and judge of yourself, the Knowledge of its unsteady Nature will give you a very steady Knowledge of Religion, and an hearty Sense thereof: When the Uncertainty of the World has made an Impression upon your Mind, a Zeal for Religion will make another, the Contempt of that will advance the Esteem for this, when that falls so much lower, this will rise so much higher in your Soul, by a difference of Motion, as the things are different. It may seem very strange, that my pleading should be so importunate for your Contempt of the World, when you have so large an Interest therein; as the Advice would seem absurd, and very disagreeable to him who has the largest stake in the Game, to play all the time with little Care. But if you should think my Pleading to be less suitable, yet it is on your side, and then I cannot think any thing absurd or unseasonable, which favours and promotes your Well being. This my Proposal can never be so unseasonable, as it will be necessary; because if earthly Things be treated by you with Fondness and Caresses, you will scarce be happy in having more than others, you may be most unhappy in losing more; as Bodies of greater Bulk are more exposed to Wounds, and the Wounds are more Inflamed, and Fatal. The Possessing a wealthy Share in the World does not make the despising of that less needful, but rather is a new Engagement to it; because otherwise you only have so much more to hurt you. There cannot be a right Use of the World, unless there be a mean Opinion of it; if there be not a right use, if you abuse it, that will be sure to abuse you too in a just Revenge, and will do you Mischief. So well does one of your Sex declare in those her Manly Writings, which have so large a share in the two great Accomplishments, (Piety and Wit) where no share can be too large, and she Summons the whole World to hear the mighty Thing which she declares, when thus she Writes in Defiance to earthly Things, and for Instruction to Mankind, who are not very apt to bid Defiance to them.  

My Muse pronounce aloud, there's nothing good,  
Nothing the World can show,  
Nothing it can bestew.   
Your having the meanest Thoughts of the World is my last Advice, (however when I have so great an Opinion of this Advice, it might also have been my first) that, like other last words, it may be more Imprinted upon your Memory, may go farther into your Judgement, and pierce deeper into your Affections; because this will Crown and Finish, and give a lively Influence to all my other Counsel, without this it cannot be performed, or cannot be effectual. You will not then so remember your worldly Advantages, as to forget yourself, or rather to remember and think of yourself too much; but the goodnatured Saying will have its force upon you, Ecclus 3.18. The greater thou art, the mote humble thyself, and thou shalt find favour before the Lord.  
If any part of my Advice seem less easy, be pleased to choose and begin with that which seems very easy, and that will carry you by gentle Steps to the other; upon the practice of the easier part, the other will not seem any longer difficult: As sometimes by a scarce sensible rising we go up to the top of the Hill, and without great Toil, only by going on, we reach it, when it appears at a distance very high, and the Ascent very troublesome. You are ready, I know, to meet Religion, in every way in which it is coming towards you, and you give it all the joyful Embraces at the Meeting, and you are ready to take all Good Advice, at the same time you so little want it, and are fit to give it. Every thing which wears the Badge, or comes in the Name of Religion has more than a Cup of cold Water, something warm and vigorous, and hearty from you, and surely you shall not lose your reward. To Proposals of Religion you always give an easy and liberal Entertainment, and you are not therefore to be oppressed, as Persons easy in Access, and bountiful in Entertainment, sometimes are by troublesome and imposing Guests. My Instructions should be useful, but not severe; like a well modelled Poem, they should have Profit, and Pleasure too, they should be Healthful, as Exercise and good Diet, not unpleasant as Physic, especially where little of Disease is to be removed, and a softer Method will prevent: When the Mind is of so untainted a Constitution, the Physician may be as much a Courtier as he pleases, there can only be need of something to prevent, and not to Cure. If any part of my Counsels seem less suitable to your present Age, that has a Design beyond it, to become a standing Rule for all your Life; and why should not good things, as well as some ill things, and Poisons have a lasting force, and work at the distance of many Years? I would thus lay up for you a Treasure of Instructions, which may hereafter make you Rich in good Works, and I would in this Sense lay up for you a good Foundation against the time to come, a Foundation as strong as good, that you may be built up in your most holy Faith, and may never be liable to any Fall or Ruin. My Designs cannot be narrow and short, when your Welfare is in view, and in pursuit; and how charming is the Thought of my having done any thing to advance it in every part of your Life! So you may be that to me, which an old Christian Writer calls a Prince of his Time in an Epistle to him, The glorious Ornament of all my Labours, if I may pretend to Labours, and may deserve such an Ornament. A Secretary to four Popes Writ a Book of Advice upon Studies and Learning, Dedicated it to an Illustrious Lady, and he intended it for her Service. A Grammar was Written for the Use of Queen Mary, when very young, and Presented to her Mother, Catherine Queen of England: I profess not here to send you Learned, but Religious Instructions, and not to teach you Words, but Things, the best, and the greatest Things, and no other Language but of the better Country, that is, the Heavenly. I present only such Instructions, as upon the Command of King James the First, Dr. Williams, (afterwards Bishop, and Lord Keeper) writ for the use of the Lady Catherine Manners, Daughter to the then Earl of Rutland, and Married to the then Marquis of Buckingham. When the Author sent those Instructions to the Marquis, he declared thus in his Letter which attended them; Praying is most necessary for the obtaining, Principles for the Augmenting, Resolution for Vie defending a true Faith and Profession. The young Marchioness was then not only to be Instructed in the Doctrine of the Church of England, but to be Converted from another, of the Church of Rome.  
That every thing now proposed, may so much more prevail for your sake, and for mine, be pleased to Pray in that prevailing Language of the Church.  
Lord of all Power and Might, who art the Author, and Giver of all good Things, grafted in my Heart the Love of thy Name, increase in me true Religion, Nourish me with all Goodness, and of thy great Mercy keep me in the same, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  
And now, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any Virtue, if there be any Praise, think on these things.  
May you observe all these Rules, and whatsoever Rules may be added to these, that you may have an Addition too of Blessings, and a far more exceeding Weight of Glory, a Weight which shall not be Uneasy, or Oppress; but the heavier it is, shall be still more easy. May the holy Practice, you began so very early, end very late, may it never end; but O let it be continued in the Heavenly, in the endless State, not only continued, but as high as the Heaven is, in comparison of the Earth, so much more heightened too. May you always be possessed with a Desire, a steady and refined Desire of Heaven, as a Place not only of everlasting and unchangeable Happiness, but also of everlasting and unchangeable Holiness. May you be happy now in a Religious Practice, and happy hereafter in the Reward thereof. In the mean time the view of both, of your Practice and your Reward, makes another happy, the unworthy Writer, and  
Madam, Your Lady ships most Unworthy And most humble Servant. J. P.   

A Prayer before the receiving of the Sacrament, with regard to its being Commanded by God, and desired by us.  
O Most gracious God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in him the Father of Mercies too, and the God of all Comfort, let thy Mercies, and thy Comfort, I most humbly, I most earnestly beseech thee, be always present to me, and particularly at this time, and at such times as this. Thou hast appointed a Sacrament for the Health and the Strength of my Soul; O make me to rejoice in that Appointment now, as I am to live, by the right use of it, hereafter. Thou hast given me a Command, O my God, to receive it, and thou hast given me the privilege of receiving it: O let this Command at least be performed by me, that the Breaches of all thy other Commands may be forgiven to me. O let not this Privilege be despised, that all the other Privileges and Benefits may not be forfeited. Thy dying Son has spoken to me, and in Words which were almost Written in his Blood, and which I should be ready to Seal with mine; do this in remembrance of me. When he bids me, and when thou repeatest what he said, with new Engagements, shall not I do this, and every thing? Can I choose but do it, when it is to be done in remembrance of him, the Thought of whom is to be most pleasing to me, his Name is as Ointment poured forth, his Mouth is most sweet, and he altogether lovely? Can any thing be needful to make me remember him? Can any thing be able to make me forget him, till I can forget myself? It yet there be no necessity for any thing to preserve the Memory of him, there is one for the performing what thou Commandest. If nothing can make me forget thy Love, and the Son of thy Love, yet I am to show that I do not forget him, in remembering his Precept. From thy Goodness I have received a Command, and now from thy Grace a Desire for the observing of it. O grant me all the Measures, the overflowing Measures of thy Grace for the Executing thy Command, and my Desire, and thy Grace, (as much need as I have thereof, will be sufficient for me, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Lord, I desire, help thou my Weakness in desiring, and much more in the performing. Be thou a Sun and a Shield, a Sun to Cheer and Enlighten, a Shield to save and defend my Soul. Gird me with Strength, who have none of my own, and let thine so wound my Spiritual Enemies, that they may not be able to rise, but fall under my Feet. Let there be no want of Grace from thee, and in me no want of Will: I am Feeble and Weak, but thou, O Lord, art Strong and Mighty, and thy strength is made perfect in my Weakness, and will make that perfect too. As thy Mercy rejoices against Judgement; so does thy Power against Infirmity, and thy Power, the more I want of it, will rejoice so much more, if my use of thy Gift be suitable to what thou hast given: Thou givest to will and to do of thy good Pleasure; for the partaking of this thy Holy, this thy blessed Sacrament thou hast given me to will, O give me to do of the good Pleasure, which thou hast declared for me, and declared to me in the Merits, and for the fake of thy beloved Son, and my never enough beloved Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.  
Another Prayer before the receiving of the Sacrament, with a regard to God's Favour, and our Qualifications in our Approaches to the Sacrament.  
O Thou the God of my Mercy, and the God of my Salvation, accept, I pray thee, thy most unworthy Servant in that Duty in which I should appear most worthy, and accept my Weakest Service, where the best of my Strength should be employed. O thou High and lofty One that inhabitest Eternity, whose Name is Holy, thou dwellest in the High and Holy Place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble Spirit, to revive the Spirit of the Humble, and to revive the Heart of the Contrite: O make me contrite in Heart, and humble in Spirit, that thou may'st dwell with me, that I may dwell with thee in thy House, and at thy Table. For thy Son's sake, for thy own sake, for thy Mercies sake, contend thou not for ever, and be not thou always angry, that the Spirit may not fail before thee, and the Soul which thou hast made. Thou hast seen my ways, O heal me; lead me, and restore Comforts to me, and to my Mourners, to all those Powers within me, which mourn for my Sins against thee: Be thou mine everlasting Light, and the Days of my Mourning shall be ended. Make me first to wash my Hands in Innocency, and then admit me to compass thine Altar, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God. And how blessed are they who dwell in thy House, they shall be always praising thee! A Day in thy Courts is better than a thousand. I confess my Sins, O do thou forgive them: I grieve for my Sins, O make me to rejoice in the Pardon of them. [Hear remember as much as may be, and confess the particular Sins of your Life] Too long, alas, have I lived, O make me to live no longer, in a Correspondence with them. Too long have I born the Burden, and thou the Defiance, of them. Too long have I been at Peace with my Lusts, and then all the time not at Peace with thee, and with myself: I now Proclaim War against them, do thou teach my Hands to War, and coyer my Head in the Day of Battle, give me the Shield of thy Salvation, and thy right Hand shall hold me up, and thy Gentleness shall make me great. Give thou to me Grace and Glory, and make me to live a Godly Life, and then no good thing shalt thou withhold from me now in the Sacrament, nor afterwards in any other part of Religion, or any part of my Life.  my Soul with the Garments of Salvation, cover it with a Robe of Righteousness, as a Bride adorns herself with her Jewels. Let that Pardon, which this Sacrament is the Seal of, be extended to all my sinful Imperfections in the receiving of it. The Pardon of my Sins, and the Acceptance of myself, the great Benefits of thy Sacrament, and a true Frame of my Soul, that the benefits may be mine, and I may be thine for ever, vouchsafe, O God, who art rich in Mercy, to grant to me who am poor in Performance; O grant all to me in the Name, in the Righteousness, in the Mediation of thy only Son, and my only Redeemer, Thy blessed Son, and my ever blessed Redeemer, and I ask all again in his holy Words, Our Father, etc.  
These Prayers are so much longer, because it is supposed that good Persons set a part more time for this Occasion, and so they are more at leisure for a length, and they have then a stronger Devotion for the bearing it; and the Retirement at such a Season is to take off our Thoughts from the World, and to this Design Prayer is very useful, and the more we are in that Duty, the more we are out of the World; the nearer we approach to God in Prayer, the farther we are from the World in Thought.  
Here follows a shorter Prayer to the same Preparatory Purpose.  
O Blessed Jesus, who hast Suffered, who hast Died for me, whose Sufferings and Death I am now to remember, make me, unworthy as I am, not to Eat and Drink Unworthily in this solemn Remembrance: That Worthiness which I have not, be pleased to give me, O give me that which thou hast purchased for me, that which I have so little, which thou hast so much of, thou hast enough for me, and for all Mankind besides me; I ask it for myself, and for all, now, and ever. Amen. Devout Ejaculations at the Holy Table before the receiving of the Sacrament.  
THou hast invited me, O merciful Lord, to thy Table, and lo I come; Thou wilt receive whom thou hast invited, O receive me graciously.  
Lo, I come, to do thy Will, O my God, I am contented, I delight to do it; and let thy Law be always within my Heart.  
In Burnt-offerings and Sacrifices for Sin thou hast had no Pleasure, Sacrifice and Offering thou wouldst not; but a Body hast thou prepared, thy Son's Body to be Crucified; O let a Soul too be Prepared, my Soul to be Offered.  
O most Kind and Compassionate Jesus, who didst Exhort the Daughters of Jerusalem at the time of thy death not to Weep for thee, but to Weep for themselves, and for their Children; have a favourable Regard to all my Weeping for myself, and for my Sins, upon this Remembrance of thy Death.  
Devout Ejaculations after the receiving of the Sacrament.  
I Have received, O my God, and I Praise thee, I Glorify thee, I Adore thee for the Honour of thy Command, and the Favour of thy Leave to do so.  
Thou hast given me Bread from Heaven, Thou hast given me Wine that maketh glad the Heart of Man, glad with a spiritual Joy which thus gins in this World, and is not to end in another.  
I did hunger and thirst after the Righteousness which is offered in this Sacrament, and O let me now be filled, let me now be blessed.  
Let all the spiritual Virtues of thy Body and Blood, O most holy Jesus, enter into my Soul, enter deep into it, may they enliven, may they nourish, may they strengthen it to an everlasting Life. Amen.  
However this Discourse has nothing to deserve such a Conclusion, yet I ask leave to give the same to my Discourse, which a Jew did to his, when he had Written a Catechism, (by him named Good Doctrine) of the Jewish Religion, According to the Sincerity of my Purpose remember me, O God: The Jew says yet more, which I cannot pretend to say, with that Confidence which is more peculiar to Jews in the high Thoughts of their Favour with God. I shall not blush, nor be ashamed in this World, nor in that to come, but thou wilt give me the Portion common to those by whom many have been Exhorted to Piety and Righteousnese; for they shall shine as Stars, so, so let it please thee.   
FINIS.