Flores Solitudinis.  
Certain Rare and Elegant PIECES; Viz. Two Excellent Discourses Of 1. Temperance, and Patience; Of 2. Life and Death. BY I.E. NIEREMBERGIUS. THE WORLD CONTEMNED; BY EUCHERIUS, BP of LIONS. And the Life of PAULINUS, BP of NOLA.  
Collected in his Sickness and Retirement, BY HENRY VAUGHAN, Silurist.  
Tantus Amor Florum, & generandi gloria Mellis.  
London, Printed for Humphrey Moseley at the Prince's Arms in Saint Paul's Churchyard. 1654.   

TO THE TRULY NOBLE And Religious Sir CHARLES EGERTON Knight.  
SIR,  
IF, when you please to lock upon these Collections, you will find them to lead you from the Sun into the shade, from the open Terrace into a private grove, & from the noise and pomp of this world into a silent and solitary Hermitage: do not you think then, that you have descended (like the dead) in Occidentem & tenebras, for in this withdrawing-roome (though secret and seldom frequented,) shines that happy star, which will directly lead you to the King of light. You have long since quitted the Public, & to present you now with some thing of solitude and the contempt of the world, would look like a design to Flatter you, were not my Name, argument enough for the contrary. Those few that know me, will (I am sure) be my Compurgators; and I myself dare assert this, you have no cause to suspect it. But what ever the thoughts of men will be, I am already sure of this advantage, that we live in an age, which hath made this very Proposition (though suspected of Melancholy,) mighty pleasing, and even mean wits begin to like it; the wiser sort always did, for what (I beseech you,) hath this world, that should make a wise man in love with it? I will take the boldness to describe it in the same character which Bisselius did the handsome concubine of Mahomet the great: 
Puella tota quanta, nil erat aliud  
quam Illecebra picta, delicatus harpago, etc.  
The whole wench (how complete soe'er) was but  
A specious bait; a soft, sly, tempting slut;  
A pleasing witch; a living death; a fair,  
Thriving disease; a fresh, infectious air;  
A precious plague; a fury sweetly drawn;  
Wild fire laid up and finely dressed in Lawn.   
This delicate, admired Enchantress (even to those who enjoy her after their own lusts, and at their own rate,) will prove but a very sad bargain; she is all deception and sorrow. This world and the prince of it are the Canker-Rose in the mouth of the fox; Decipit, arefit, pungit. But those future, supreme fruitions which God hath in store for those that love him are neither Phantasms, nor fallacies; they are all substantial and certain, and in the Apostles phrase, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Nothing can give that, which it hath not, this transitory, changeable and corrupt world cannot afford permanent treasures. All it gives, and all it shows us, is but trash & illusion. The true incorruptible riches dwell above the reach of rust and thiefs.  
Man himself in his outward part, which was taken out of the world, feels the like passions with the world, he is worn, was●ed, dissolved and changed, he comes hither, he knows not how, and goes from hence, he knows not whither. Nescio quò vado, valete posteri! was the Roman's Epitaph: One generation cometh, and another passeth away. Properant & decurrunt in absconditum, they hasten and drive on to their appointed place, until the great day of account. All the several shapes and gestures we see in this wild Masque of time are but so many disguises which the Spirits that first assumed them, cast off again when they have acted their parts. Most elegantly did Augurellius sing to Peter Lipomanus upon the death of his sister Clara; 
Amaena, Petre, cum vides, etc.  
Peter, when thou this pleasant world dost see,  
Believe, thou seest mere Dreams and vanity;  
Not real things, but false: and through the Air  
Each where, an empty, slipp'rie Scene, through fair.  
The chirping birds, the fresh woods shady boughs,  
The leaves shrill whispers, when the west-wind blows.  
The swift, fierce Greyhounds coursing on the plains,  
The flying hare distressed 'twixt fear and pains;  
The bloomy Maid decking with flowers her head,  
The gladsome, easy youth by light love lead;  
And whatsoever here with admiring eyes  
Thou seem'st to see, 'tis but a frail disguise  
Worn by eternal things, a passive dress  
Put on by beings that are passiveles.   
All the gay appearances in this life seem to me but a swift succession of rising Clouds, which neither abide in any certain form, nor continue for any long time; And this is that, which makes the fore travel of the sons of men to be nothing else, but a mere chase of shadows. All is vanity (said the Royal Philosopher,) and there is no new thing under the Sun.  
I present you therefore with a discourse persuading to a contempt & a desertion of these old things which (our Saviour tells us) shall pass away; And with an historical, faithful relation of the life and happiness of a devout, primitive father, who gave all that he had upon earth to the poor, that he might have treasure in heaven. Some other Additions you will find, which meeting now in this volume under your name, will in their descent to posterity, carry with them this fairest Testimony, I loved you. This (Sir) is my main and my sole design in this Address, without reservation and without flattery, for which respect, and for no other, I believe you will accept of what I have done, and look upon my sudden and small Presents, as upon some forward flowers whose kind haste hath brought them above ground in cold weather. The incertainty of life, and a peevish, inconstant state of health would not suffer me to stay for greater performances, or a better season; lest losing this, I should never again have the opportunity to manifest how much and how sincerely I am  
Sir Your Servant and wellwisher Henry Vaughan. byVske near Sketh-Rock. 1653.   

To the only true and glorious God, the Sole disposer of Life and Death.  

O Do not go, thou knowst I'll die,  
My Spring and Fall are in thy Book!  
Or if thou goest, do not deny  
To lend me, though from far, one look!   

My sins long since have made thee strange,  
A very stranger unto me;  
No morning-meetings (since this change)  
Nor Evening-walkes have I with thee.   

Why is my God thus hard and cold,  
When I am most, most sick and sad?  
welfare those blessed days of old, (Lad!  
When thou didst hear the weeping   

O do not thou do as I did,  
Do not despise a lovesick heart!  
What though some Clouds defiance bid,  
Thy Sun must shine in every part.   

Though I have spoiled, O spoil not thou,  
Hate not thine own dear gift and token!  
Poor Birds sing best, and prettiest show,  
When their nest is fallen and broken.   

Dear Lord! restore thy Ancient peace,  
Thy quickening friendship, man's bright wealth;  
And if thou wilt not give me Ease  
From sickness, Give my Spirit health!    

To the Reader.  
CAndidus & medicans Ignis deus est. So sings the Poet, and so must I affirm, who have been tried by that white and refining fire, with healing under his wings. Quarrelling with his light, and wand'ring from that fresh and competent gourd, which he had shadowed me with, drew those Sunbeams upon my head, whose strong and fervent vibrations made me oftentimes beg of him, that I might die. In these sad Conflicts I dedicated the Remissions to thy use, Reader, & now I offer them to thy view. If the title shall offend thee, because it was found in the woods and the wilderness, give me leave to tell thee, that Deserts and Mountains were the Schools of the Prophets, and that Wild-honey was his diet, who by the testimony of the Son of God, was the greatest amongst those that are borne of women. It may be thy spirit is such a popular, fantastic fly, as loves to gad in the shine of this world; if so, this light I live by in the shade, is too great for thee. I send it abroad to be a companion of those wise Hermits, who have withdrawn from the present generation, to confirm them in their solitude, and to make that rigid necessity their pleasant Choice. To leave the world, when it leaves us, is both sordid and sorrowful; and to quit our station upon discontents, is nothing else, but to be the ●pes of those Melancholy Schismatics, who having burnt off their own hands in setting the world on fire, are now fallen out with it, because they cannot rule it. They are Spirits of a very poor, inferior order, that have so much Sympathy with worldly things, as ●o weep at Parting; And of as low a Parentage are those, that will be sick of Leap-yeares & Sublunary mutations. I honour that temper, which can lay by the garland, when he may keep it on: which can pass by a Rosebud, and bid it grow, when he is invited to crop it, 
— Whose gentle measure  
Complyes and suits with all estates;  
Which can let loose to a Crown, and yet with pleasure  
Take up within a Cloister gates.  
This Soul doth Span the world, and hang content  
From either pole unto the centre,  
Where in each Room of the well-furnished tent  
He lies warm and without adventure.   
Prince Lewes, the eldest Son of Charles King of Naples, at the age of twenty one years, and just when he should have been married to the youthful Princess of Majorica, did suddenly at Barcellon put on the rou●h and severe habit of the Franciscans: The Queens and Princesses they met to solemnize the marriage of his sister Blanch with James King of Arragon, employed all their Rhetoric to dissuade him from it; but to no purpose, he loved his Sackcloth more than their silks, and (as monsieur Mathieu (alluding to that young Princess,) speaks of him,) Left Roses to make Conserve of thorns. Resolution, Reader, is the Sanctuary of Man, and Saint Paul's content is that famous Elixir, which turns the rudest mettle into smooth and ductible gold: It is the Philosophers secret fire, that stomach of the Ostrich which digests Iron, and dissolves the hardflint into blood and nutriment. It was an honest Reply that his Cook made unto the Duke of Milan, when worsted in a great battle by the Florentines, the over passionate resentment of so unexpected a repu'se, made him quarrel with his meat: If the Florentines (said he) have spoilt your taste, that is no fault of mine; the meat is pleasant, and well dressed, but the good success of your Enemies hath made your appetite ill.  
I protest seriously unto thee, and without Scepticism, that there is no such thing in this world, as misfortune; the foolish testiness of man arising out of his misconstruction and ignorance of the wise method of Providence, throws him into many troubles. The Spouse tells us, that the fingers of the Bridegroom are decked with beryl and precious stones: what ever falls upon us from that Almighty hand, it is a diamond; It is celestial treasure, and the matter of some new blessing, if we abuse it not. God (saith the wise King,) created not Evil, but man (who was created upright) sought out many inventions: these indeed be get that monster; his ill digestion of his punishment (which is a kind of divine diet,) makes him to pine away in a sinful discontent. If thou art sick of such an Atrophy, the precepts laid down in this little book (if rightly understood, and faithfully practised) will perfectly cure thee.  
All that may be objected is, that I write unto thee out of a land of darkness, out of that unfortunate region, where the Inhabitants sit in the shadow of death: where destruction passeth for propagation, and a thick black night for the glorious dayspring. If this discourage thee, be pleased to remember, that there are bright stars under the most palpable clouds, and light is never so beautiful as in the presence of darkness. At least entreat God that the Sun may not go down upon thy own dwelling, which is heartily desired and prayed for, by  
Hen: Vaughan. Newton by usk in South-wales. April. 17. 1652.   

Two Excellent DISCOURSES Of 1. Temperance and Patience. Of 2. Life and Death. Written in Latin by Johan: Euseb: Nierembergius.  
Englished by HENRY VAUGHAN, Silurist.  
— Mors Vitam temperet, & vita Mortem.  
LONDON: Printed for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at the Prince's Arms in Saint Paul's Churchyard. 1654.   

OF TEMPERANCE AND PATIENCE.  
THe Doctrine of good living is short, but the work is long, and hard to be persuaded, though easy to be learned: for to be good, is of all things the most easy, and the most ready, if we could learn but one other Art, which Antisthenes termed the most necessary, I will add, the most difficult, and that is, to forget to do Evil. I find that peace and joy have two handles, whereby we may take hold of them, Patience, and Temperance. Rule thy Evil with these, and then thy will may rule thee well. Horses are ruled with bridles and spurs. In prosperity use the first, that is, restrain, or keep in thyself. In adversity the last, that is, Incite, and use thyself to a gallant Apathy, and contempt of misfortunes. Generous and metlesome Coursers when they are breathed, or rid abroad, are compelled to trample upon those very things, whose first sight startled and terrified them; do so with thyself: tread under thy feet thy most hideous adversities; so shalt thou forget the fear of fortune, which makes men unfit for virtue. Patience in adversity is temperance in prosperity. Nor can it be easily resolved, which of these two excels: This is most certain, that noble sufferance is as necessary to man, as the virtue of temperance. Some few Crosses thou canst bear well, but fortune can afflict thee with many, and thou by patience (the greatest of virtues) must afflict her with more; for 
— The naked man too gets the field,  
And often makes the armed foe to yield.   
It costs not much to live well, and it is as cheap to learn it. The whole Art is comprised in these two words, Patience, and Temperance. In these lies all the Mystery of Peace: you would think it a Secret of the Priests of Ceres, it is so unknown to any, but sacred minds. These are the Domestic Gods of tranquillity, and the tutelar Angels of good men: believe with Epictetus, that the Quintessence of all Philosophy is squeezed into these two, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bear and forbear. He neither obtains, nor retains his joy, that doth not abstain, and sustain. These are the two Poles upon which tranquillity and virtue move. To obtain peace, you must bear; to retain it, you must forbear. An odd way of fruition; By refusing you obtain, and by suffering you preserve: by refusing the favours, and suffering the spite of fortune. By this very carriage did Diogenes believe that he had quite deposed and overthrown her: he crowned his temples with branches of Pine, the old Isthmian ceremony, and walked like an absolute victor in the Sacred Games. Being required by a cross fellow, not to usurp that honour till he had lawfully strived, he answered, that he had overcome two enemies, Pleasure and Grief, the one by forbearing, the other by bearing. Make not thyself a Woman: thou hast (if thou wilt use them) both Temperance and Patience, the best Stratagems, and Countermines against the Wiles of Fortune. Her storms and sudden furies (which are always clean, and without dissimulation,) thou mayst break and overcome by bearing; Her Arts, her deep and cankered hatred, by listening to Reason, and a wary, stayed Circumspection, while she spends and wastes with her own malice. The wrath of furious and hasty persons is sincere, and without artifice; It hath no poison, but what breaks out presently at the tongue, or the hand: Fortune too, when in this humour, is less Noxious, for She makes then an indifferent use of all Tools, and disposeth of them without Study. But when She begins to hate, She becomes slow and weary, and not contented with open valour, adds to it Treachery. She pines with the Memory of her old favours, and that She may pull down what She built, adorns her most deadly Intentions, as Poverty and grievous Miseries, in the dress of Felicity. All her projects, machinations and Engines to Torture and vex Man, amount to no more, then to give him what he would not have, and to deny him what he would have. He breaks her neck that abstaines from the first, and contemns the last.  
But here is our double Disease, by which Virtue Conceived for a great end, together with Felicity, become both abortive, that we neither rightly wish, nor rightly abstain, loath, or love, but do both most absurdly, most preposterously. We Covet most unseasonably, when even necessity is necessary, and this to him that wants, is no more than a wish. We covet, I say, such things as fortune hath not, and in a time when they may not be had. We would have Cherries in January: These wishes are their own Torments: Fortune too most Commonly gives them but cold Comfort. Why should we Covet extraneous Goods? It is better to serve the necessity of the time, then to be a slave to Fortune. We are set upon longing like Women with Child, that labour with strange appetites and depraved stomaches; that loath healthful Viands, and (which in them is very strange) abhor sweet meats; That affect raw, absurd compositions, that eat lime, Charcoles' and Ashes, that in the dead of Winter long for Summer-fruits, and in Summer for Winter-fruits. What dost thou think is bearing and forbearing? It is to be even with Fortune, discreetly to abstain, discreetly to will, and to covet nothing. Abstain then: otherwise what wilt thou do by Coveting, but make way for Fortune, and enlarge her Empire? Though she would not, she must needs hit thee. Her being blind, hinders not but she may shoot well: When the mark is have at all, and every where: an Archer without out Eyes cannot miss it. Though unwilling, her Arrows cannot wander from him, whose lust wanders after all things. She will hit him without Aiming, whose hope aims at every thing. No Weapon falls in vain amongst a multitude. Her scope to hurt, is the same scope thou takest to wish.  
Thou must know that the Command of Fortune over man about these outward things, lies in the midst of the will, as the hand in the midst of a bended bow. If thou holdest thy will by the middle, than art thou master of both ends, and mayst do any thing. If thou commandest the one half, I will not say, thou hast no hold at all. Liberty hath two Limbs, to Will, and to refrain: The one is a strong Arm, the other a weak Hand: What thou hast not, thou mayst refrain from wishing to have, but no man can have what ever he would have. When you refrain from willing, then have you Power over all things; when your will lusteth, than you are subject to all things. Outward goods are fleeting things, and the faithful servants of unfaithful chance. O how great a treasure, how provident and infallible a supply against these sudden Ebbs and diminutions is a regular and resolute will! Why are we troubled at them! We are too hard for Fortune, and by much too hard, if we command but the one half of our will; that maimed and halting hand (if I may so speak) will overtake and bring back the most averse and winged Felicities. It will enrich us sooner and surer than all the Treasures of Croesus: Those are but beggary before thee if thou covet them not, if thy will be not a beggar. Not to will, makes thee securely rich, even when thou wilt, that is, when thou dost will nothing. Thou makest Fortune poor by leaving her no power over thee, and nothing in herself, wherewith to please thee; I mean to deceive thee. Thou wilt be richer than Attalus by contemning his store, and of greater power than Midas; for his was placed in fruition and touching, but thine in absence and emptiness. By wishing nothing thou hast all, yea those things which thou seest not: and what wonder then, if those things thou seekest not, being abundantly enriched by thy most precious poverty? It was Divinely argued by Eusebius, That he only should be esteemed rich, who was persuaded that he had enough. For those that add still to what they have already gotten, and never think that they can get enough, though richer than Midas, are most poor and miserable beggars; because they are nothing rich in their own minds. And in another place, An unreasonable covetousness (saith he) is sooner driven away with the loss of riches already gotten, then by a plenteous and daily access of more treasures. Wherefore thou art then only rich, and possessest all things to thy mind, when to have nothing is in thy will: When ever thou sayest, It is enough, thou hast all. Yea, thou hast more than thou shouldst have. All that comes afterwards doth but load and overwhelm thee.  
Of such an Immoderate use is Temperance, and I Judge Patience to be of no lesser. Happily it may be easier; for having learned to abstain, we may the better sustain. Impatience ariseth naturally out of Cupidity, and fear is the Daughter of hope. Cast these away, and you will find, that an adverse Fortune may be entertained, not only with Patience, but with much welcome. Crates, or Zeno (a gallant man, if either of the two) being at Sea in a great storm, caused all his goods (wherewith the Ship was Loaden) to be thrown over board, and thanked Fortune for the kindness: do thou the like, and approving of thy misfortunes, say, It is well done, Fortune, thou hast read me a good lesson, thou hast had care of my Soul. I thank thee that thou art Come thyself to fetch these burdens, which I should have brought thee home. Thou hast dealt courteously to lend me their use, and to prevent their Abuse. I like thy Method, and prefer thy advice to thy favours; I know thy meaning. I must make a wise use of these crosses, I must have recourse to virtue, to myself, and to my God. Thou dost not only Incite, but compel me to goodness. I am brought safe to shore, by the splitting of the Ship: hereafter I will be better provided. Behold, thou hast left yet behind thee some moveables, which thou shouldst have taken with thee, they are thine by right. Thou gavest me so many things, that thou canst not well remember them. I desire not to conceal them, take all thy Relics and appendencies with thee, all that is here besides myself; I hold thy leave not worthy of acceptance from the mind of man. I wish that we would so deal with Fortune, as a certain old man did with thiefs that came to rob his house. Take with you (said he) all that you see here. They did so, leaving nothing behind them but an empty purse; which the old man took up, and following after, called to them; Take this also with you, which you forgot to put up. Fortune perhaps amazed at such a Noble, Serene disposition, would restore all: It is most certain the Thiefs did. But let a Christian reject this figment of Fortune, and in all worldly mutations acknowledge and kiss the divine hand.  
But if after all this, thou wilt not excuse the outward and ravenous manners of Fortune; there will be no Just cause for thee to accuse them, having received no damage by her. If thou wilt purge thy mind from wishes and hopes, thou mayst safely place thyself before her very Arrows, and defy them. And truly I believe it will be thy most secure station. When Stratonicus saw an unskilful fellow shooting at Butts, he got presently close to the White, as the only place free from danger: and being asked his reason for that unusual Refuge, he answered; Lest that fellow should hit me. Fortune (we say) is blind; stand then in her way: She hits that the least, which she most aims at; but if all her shafts should fall upon thee, they can draw no blood from thee, as long as thou art not drawn by covetousness. If you break off the point of the Weapon, it cannot hurt you. Our own Covetousness is Fortune's edged tool; take that away, and you disarm her, and secure yourself: blunt weapons wound not to blood.  
I suppose now that Epictetus his abridgement, or reduction of Philosophy into two words, Abstain and Sustain, will seem prolix enough to you. The first we have passed through; the second and last, I mean Sustain, or the Art of bearing well, we shall find tedious enough. He cannot be said to wish for nothing, that finds fault with that which he hath. This bearing well is to desire nothing but what we have. A Serene, bright Will then, not clouded with thick and muddy desires, will find the burdens of Fortune to be very light: For Fortune of herself is very light and easy, but she hath for panels our own Lusts, which are heavier than her packs, and without these she puts not one load upon us. Nothing tires and weighs us down but our own wishes, which evils (being ignorant that our burden proceeds from them,) we multiply with an Intent to ease ourselves, but in the mean time the weight increaseth. A certain plain Countryman wearied with ploughing, and returning home from the field after his day's task, tied the Plough to his Ass, and afterwards mounted himself upon his back; but the tired Ass, and overloaden, could not stir from the place; whereupon the Countryman lights, and with the Plough upon his back remounting the Ass, tells him, Now I hope thou canst go well, for it is not thou, but I that carry the Plough. We are every day as ridiculous, though not so harmless as this Countryman. We study with new cares and new desires to ease and diminish our old lusts; which not only keeps under, but chokes and presseth to death all the seeds of Joy and Content. This is nothing else, but to retain the former load undiminish'd, and to put another on the top of it. As long as we tolerate these burdens, we become intolerable to ourselves, without any exaggeration of Fortune. Let us shake them off, let us cast off hope, that troublesome Tympany; so shall we find Fotune light, and be able to bear both her and ourselves. All things may be born of him, that bears not future Evils; Those are grievous burdens, which miraculously oppress us, and so strangely accommodate themselves to our hurt, that they exist in the heart, and vex it, before they can exist in time. Not only Evil, but Good, when it is hover and uncertain, doth afflict us. Of Evils themselves there cannot come so many together upon us, as we can fear: fortune can throw at us but few darts at one time, and were she not still furnished by our lusts, we should quickly see her quiver empty. Abstinence then, or the restraining of our desires is the Nursery of patience, by a like title as the toleration of evil and good  
But when I name Patience, I speak not of a Simple thing; for there is not only patience in Evil, but in Good also, and this later is sometimes the most difficult. There is one when we suffer, and another when we act. There be also other divisions of Patience. Holy Ephrem makes it threefold: the first towards god, the second towards the tempter, or wicked Angel, and the third towards man. I shall add a fourth, and the most difficult of all, towards our selves; or I will make it only twofold, first towards those that are without us, the second and last towards our selves, or those commotions which fight against us from within. This last is the greatest, because it teacheth us to bear those pressures which lean upon us, and bow us down. It is harder to resist those weights which come forcibly upon us from above, than those which come oppositly, or over against us. The beasts can draw more after them, than they can carry upon their backs. Man hath enough to bear within himself: but evils are a great family, and keep aswell without doors as within. Every minute of our tranquillity is purchased with patience; It is the great Sacrament of peace, the Sanctuary of Security, the Herald and the badge of felicity. What will it avail us to be at peace with those that are without, while we suffer intestine wars and tumults within? let us have peace in ourselves, and having mastered the rebellion and disorders of the will, let us be the patients of our sadness, yea of our Impatience, and some times of our patience.  
As nothing is more accidental to man then to suffer, so should he conclude, that nothing is more necessary for him than patience. It is the natural medicine for all humane calamities, with which (as the heart with Dittany) we pull out the heads and splinters of those arrows which the mighty hunters of this world shoot at us. Nature dealt not more unkindly with man, than with other creatures: The Boar is cured with Ivy, the Dragon with wild-lettice, and the Snake with Fennell. Others have their cure nearer, in their own members: his tongue is the Balsam to a wounded dog; and the Catholicon of man is silence and patience. But did I say that to suffer was accidental to man? I blot out that error, and affirm, It is necessary: wherefore patience is most necessary; for by that we are freed from a slavish sufferance, as by a certain gifted premonition and defensive faculty. By patiently enduring we become impassable. The mind is invulnerable, unless in the fits of impatience, as Achilles was in the heel. Think not the Art of patience to be any more, than not to suffer voluntarily; at least, not in spite of thy will. He that gently endures, doth by a short cut free himself from the tedious labours and numerous punishments of life. Necessity's should be cheerfully borne. The hands, the feet, and the other limbs will sooner fail to execute their duties, then to be Insensible of pain. The sick, the maimed, yea and the dismembered are not so morcified, but they are subject to sensation. It was an excellent saying of Herod the Sophist, when he was pained with the gout in his hands and feet; When I would eat, (said he) I have no hands; when I would go I have no feet; but when I must be pained, I have both hands and feet. So entire and whole are we always to grief; which sufficiently showeth, that the soundness of man is best seen in his patience; and such a strong necessity of suffering is laid upon us, that when our limbs fail us in their offices, they must not fail of sufferings. Thou wilt ask then what can they suffer, when without spirit and motion? I will tell thee; Not to be apt to suffer, is their suffering. Nothing is lacking to the misery of man, though his limbs should be wanting, his grief by that defect will abound the more.  
Deeply, and into the Inmost Closets of our hearts should that saying of the Temanite descend, Man (said he) is borne unto trouble, and the bird to fly. Observe, if the birds be unfurnished of any thing for flight: they are all over armed for it; Their Bills are keen and sharppointed, and serve like foredecks to cut their air; Their pinions are two swift rowers, and the feathers in both wings placed orderly every one longer than the other represent so many oars. Their trains are the Sternes, with which they bend their whole bodies, and govern them in their flights, and with their feet and crooked claws like Anchors, they stick and fasten themselves to the green branches, which are their Havens, and shady Harbours. Though thou hadst never seen them use their wings, yet by their very Structure, thou wouldst Judge that those feathered Sails were designed for the air, and flying. Man is every way as well accoutred for trouble. Observe him: Thou shalt find nothing wanting that may conduce to his passion, though he wants much of Patience. Man is every way most exactly trimmed and adorned for trouble; He was made unfit for labour, that he might be fit for sufferings; He hath no wings to fly from them, he is poor, infirm, naked, defenceless; and (which is worse than all) forsaken of himself: Betwixt nakedness and poverty he is on all sides exposed and appointed for misery, as the bird is for the flight. Thou shalt observe all this in him; for wanting all the necessaries which support life, he is surrounded only with those sad necessities and entanglements which make life grievous and burdensome; as a Sparrow is dressed and clothed all over with those soft habiliments which make his flights easy and pleasant. The only difference betwixt them is this, that those Instruments of flying may fail the birds, but those of suffering cannot fail Man. So careful was Nature of Man's condition, that she would not trust Fortune with his relatives. The Eagle may casually lose his sharpness of sight, the Roe her swiftness, and the Lion his strength; but Man while he lives cannot not miss of afflictions. There is a greater care had of our affairs; And to a glorious end are these Calamities made sure unto us, if we can make them beneficial.  
The first token, and evidence of life is crying. The Prim-roses, or first blossoms of it are tears; from these it take its inauguration. Man is not borne before he suffers: Yea, he groans and complains in his very passage into the World. The first homage he pays to life is sufferance, and from that minute to his last, he becomes (as Blesensis saith) a constant tributary to misery. I Judge him that murmurs at this payment, that kicks under this general burden, to wrong and disesteem the Noblest Nature, I mean Man; and to be worthy of this very punishment, not to be at all. He is a most vile abuser of Humane Nature, that thinks it not worth his patience, and values himself at a most sordid rate; let him bear in his manhood, what he bore in his Infancy, and not be ashamed of his Investiture, because he felt affliction, before he felt the light. It is the first lesson we are taught here, and the last that we shall learn. All other Creatures, as soon as they are born, make some use of their strength; but Man knows no use of any thing but tears: He must afterwards be taught the cause of them. We must teach him every thing, but weeping. All other things are given him for his labour, but tears he can have for nothing. This only faculty was bestowed upon him gratis, all other concessions are the rewards of his pains; but tears were given him freely, because they ease and allay his sorrows. This convenient Salve did nature ordain for some inevitable Sores. She prepared this Oil to allay the aching of those stripes the World gives us, which without this Native Ointment would have smarted more: for those wounds, whose anguish is not vented at the Eyes, lie heaviest upon the heart. And by this I am induced to believe, that it is natural for man to Suffer, because he only naturally weeps. Every extraneous felicity of this life is violent, or forced; and these constrained, though splendid Adjuncts of Fortune are therefore short, because no violent thing can be perpetual. To suffer is the natural condition and manner of man, this is believed to be his misery: without patience, I confess, it is. Nature never fails us in those things which are needful, much less divine providence and grace: We shall therefore never fail of Sufferings, because they are the great Necessaries, & Medicines of Humane Nature. We read of many men that never laughed, but never heard of any that never wept. Democritus himself came weeping into the World; none ever came without labour, none without grief.  
Thou wilt ask, why man, the only creature addicted to beatitude, should be borne to trouble? why through the vale of tears travels he to the house of joy? why is he alone, being capable of felicity, made subject unto misery? Because he is borne for virtue, the next and readiest instrument to attain beatitude. Now troubles, or misery are the mass, or first matter of virtue, and without this hard rudiment, without this coin of sorrow he cannot purchase it. Nor are the good offices which these calamities do for us, either mean or few; for wherefore flows, yea overflows the divine mercy upon man, but because he is miserable? wherefore is God's sure power and saving arm stretched out, but because he is frail? wherefore are his comforts and refreshments so plentifully showered down, but because he is sorrowful and helpless? wherefore is his liberality and most faithful providence seen every minute, but because he is poor and constantly needy? yea wherefore is Immortality, everlasting pleasures, and a glorious resurrection secured unto us, but because our bodies are mortal, and subject to death and putrefaction? By this time perhaps you see the appositnesse of that comparison which Eliphaz made betwixt man and a bird. The bird by nature lifts himself above the earth upon his wings, he passeth from hence into the clear confines and neighbourhood of heaven, where he dwells for a time, and looks with contempt upon this inferior darksome portion of the world: when he descends towards the earth, he keepeth still above us, he lodgeth in the height and freshness of the trees, or pitcheth upon the spires or ridges of our houses, or upon some steep rock, whose height & inaccessibleness promise him security; something that is eminent and high he always affects to rest upon. Man likewise ordained for heaven, and the contempt of this spot of earth is by his very calamities borne up and carried above the world, yea into heaven, as an Eagle by the strength of his wings ascends above the clouds. O the depth of the riches of the wisdom of God O the merciful design, and devic● of his providence! who knowing our corrupt nature, hath laid upon us a necessity of seeking those blessings, whose inestimable value ought to stir us up to a most voluntary and diligent searching after them. To this necessity by the same chain of his providence hath he tied utility. These are sufficient motives to persuade us to patience. It was wisely said by some Arabian, that the hedge about patience was profit: for he that thinks gain to be necessary, must think labour so too. Although Fortune should be so prodigal as to pour all her Treasures into the bosom of one man, and not repent when she had done; yet would this very man sometimes feel strong exigencies in indigency. Pompey, and Darius were both hardly distressed with thirst; they that were Lords of so many Rivers, did then wish for one drop of Water. Alexander the Great, in some of his expeditions was like to perish with cold, though his Dominion did in a manner extend to the very Sun; for in the East (which I may call the Sun's House,) he was such an absolute Lord, that (bating the Power to forbid the Sun to rise) there was nothing more could be added to his conquests.  
Seeing then that labour or troubles are a necessity imposed upon man, it follows, that there are other labours belonging unto him, which are also as necessary; and those I shall term Voluntary Labours. O● these the Elegant Philosopher Eusebiu● hath excellently spoken; Voluntary Labours (saith he) are necessary, because of future Labours which hang over our heads: he will bear those with more ease when they fall upon him, who of his own accord, and beforehand hath exercised himself in them: But you see that in this course also the main remedy is patience. He that suffers willingly, suffers not, even that which is necessary to be suffered. One wedge drives out another. Venomous bitings are allayed by Venomous Medecines; therefore in necessary troubles, there is a necessity of voluntary Labours, that Violent Evils meet not with Obstinate Wills: but the unavoydablenesse of suffering would not be grievous, nor the necessity or Law of Nature any way rigorous, did not we by our own exaggerations add to their weight, and our own pain. We help to increase our own Calamities by reasom of our Inerudition, as Diphilus tells us, who adviseth even the happy man to learn miseries. What can we do more becoming our frail condition, then to teach our Mortality the troubles of life, which are certain prolusions, or arguments of death? What is more beneficial, then to learn great trials and dangers, that we may leave that servile custom of fearing? Fortune, whose burdens we ought to bear as willingly, as if we desired to undergo them?  
It is a great rudiment of patience to suffer willingly, when we least expect sufferings. It is strange, that although we see nothing in the course of this life more frequent than miseries, yet will we not be persuaded that they may fall into our share: Our griefs come most commonly before we believe they may come. Nothing can make us believe, that we may be miserable, until misery itself assures it to us. The mind therefore should be tried and prepared for it, with some lusorie or mock-misfortunes. Nor must we give ear to Democritus, whose saying is, That if there be any things for us to suffer, it is good to learn them, but not to suffer them. It is good indeed to learn them, but if they must be avoidable suffered, what will our learning of them avail us? A most ridiculous advise, in my Judgement: And if the Author of it had been wise, he had laughed at nothing more than at this his own Conclusion. It is good to learn to suffer Evils, but not to be evil. It will benefit us much to learn to suffer them, if not as they are Evils, yet lest we ourselves become Evil; for such we shall be by impatience. Besides the overcoming of real evils, there remain other slight hurts, as the discourtesies of nature, chance and fury, of our enemies and ourselves also, which we cannot avoid; but these last are no evils, but the sheaths or quivers of evils; out of these either our opinion, or our impatience draw evils upon ourselves. Bion used to say, that it was a great evil, not to be able to bear evils. Without this ability, life cannot be pleasant to any, and in this consists the skill and knowledge of life.  
Let the mind then learn to buckle with these rude toils of life, and by a frequent velitation or light skirmishing with troubles so improve itself, that when we c●me to deal with the serious hand, and close encounters of fortune, we may receive her at sharp, and like active, vigilant Duelists, put by her most Artful and violent thrusts. One Salustius that lived in the time of Simplicius did put upon his bare thigh a burning coal, and to keep in the fire did gently blow it, that he might try how long he could endure it. I believe that fire did put out and quite extinguish all the burnings and raging flames of incensed fortune. If crosses foreseen are always held light, those we taste and make experiment of before they come, must needs be lighter, because after trial we fear them not: fears are the forete●●h of miseries, which by't us sor●st, and m●st intolerably. It was a most ridiculous judgement which that Sybarite (mentioned by Serinus) passed upon the valour of the Spartans'. This tender Citizen travelling by chance into Lacedaemon, was so amazed at the severe discipline of that manly nation, who brought up their children in all rigorous and laborious exercises, that being returned home he told the Fiddlers of 
* A town in the higher Calabria in Italy 20. miles distant from Rome: the Inhabitants were mightily given to pleasure, and taught their horses to dance to the pipes; which the Crotoniatae their deadly enemies observing, brought into the field a company of minstrels: the Sybarits horses bearing the pipes began to dance, and disordered their Army, by which means they were overthrown to the number of 300000.  Sybaris, that the forwardness of the Spartan Youths to die in battle was, because they would not be compelled any longer to such a toilsome life. This soft fellow knew not how much Industry could prevail against misfortune, and patience against passion. That valour of the Spartans' was not despair, but the virtue of suffering perfected. Their voluntary labours at home had so excellently improved them, that they could not only slight the necessary and common afflictions of life, but overcome also (by a noble volunteering,) the very prerogative of fate, violating even the violence of death, while they died unconstrayned and undisturbed. Mithridates' his fear of being poisoned, made him use himself to a venomous diet, by which he came at last to digest all sorts of poisons without any prejudice to his health: so that afterwards when he would have poisoned himself in good earnest, he could not possibly do it. By this destroyer of mankind did he secure himself even from himself, and by long acquaintance made this deadly enemy a faithful friend: he fed life with the provision of death. By a like sagacity should we forearm ourselves against the conspiracies (if I may so say) of nature. Let us labour against labours; It will much avail us: our very fears will prove comforts; by using ourselves to sufferance, the Antidote of life, which is Patience, becomes effectual.  
Of such great importance is this assiduous exercise in troubles, that it lets in the nature of Constancy, and is a sure manuduction to that sincerest virtue. The Roman Fencers, players for prizes, barbarous and dissolute livers, if but indifferently skilled, received their wounds without groans, or any alteration of gesture or countenance, because they would not be judged pusillanimous, nor cowardly decliners of danger; If at any time they fell by the violence of wounds, they sent presently to know their master's pleasures, (because they would satisfy them,) for they themselves were contented to die; If their masters (finding them incurable) bade them prepare for death, they would presently hold forth their throats and receive the sword most willingly. O the serious faith of Plays! O the faith of Players in serious dangers! It is all one then, whether thou thinkest fortune a mere pageant and pastime, or not; Thou shouldest obey with an Immortal faith even to the death. Let a wise man execute the commands of his creator, let him like a faithful soldier of JESUS CHRIST certify his great master, that he is ready and willing to do him service, that he will lose his life, & choose rather to die, than not to submit to his pleasure. The conflicts of a good man with calamities are sacred: he is made a spectacle to the world, to Angels and men, and a h●llowed Present to the Almighty. Let him in this state overcome his Enemies! A more glorious garland then the Olympic Olive-branches shall crown an enduring Patience, which by an humble, but overcoming Sufferance wearies the hands of those that beat us. It is the part of a wise man, to tyre and wear out the malice of his Enemies. I say not by Suffering, but by Patience, which makes him neither their Patient, nor trampled upon, but a trampling overcomer. This was the glory of Melancoma, who lived not one day without an Enemy. In the most vehement season of the year, he judged his single-selfe hard enough for his two Adversaries: He could bear with the Sun, his most obstinate Antagonist, though fight against him in the heat of the Summer with so many hands as he had Rays.: When he might have gotten the Victory by Opposition, he would not but by Submission. He considered, that the best might be overcome by the worst, if force should take place. That Victory was in his Judgement the Noblest, when the Enemy, yet whole and without any hurt, was compelled to submit. There is he overthrown, when not by wounds, but by himself.  
Therefore what vice, and a spurious Patience did in the Roman Fencers, let Virtue and true Patience perform in thee: and what custom and exercise wrought in Melancoma, let reason and Judgement work in thee: What reason effected in Possidonius, let grace effect in thy heart, and let not grace which worked mightily 
a 
One of the Courtiers of the Emperor Traian, and afterwards a most glorious Martyr.  
Being in Chase of a Stag, he observed betwixt his horns the sign of the Cross, and heard a voice out of his mouth, speaking to him in the Latin tongue, Cur me persequeris? Whereupon leaving his game, he retired presently into his own house, and having called together his wife and children, were all baptised and received the Christian Faith. But in the persecution under Hadrian, he and his wife Theophila for their faithfulness to JESUS CHRIST, were burnt together in a brazen bull; And so having overcome and endured unto the end, they received the morning star, and crowns of life, which shall never be taken from them. See Volater lib. 15.   in Eustathius, and sufficiently in many others, languish and fail in thee alone. The power of God is perfected in weakness, giving us some prelibations (as it were) of itself; whither by bearing with our Infirmities, or by our bearing his Operations. I believe this last: for the glory of an almighty power against a weak thing would be very small; how little then against Infirmity itself? That power is truly glorious, and hath matter for glory, which prevails against the mind, a free unconfined thing, and holds it firm though surrounded with Infirmities: The power of God Glories more in prevailing against us, then against our infirmities.  
B●t if we seek for more delicate or easy remedies, and dare not arm ourselves against misfortunes with this harness of proof, b●cause we think it too heavy; It remains that we must make use of either Hope, or Expectation. Evils that are foreseen, lose much of their edge: But because we promise ourselves the favours of Fortune (of whom we have always a good opinion, though we seldom speak well of her, and she deservs as ill,) our calamities, while this credulous remissness keeps us from looking to th●m, find way to surprise and oppress us at once. Against violent misfortunes we may not use violence. Expectation will sometimes serve us best, if it be accompanied with a strong and irremisse belief, that the Cross is at hand, and will not delay. For what happens in this life more frequent, than unthought of events? We meet oftentimes even in one day with matter of grief, and matter of Patience. It is strange, that for those two meals we eat in the day, we are all the day, and all our life long providing: But for trouble, for griefs and sadness, which take not up two hours in the day, but all the hours and days of our lives, we never think to make any preparation. Cast up (if thou canst) how many things must be had to humour the pride of man's appetite; more than for a Sacrifice. It is no small state, nor ceremony that the belly is served with: How many men doth this wormsmeat Employ, Cooks, Bakers, Fishers, Fowlers, Hunters, Sheepfeeders, Herdsmen, Millers, Colliers, and Butchers? How many Instruments, Spits, Pots, Trivets, Cauldrons, Chasing-dishes, Chargers, Platters, and a thousand other utensils of gluttony? And to what end is all this preparation? But to please one palate once in the day, or twice at most. O foolish men! We are ever providing for pleasures, but never for troubles, which not twice, but for a great portion of our time, (if not continually) we must needs endure. Who against the certain approach of an Enemy, will be secure and quiet, and upon the coming of a friend watchful and solicitous? Why do we provide so much for pleasures and vanity, and provide nothing against the day of trouble and misery? We are guarded about with clothes of state, Canopies, Couches, Silk-Curtains, Featherbeds and Pillows; we arm ourselves for delights and softness, for sleeping and eating, because they are every day's works; but hear not every day telling us, that the Evil day is behind. We labour to provide for the back and the belly, why not for the better part, why not for our frail condition? The Sense of the secure liver is too too delicate: The affliction of the Inconsiderate or unprepared too bitter. Chance throws down the careless violently: and Fortune tires the idle even to vexation. The rude and unexperienced in troubles afflicts and macerates himself with an impatient mind in the very midst of his most affected bla●dishments, and in the bosom and calm of all his pleasures.  
I hold Impatience to be a kind of Nightmare which comes upon us waking, or the Day-hag of life: This troublesome disease (for our time of rest is his time of misrule, and when we are sleeping, then is he stirring,) sets upon us when we are most at ease, and with a certain strange heaviness seems to oppress and smother us, when in the mean time that weight which so much oppresseth us, is laid on by our own Imagination: and this sometimes makes us cry out, as if we were killed; others, according to Lucretius, 
Struggle & groan as if by Panthers torn  
Or Lion's teeth, which makes them loudly mourn.  
Some others seem unto themselves to die.  
Some clime steep solitudes & Mountains high,  
From whence they seem to fall inanely down,  
Panting with fear, till waked, and scarce their own,  
They feel about them if in bed they lie,  
Deceived with dreams, and night's Imagery.   
But the greatest trouble of all, is, that without any hope of remedy, they vainly strive and endeavour to shake off this shadow of heaviness; 
In vain with earnest struggle they contend  
To ease themselves: for when they stir & bend  
Their greatest force to do it, even thenmost  
Of all they faint, and in their hopes are crossed.  
Nor tongue, nor hand, nor foot will serve their turn,  
But without speech and strength within they mourn.   
What more express Image can there be of Impatience lying heavily especially upon those, who drouse away their time in a vicious rest and Idleness? They are oppressed, cry out, rage, and vainly resist, without any burdens but what their own fancy lays upon them. They feel the weight the heavier, the more they stir it, without they shake it quite off. To refuse, or not willingly to undergo burdens, is the only burden of Impatients. But if they would awake to themselves (which of necessity they must, for when can the will be more Rational, than when necessity is unreasonable) all these factitious weights and seeming heaviness would quickly vanish: Force must not be used against Fortune, but Patience. This excels so much in strength, that it bears all: For it bears what ever it will, and for this very reason because it Wills. Samson carried away the do●es, the two posts, and the bar of the Gate of the City of Gaza; but this strength lay in his hair, like the locks of Nisus and Pterelaus. A miraculous strength; but weakly secured. The strength of Patience is more safely seated; It lies not in a lock, which may be cut off by some Dalilah, or Comethe, or Scylla, or any womanish and fearful hand. To Will, is the Sanctuary of its strength; by being willing it is not only enabled to bear, but also beareth. The back and shoulder of Patience is the Will. This voluntary fortitude of the mind will do all its business, without the help of outward Engines; It needs not the assistance of the Arms, nor the weak use of wishes. The strength of Virtue is not external, but in itself.  
There remain also other necessary Indurances, though not to those that suffer them already, yet to others that may, or are about to undergo them: For the preservation of our Country & liberties we ought patiently to suffer even unto death. It is not too dear a rate to pay that debt we owe to Nature, for the defence of Nature in our public Persons: To this we want not the Encouragement of examples. What ever hath been suffered heretofore, may be suffered now by us. But if those precedents rather cool, then provoke our Courage, why dare not we suffer a little, seeing they suffered so much? To teach us this Virtue of Patience, and strengthen our ruinous brittle condition, the motherly love and fatherly care of the eternal, Divine mind, did provide and disperse through certain spaces and intervals of time (like knots for the strengthening of a weak reed,) persons of such eminent Patience and Piety, as might by their examples sustain and bear up mankind, until the Ancient of days, and Father of Immortality himself should descend into this mortal life, and be born for Patience, and for death. In the mean time, that the populous World might not want a Glass to dress themselves by, he sent these to be the substitutes and forerunners of his mighty and inimitable Patience. The first he consecrated to this dignity was Abel, in whom Patience (saith holy Aldhelmus) was Original, as Sin was in Adam. God joined Patience to his Innocence by a certain Original Justice or claim in him; but to the rest of the Just it descends together with sufferings, by right of Inheritance: to none more, to none better than to the Innocent. But now even by this, those suffer most, that should suffer least, the good and the Just. But those sufferings are most sacred, that are most unjust. Adam found out afflictions, and Abel Patience; the medicine presently followed the disease. Evils were the Inventions of Sin, Patience was the Device of Innocence. So that Patience as their peculiar Treasure abounds more, and is more beloved by the Just, then by any else. But that Posthume Cry of Abel proceeded not from Impatience: For God would not have taken to himself the cause of one dying discontentedly, and with Indignation; but as devout Alexandrinus saith, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, etc. Abel the Just dying unjustly was the first of men that showed the foundations of death to be ruinous; wherefore he being dead yet speaketh. Death, whose right came by unrighteousness, laid ruinous foundations indeed, because ill-layd, upon the Just dying unjustly. It hath cause to grieve, that it erred so foully in its first stroke, seeing it might have made a better beginning in wicked Cain. But there was Divinity in it, that death taking possession of mankind by the Murder of the Just, might be justly exterminated and swallowed up in Victory by the undefiled Virgin-Prince of the Just, who for that end was born of a Virgin. Ephrem saith, that death howled or lamented in her very beginning, which showed what would be her end. The Hern by instinct of Nature Chatters and mourns, before he becomes the prey of the Falcon. Death died by him, over whom she had no power. Only there is the night of death, where sin, where corruption lives.  
Another tie of Constancy laid upon the World, after a convenient space, was Job, who retained his Patience after prosperity, and after Innocence. Patience is no where merrier, nor better contented with itself, then in the Innocent. Integrity and Fortune seldom lodge together. Adversity is the Whetstone which keeps it from rust, and makes it shine. No Virtues can subsist without troubles, which are their food. They live not commodiously, where their Provision is far from them: Wherefore holy and Just men have adversity always (like a Well) at their doors. I shall take up then with that saying of Eliphaz: Affliction comes not forth of the dust, nor doth trouble spring out of the ground; but rather from Heaven; and comes oftener to holy and heavenly livers, then to Worldly and unrighteous persons.  
After Job, and at a convenient distance from his time was Tobiah appointed, who instead of Celandine, made use of Patience to heal his Eyes: being blinded by the Swallows, he found a more precious medicine than their Hebbe, and his glory is more by bearing with the living, than burying the dead. This holy man also after Innocence, though not after prosperity, retained his Patience; until at last the Son of God himself, after Impassibility and almightiness, became woefully passable, and humbled himself to the death of the Cross: of so great an example was Patience worthy, and so necessary was this voluntary passion of God himself to our fatal necessity of suffering. By this mighty example of himself he hath sanctified Patience to be the All-heal, or Universal Antidote of Evils, and the Sovereign Lenitive of sorrows. Divinely did one sing to the blessed JESUS. 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
Thou the Nepenthe easing grief  
Art, and the minds healing relief.   
At this secret Counsel of the Almighty, did the rude Instincts, or hallucinations rather of the old Heathens (proceeding, no doubt, from their sense of Humane misery.) blindly aim. They dreamt of some Son of God to be the great exemplar of Patience, and pattern of Virtue; but finding none, they made and proposed to themselves Hercules the Son of Jupiter, for a precedent of continual Patience, Obedience and Virtue: about whose labours and achievements, Antiquity hath mightily pleased itself with lies and Fables. This (indeed) they rightly apprehended, that labour or troubles are rather repugnant to, then unworthy of Divinity; they held them becoming Virtue, and withal necessary, that they might adorn Patience with these two Jewels, the reward of suffering, and the dignity of the Sufferer. But the Truth of God hath now outdone the Fictions of men; It hath exceed all they did licentiously wish, but could not hope for. Our Patience is now sufficiently instructed by the SON of God, who is the pleasant remedy and Panacea of Evils. The blessed JESUS breathed nothing but Patience, nothing but mildness in his life, in his Doctrine.  
These are the great examples which true Christians should follow; not those of spurious Patience, and a narrow, heathen fortitude, which after it had born some Evils indeed, died at the root, and could not bear itself. Seneca (otherwise in many things a very true, and sometimes a Christian Philosopher,) proposeth to his readers the example of Cato; but I utterly reject it; for he destroyed himself, because he could not save his Commonwealth. What Constancy was here, though in a state that concerned not his private happiness? or what manner of Constancy was that, which durst not endure and hold out, but was overcome, not by irrecoverable, fallen affairs, but falling: Not collasped and ruined, but tottering and doubtful? I confess, it was a spectacle, which the Eye of God Intentive to his great and various works might behold with glory: and I confess him a brave Heathen, Ill-disposed. But I see nothing glorious and excellent in him, nothing of true worth, but what I can find as well in the most degenerate and womanish Sardanapalus. If we look upon Cato amidst the public ruins, we shall find him overthrown and laid along, where an old wall stands up, no Enemy having touched him. A most unworthy man▪ (if he was a man,) to fall thus basely like a Woman; who at the noise of any thing suddenly thrown down, casts herself to the ground, and squeaks though untouched, and far enough from danger. But thou wilt say, Though all things became subject to one man, though his legions possessed the Earth and his Navies the Seas, yea though Caesar's own regiment was in the gates, yet Cato made his way out. An honest voice, if it were not flattery: I tell thee he did not make his way, but sneaked and fled out most shamefully: His legs could not carry him off, and therefore he ran away upon his hands. But it is all one, fly with which he will, it is a plain flight; his busy and searching fear, which in him (by reason of a sudden, unmanly astonishment) was most Sagacious, showed him this postern or backdoor, which he most basely fled out at. But what could that man be afraid of, that had born so often the Assaults of Fortune? He feared that very same Fortune: How can that be, (sayest thou) seeing he had coped with her so long before? For that valour let him thank his error: He believed Fortune (according to her old vogue) to be still inconstant, he expected that the Tide should turn; but finding her obstinate, and resolved in earnest to the contrary, he feared her last blow, and providing for himself by a most dastardly tenderness, did with his own hands dress and make a wound to his own liking. To be patient, or to suffer as we please, is not Patience. He could bear the anger, but not the hatred and feud of Fortune. That is poor valour, that bears only the flourishes and pickearing of an Enemy, but dares not receive his full charge. A weak man will for some time stand under a great burden; but he that carries it through, and home, is the strongest. Cato then was a most base, pusillanimous combatant; he quitted his ground, and left Fortune in the field, not only unconquered, but untired, and flourishing with a whole Arm, which he had not yet drawn blood from: What Inconstancy can be greater than his, who was more Inconstant than Vertiginous Fortune? Or who more a Coward than he, that fled and ran away swifter and sooner than her wheels? To call Cato then either constant, wise, or good, is most unjust; nay more, it is an Injury to mankind, to call him a man, who hath deserved so ill of Wisdom and men, by thinking that any Cause, or Chance in this World can be worthy of a wise man's death. I would he had read the Conclusion of Theodorus, not the dissertation of Socrates! Theodorus Cythereus most truly affirmed, that there never can be cause enough for a wise man to cast away his life; And he proves it by invincible reason: For him (saith he) that contemns humane Chances, to cast away his life because of them, how contrary is it to his own Judgement, which esteems nothing good, but what is Virtuous, nothing vicious but what is evil? I wish, when he did read Socrates, that he had also understood him! for than he should have heard him condemning that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or mad refuge of selfemurther, and commanding him not to stir out of his appointed station without full Orders from the great General of life. Why then dost thou cry up Cato for a great leader, who was a most cowardly common Soldier, that forsook his Charge, and betrayed the Fort entrusted to him by the Prince of Life? But here thou wilt reply, that his last night's contemplation, just before he quitted it, was Immortality. The end he did study it for, made it then unseasonable: And I know not (seeing he was but an Imperfect speculator in the Doctrine of Immortality,) why he should be so hasty to try whither Eternity was perishable, or not, by casting away his own. He should have expected it, as he did expect the change of Fortune, which till that night he always esteemed Mortal: He should have prepared for it by making trial of his Constancy before Eternity.  
What praise then either of Patience, or Fortitude hath he deserved? he did no more than the most effeminate, Hemon and Sardanapalus. O the glorious Act of Cato then, equal to his, that handled the Spindle's! An Act of Women, Evadne, Jocasta, and Auctolia. An Act of Whores, Sapph and Phaedra. An Act of Wenches, Thysbe, Biblis, Phillis and Anaxarete. An Act of Boys, Iphis and Damocles. An Act of Doting, decrepit men, Aegeus, Sesostris and Timathes. An Act of Crazy, diseased Persons, Aristarchus and Erat●sthenes. An Act of Madmen, Aristotle, Empedocles, Timagoras and Lucretius. A rare commendation indeed for a wise man, to have done that which Whores, Wenches and Boys, sick men and Madmen did, whom either the Impatience of their lust, or Fortune made Impatient of life. Whither thou wilt say, that Cato killed himself to fly from Fortune, or to find Immortality, thou canst in neither deny his Impatience either of Joy, or else of fear, and in both of life. I would he had been as patient now of life, as he was sometimes of thirst! That voice of Honour, upon the Sands of Libya, was his! where (the R●man Army like to perish with thirst) a Common Soldier that had taken up a little muddy Water in his Helmet, presenting it to him, had in stead of thanks this bitter rebuke, 
Base man! & couldst thou think Cato alone  
Wants courage to be dry, &, but him, none?  
Looked I so soft? breathed I such base desires,  
Not proof against this Libye Sun's weak fires?  
That shame and plague on thee more justly lie!  
To drink alone, when all our troops are dry.  Here was a glorious Voice, and there follows it a more glorious hand: 
For, with brave rage he flung it on the Sand,  
And the spilt draught sufficed each thirsty band.   
This manly Virtue he degenerated from in his last Act, and all his friends wisely bending to the present necessity, he only broke. The people being all taken, he only fled. To see Cato a sufferer in the public misery, had been a Public comfort; they would have judged it happiness to have been unhappy with him. It is Honour to suffer with the Honourable, and the Tyranny of Fortune is much allayed, and almost welcome to us, when she equally rageth against the good and Noble, as against our private selves. If, as he refused the remedy of thirst, he had also rejected this ill remedy against misfortune, his glory had been perfect.  
We must then be the Patients of life; and of this Patience (which I think the greatest of any,) we have two eminent examples in Job and Tobiah, who not only provoked by Fortune, but by their wives also, defended their Calamities in the defence of life. For the other Patience in death (which is the least,) the example of Abel sufficed, designed by the wonderful Counsel of God (until the manifestation of his Son, that great Arch-type of Patience in life and death,) to suffer, though Innocent, a violent and unexperienced death, that the first onset of fate (which was most furious,) meeting in him with an unconquerable Patience, might be so●● what tamed, and the weapons of death having their edge dulled in the first conflict, might afterwards be of less terror to mankind. Just Abel was the first that showed us the way of dying, when the name of death, as yet untried, was most formidable unto life; that he might teach man Patience in his death, and leave it to posterity as a Medicine found out by him. But when men (by a sad experience grown wise,) found out a greater Evil than death, which to religious men was this sinful life, and to the miserable and Impatient their own lives; then were Job and Tobiah set forth the convincing examples of Patience in life, who endured a life more bitter than death, lest by not enduring, they should, to their misery, add sin. They taught the World that Patience was a better Medicine for Evils than death, and withstood the opinions of the Lunatic people. Falsely did Euripides (arrogating a laudable Title to death,) term it 
The greatest medicine of Evils,  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.   
As if he in another place had not termed it the greatest of Evils. If death then be not its own Medicine, how can it be the Medicine of Evils? It is an Evil great enough, that it is not the Medicine of Evils; but that sufficeth not, it is also the greatest Evil. Aeschylus is in the like error, for it is called by him 
The Physician of incurable Evils,  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.   
A most ridiculous appellation: How can that be the Physician of incurable Evils, which is itself such an incurable Evil as their own Machaon could not resist? Equally false is that of Sophocles, 
The last Curer of diseases is death.  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.   
If death itself be a disease, which must, and shall be healed, how can it be the last curer of diseases? But these men (after the Common manner of Physicians,) held the cure of great Evils to consist in desperate remedies, as obstinate diseases are expelled by strong and Diaphoretick Medicines: Health indeed is dear unto us, and death, I confess, puts an end to all its diseases, and to all Medicaments too. It takes away the disease sooner and oftener than any other remedy; but these Poets themselves (as sick men say of their Potions) deny not but it is bitter.  

〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
It is better to live ill, then to die well,  Saith Euripides himself in another place; such a good opinion had he of death. It had been but a sorry provision for mankind, if God had given us no other Medicine against Temporal Evils, but death. The cure of our miserable condition had been both imperfect and uncertain, and to our sad necessity there had been added necessary despair, when the cure of small Evils had been by a greater, and the great Evil itself left incurable.  
But (Glory to the blessed Jesus!) we are both fully c●red, and faithfully cared for! That which can cure all Evils, must be something that is not Evil; Therefore death cannot cure them, because it is an Evil; for God created it not, but it came into the World through the envy of the Devil: Good men hold it to be Evil, & the bad find it so. Thou wilt ask then, what is the Medicine of Evils? I answer, it is that, which is the Medicine that strengthens us to bear the violence, and the pangs of death; that which the very Enemies of it cannot deny to be good, I mean Patience: that which being made Evil by abuse, yet in that state hath been commended by men that were not Evil, by Seneca in his Cato, Dion in his Melancoma, and Philo in his Pancratiastes: So winning and attractive is the Virtue of Patience, that the very shadow of it procures reverence, and make the very abuse and corruption of it laudable. If then the Counterfeit of it could beautify vice, and make it amiable even to wise men, what wonder is it, if the Substance be a protection and ornament to Virtuous persons? This is the Medicine which Leonides gave against death. Let those Titles therefore which death usurped, be vindicated by the right owner. Patience then is the best medicine of Evils; It is the cure of the Incurable, the last Physician, the Ease in death, the mollifying Oil, the gentle purge, the pleasant Potion, and that I may recover its right to another Title which death usurped from the pen of B●etius, It is a sanctuary that lies always open to the distressed. Lastly, lest I should deny that, which even the envy of Fortune could not deny, Patience (as Zeno elegantly said,) is the Queen regent of all things, yea of that rebellious changeling Fortune. But let us add to the certainty of the cure, the easiness of coming by the medicine: We need not send for it into Foreign Regions, nor dig it out of Mines, nor extract it out of the Veins of Herbs, or the vital parts of beasts: We need not go for it to the Apothecary, nay I shall add, we need not wish for it; It is already in our custody, a manual Antidote that is always about us, and in us, effectual for all things, and ready for all men. It is a Physician we need not call upon; not like death, that forsakes the wretched, and those that earnestly long for it, that hath no pity upon tears, but keeps off, 
— And will not hear the Cry  
Of distressed man, not shut his weeping Eye.   
Hitherto we have taken view but of one side of Patience, and that half of her which she opposeth to Evils. Every part of her is lovely and excellent: and if we remove now from this Collateral station to a direct, we shall behold her entire beauty, and how well she deserves of good. The Sacraments of this Virtue are two: To suffer Evil: to do good: Nobly doth she celebrate both; with her there is no Evil, without her there is no good. I think her the Mart, and Mother-City of all that is good. Every Virtue is a Colony of Patience, planted and nourished by her. Virtues owe their Original to her, she is part of it, and in every one of them. She is their holy fire, their Vesta, and Lararium, or private Chapel; they are her Nuns or Virgins, what ever they have, either sacred or glorious, is from her: To the perfection of man there is nothing more necessary: For as Brass must be first melted, and afterwards cast; so the hard and rigid matter of Virtues must be softened and dissolved by Patience, that man may become a glorious and living Statue of Divinity. No marvel, that we require labour and hardness in Virtuous persons, seeing we expect it from Smiths; A certain Just Law of all the World hath exacted it to be the price of Virtue. Bear what thou wouldst not, and thou shalt enjoy what thou wilt. Labour is the good man's purse: Patience is his Gold: Only an obstinate, sordid Idleness makes men poor, not only in body but in mind also: Without Patience they cannot possess their own Souls. Neither Nature, nor Virtue, nor Fortune (and this last thou wilt perhaps think strange,) trust us with their goods without this. Prosperity, when it is lent to man, dispensenth its treasures to none so plentifully, as to the laborious: Without a blow it strokes us not. The sweetmeats it brings are not eaten, but in the sweat of the face. It was truly said of Fortune, 
Give bread to the poor, but give him thy fists for sauce.  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.   
The Snake will easily slip through our hands, unless we grasp her with Figleaves, or some knotty, rough grass; Fortune is very slippery, and without labour, and a strong hand, she will not be held. Honest gain breeds most Joy, I shall add most security, when it is gotten with most pain. Labour is the earnest we give for after-joys, which are an addition, or consequence rather, attending the other fruits of it. Though it goes before them, yet it is refreshed with their following after; As hunger, which is a Natural sauce, sweetens the meat, and the Joys of the eater, even before ●e eats: We look with most delight upon those things which we think to be our own, and we think them most, which we have most laboured for. Patience is a certain Title to possession, but labour gives the Right. The Mother loves those children best, and as most hers, which she brought forth with most pain. Hony is gathered of bitter herbs; they that love not the bitterness, must not eat of the Honey. The drones of Attica (saith Tzetzes,) will not touch the honey of Hymettus, because it is gathered of Thyme, which the Attic drone cannot endure to light upon. The Noble Xenophon loved no glory, but that which was purchased by his own Industry.  
The glory of God himself is not without labour, which he hath showed unto us by his works, and amplified in particular natures according to his wisdom, for our example. Wickedly did Hermogenes think of that Supreme, eternally active Mind, esteeming him to rest, by reason of idleness and inefficacy, though elegantly refuted by Afer in these words, his glory is the more in that he hath laboured. God doth not only look upon, and rule the World, he made it also; And which of these, thinkst thou, is most worthy of glory? is it not to have made it? What is more glorious then to have made glory? In the present Sabbath and solemnity of God's rest, the works which he hath made, declare his glory unto men, whose task also is, to work. Besides, this first curious draught of his Almighty hand contributes something to the perfect beauty of his immortal, last one; for the Divine Eye (reflecting upon this proof,) will adorn that building of holiness and glory with everlasting strength, and an inviolable, Celestial freshness. God made not man by a Fiat, as he did the rest of the Creatures, but fell to work himself, and like the Potter that first tempers, than fashions the Clay, he made him by making, not by speaking. That one royal creature capable of felicity, was consecrated for beatitude, and the Divine likeness with the ceremony of labour: Here man was instructed, before he was made: he received the exemplar of living before he received life: Idleness was forbidden him, before he had the Power given him to be active. But when he gave him life, he gave him also with it another Specimen, or Item of labour, breathing into him, as if he had used respiration (which refresheth the laborious,) to show man the use of his breath. All things that were created for the service of mankind, were by the manner of their Creation (which was with a Fiat, or command,) taught to be obedient and humble: But man was first ordained for Dominion, afterwards for labour; And God himself, the Lord of all, laboured in his Creation, that He might make him to be in love with his Ordinance, and that God (plotting as it were against himself,) might by that love of man be induced to love him the more, and to esteem him more his own Creature then any other, because he only (like his Creator) loved Activity, and the use of life. And this I believe is the meaning of Xenophon: Labour (saith he) is a certain over-measure, or extraordinary favour of love.  
So glorious an Ornament is Patience, either in suffering, or else in doing, I believe in both (for Labour, without the good of Patience, is good of itself,) that for no other end, but to be thought temperate and wise, the Pythagoreans commended abstinence, the Stoics severity, the Cynic exceeded to rigour, the Gymnosophists to cruelty, and a face of madness and despair. Every one of these adorned his Heresy with Patience, and all the rude statues they erected to wisdom, were crowned with this Virtue. Edesius being sent by his Father to traffic into Greece, quitted the Merchant, and turned Philosopher: His Father upon his return receiving him with stripes, and he patiently bearing them, asked him, what he had learned in the Schools of the Philosophers? He answered, To bear your anger dutifully: With the same testimony did another Scholar of Zeno adorn the Stoa: but Possidonius was hardlier provoked then either; he was so tortured with bodily pain, as if the disease had maliciously laboured to confute his principles: but how far it prevailed, appears best by his own words; It is to no purpose, (said he) vex me as much as thou canst, thou shalt never make me give thee an ill word. So careful was he of the reputation of his Master. But Dionysius Heracleotes, not able to rule his passions, lost the repute of a Philosopher. So much doth that Majesty and tacit reverence we admire in Virtue depend upon Patience.  
Patience doth that for the private man, which their life-guards do for Kings: It keeps him safe, and reverenced. It is the minds mainguard, that preserves the Authority of Virtue, and secures the Virtuous person, lest Evils should make him Evil. It is in the oppressed a certain tutelar Angel, and the sacred Guardian of their Spirits from Affliction. Most appositely did Halitargius call Patience the Conservatrix of our Condition. O how great is the Glory of Virtue, whose Guard and attendant is Patience, the Queen of all things! She is not only the Crown and Ornament of Philosophy, but the badge and Garland of the Christian warrior. She is not only honoured by the Impatient themselves, but by the furious and Savage. Abraames, almost slain and martyred by the Indian Infidels, did with this one weapon not only resist, but overcome a whole City: And that with more expedition than Caesar, and with better success than Alexander; for to such admiration and reverence of his person did his patience drive them, that in the very midst of the storm his persecutors become suddenly calm, begging forgiveness with tears, and with the general consent of the people elected him for their Patron and Precedent, whom a little before (having not seen this pearl of Patience,) they designed for destruction and death. It was the Majesty of this immovable, Serene Virtue, that forced them to this miraculous Election, adjudging it of most royal Excellency, and most worthy of Sovereignty.  
Leander told the Fathers, met at Toledo, that Patience would either win, or overcome her adversaries. Solon knew this: For being checked by some standers by, because he suffered an uncivil fellow to spit upon him, he answered: Fishermen, that they may catch one whiting, suffer themselves to be dashed over with the foam and flow of the Sea-waves; and shall not I do the like to catch a man? Whither he catched him, or not, I cannot tell: But I am sure, that John Fernandius, a Servant of JESUS CHRIST, and a Fisher of men, catched a whole Kingdom with that very bait. He preaching to the Indians in the street, one barbarous Infidel, having gathered his mouth full of sordid spittle, came pressing through the crowd to the place where he stood, and delivered it just in his face; but he nothing moved therewith, and neither rebuking the Barbarian, nor discomposing his former gesture, persisted in his Master's business, and preached on: His Doctrine though powerful, after the silent Rhetoric of this public example, might for that time have been well spared. Here was the foundation of the Churches of Japan and Amangucia: This very Indian (and none before him) becoming the first fruits of that region unto CHRIST. So glorious a document of Patience made him envy our Divine Philosophy, that envy made him Ambitious, and his holy Ambition made him a Christian. So gainful an Industry is Patience, and such a compendious Art of overcoming. Most wholesome is the advice of Pimenius: Malice (saith he) never overcomes malice, you must overcome malice with goodness: But if we could overcome one Evil with another, why will we not reserve that Glory for Virtue? By such a bloodless Victory did Motois overthrow his Adversary; from whom he fled most valiantly, lest he should offend him; I do not say with his hands, but with his sight; for Patience hath no hands, but shoulders. His Adversary pursues: Motois had locked himself up, & became his own prisoner, esteeming it guilt enough, that another could be angry with him: But hearing that his Enemy was come in (being only Impatient till he had showed more Patience,) he breaks open the door, bids him welcome, and like one that had offended, desires to be forgiven, and afterwards feasts him. This story I have touched upon, that thou mayst see how powerful an Instrument of tranquillity, and a quiet, happy life, Patience is, that makes peace to bear fruit in another man's soil, and civilizeth foreigners. How fruitful then is she at home,? How prosperous a dresser of Virtues in himself is the patient man, that will not suffer the propagation of Vices in another?  
But Leander said, that Patience doth either overcome, or else win her Enemies; I say, she doth both win and overcome: She wins men, and overcomes Fortune; nay, she makes her (though unwilling) a most officious servant of Goodness. The name of Patience is not an empty, titular Honour; it hath also very large and princely revenues for the maintenance of Virtue. That Fable of the Divine in holy Maximus is truth. He saith, that wise men dwell in the shadow of a tree, which the more the people cut it, grows the more. It strives, and vies with the Iron; or to borrow the Poet's expression, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, It lives when killed, and brancheth when 'tis lopped. His own Mythology is most elegant: By this tree (saith he) is signified wisdom, which turnes misfortunes into Ornaments, trouble into Virtue, loss into gain, and scars into beauty: For the Patient and wise liver, like the Serpent of Lerna, when he is most mangled, is most entire; he drinks in fresh spirits through his very wounds, his courage is heightened by them, and his spilt blood, like dew, doth cherish and revive him, 
Like some fair Oak, that when her boughs  
Are cut by rude hands, thicker grows:  
And from those wounds the Iron made,  
Resumes a rich and fresher shade.   
The benefit than we receive from Patience, is twofold: It diminisheth the sorrows of the body, and increaseth the treasure of the mind: Or to speak more properly, there is one great benefit it doth us, It turns all that is Evil into Good. Most apposite to this, is that of Nazianzen, Patience digesteth misery.  
Concoction and Digestion of meats are the daily miracles of the stomach: they make dead things contribute unto life, and by a strange Metamorphosis turn Herbs, and almost all living Creatures into the Substance of Man, to preserve his particular Species: No otherwise doth Virtue by Patience (which is her stomach,) transform and turn all damages into benefits and blessings, and those blessings into it self. Lupins, or bitter Pulse, if steeped in water, will grow sweet and nourishing: Patience doth macerate miseries, to fatten itself with them. Certain Divine Rays break out of the Soul in adversity, like sparks of fire out of the afflicted flint. The lesser the Soul minds the body, the lesser she adheres to sensibility, she is by so much the more capable of Divinity, and her own Nature. When her Den of flesh is secure and whole, then is she in darkness, & sleeps under it: When it is distressed and broken, then is she awake, and watcheth by some Heavenly Candle, which shines upon her through those breaches. The wounds of the Body are the windows of the Soul, through which she looks towards Heaven; light is her provision, she feeds then upon Divinity. Sublime is that rapture of the most wise Gregory, 
— 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.—  
— one food the best for all  
Is to feed on the great God's mind, & draw  
An Immense light from the bright Trinity.   
Death itself, which the lust of eating brought into the World inedible, or as Zeno saith, indigestible, is eaten, digested and transubstantiated into life by Patience, begun in Abel, and perfected in JESUS CHRIST. So that now, that saying of Pirrho, who affirmed, that there was no difference betwixt death and life, is no longer a Paradox; nor need we make use of that shrewd exaggeration of Euripides: who knows (said he) but this which we call life, is death, and death life? we see, that men, when they are (as we speak) alive, are then only sick, but the dead neither sicken, nor suffer any sorrows: Certainly the death of a good liver is eternal life.  
Every Action of a wise man is a certain emulation of Death; we may see it expressed in his patience. The Soul by this Virtue disintangles, and frees herself from the troubles of Mortality: For the frivolous flesh burning with fevers, or drowned in dropsies, or any other diseases, the attendants of corruption, which possess and fill up the narrow Fabric of Man; the Soul (as in great inundations, when the lower rooms are overflown) ascends to the battlements, where she enjoys a secure, healthful air, leaving the ground-roomes to the tumult and rage of the distempered humours. She ascends thither, where grief cannot ascend. Carneades, coming to visit Agesilaus grievously tormented with the Gout, and turning his back to be gone, as if impatient of the violence and insolency of the disease (whose custom it is to show little reverence towards the best men, the prerogative of Vir●●e can give no protection to Nature,) Agesilaus pointing from his feet to his breast, calls him back with this Check, stay Carneades, the pain is not come from thence hither. He showed by this, that his mind was in health, though his feet were diseased, and that the pain had not ascended thither, where the Soul sat enthroned. At this height she hath two privileges more than ordinary; she is less affected with the body, because at some distance from it; and hovers above grief, because above sensibility; she is nearer to God, and dresseth herself by his beams which she enjoys more freely, as from a kind of Balcony, or refreshing place, having only a Knowledge, but no Sense of the body's affliction. From this place she overlookes the labours and conflicts of the flesh, as Angels from the windows of Heaven behold War, and the Slaughter of distracte●●●en. One benefit more she hath by Patience, that though shut up in the body, yet she can have a taste of her glorious posthume liberty. Death looseth the Soul from the body, it breaks in sunder the secret bonds of the blood, that she may have the full use of her wings, and be united to Divinity. Patience, though it doth not quite loosen the chain, yet it lengthens it, that she may take the air, and walk some part of the way towards Home: Though it frees not the Soul from the body, yet it gives her liberty and dominion over it. He that is tied up by a long Cord, is within the compass allowed him untied, and a free man. The Spirit of man incensed by adversities, and collected into itself, is by a certain Antiperistasis made more ardent and aspiring: Fire is never stronger, nor more intense then amongst Water; In the bosom of a cloud it breaks forth into thunder: So this Divine Spark, which God hath shut up in Vessels of Clay, when all the passages of pleasures are stopped, his rays (which before were diffused and extravagant) return into itself, and missing their usual vent, break forth with such violence, as carries with it sometimes the very body, and steals the whole man from passion and mortality. The Levity of fire is of greater force, than the Gravity and Massiness of Earth: His Spirit is unresistable, and the unknown force of it will blow up the greatest Mountains, and the strongest Castles this earth affords.  
Hitherto have I discoursed of outward Evils, I shall now consider the Inward, and how Patience is their Antidote. You have seen her Prerogative over Fortune, and reputed Evils, which are called Evils, because they seem to be so, not because they are so; as disgrace, grief, and poverty. All these are but fictitious Evils, which Custom and Humane error have branded with that injurious denomination: for in these contingencies there is no real Evil, but the Evil of opinion; neither is any man miserable but in his own conceit, and by comparison. The glory of Patience would be but poor and trivial, if it could do no more than take away, or bear with such frivolous and fictitious troubles as these: If it prevailed only against Evils, which we do not suffer, but invent. It's true glory is, that it subdues true Evils: Not that it bears them, but that it removes them far from us: Not that it endures them, but than it abstaines from them: For truly to suffer Evil, is to do Evil, whose Agent always the Patient is, by reason of a most ill impatience: But Patience is only excellent, because it suffers not. This worst kind of Evil is therefore the greater, because because when 'tis in acting, it is not seen; and were it not afterwards felt, there would be no place left for Virtue. This is the usual method of Vice, a flattering, Comical entrance, and a Tragical exit. The force and malice of Evil Actions may be gathered by their Nature: They are so powerfully hurtful, that when they cease to be, they cease not to torment us: and so malignant, that while we act them, they flatter us, that being Acted, they may afflict us: While we are doing them, they conceal and deny themselves; but being done, they appear to our sorrow. Wherefore he that will lead a blessed, a joyful, and a peaceful life, must make it his whole work, to do no work, but what Religion and Virtue shall approve of. What peace and security can he enjoy that will revenge himself, (what more would cruelty have?) according to his own lust? What life can he be said to live, that kills himself to please his inordinate affections? What joy can he have, whose troubled conscience is his continual Executioner, racking and tormenting him in the very embraces of smiling Fortune? No outward Fomentations will serve turn against that Indisposition to which fevers and fire are but coolers. We can provide against the violence of winter and Summer-weather when and how we please: But the inward heats and colds, the raging accessions of the Spirit admit no cure. Patience, though Fortune should assist her, will never heal the wounds of conscience.  
He that suffers by the guilt of Conscience, endures worse torments than the wheel, and the saw: As that heat which ascending from the liver, and the region of the heart, doth diffuse itself through the body, is greater than the united flames of the dog-star and the Sun. What torturing invention of Amestris, Pher●tima, or Perillus did ever so afflict distressed wretches, as the fury of his own Conscience did torment Orestes, though freed from all men but himself? no Tyrant is so cruel as a guilty spirit: Not Scylla with his prison, Sivis with his Isthmian pine, Phalaris with his bull, Sciron with his Rock, nor Faunus in his Inn. The Pelusians when they punished Parricides, conceived no torture so answerable to the heinousness of the crime, as this inward Divine revenge; neither the 
a Pliny mentions this punishment: the parricide after his apprehension, to augment the horror of his conscience, was first whip● with rods dipped in the blood of his murdered parents: and afterwards together with a dog, an ape, and a cock (Creatures which show little reverence towards their sires) he was thrust alive into a strong sack, and so thrown into the Sea.  Sack, nor the Lime-kil pleased them so much as this gnawing worm, the terrible and luctual excogitation of the wise Father of Nature. They ordered therefore, and enacted it for a Law, that the murderer for three days and three nights should be penned up in some narrow room together with the naked body of the slain, and be forced to look upon it, whither he would, or not; which was effected by putting him in such a posture, as permitted him not to look any way, but just upon the dead. The Sicilian Tyrant himself knew that conscience was a more cruel torment then the bull of brass. This made him spare the most unnatural and bloody offenders, that they might be tormented, not with scalding metals, and glowing Iron, but by a damning conscience. The first penalty for murder was conscience: The first Actor of a violent death was punished with life: He that first saw, and introduced death, was thought worthy of no other punishment, but the security of life, which he first showed to be not secure: for it is a more merciless punishment than death, to have long life secured with a kill conscience. So he that brought murder first into the World, was first punished with the terrourr of conscience: Which are then most torturing, when health and strength are the capital punishments. The Protoplasts themselves, the parents of death, and of mankind too, who gave us death before they gave us life, thought it a greater plague than death, to be still alive, and yet to be guilty of death? They would have fled to death, to fly from themselves. Apposite to this is that of Marius' Victor, 
— They fain would (if they might)  
Descend to hide themselves in Hell. So light  
Of foot is vengeance, and so near to sin,  
That soon as done, the Actors do begin  
To fear and suffer by themselves: Death moves  
Before their Eyes; Sad dens, and dusky groves  
They haunt, and hope (vain hope which fear doth guide!)  
That those dark shades their inward guilt can hide.   
You see now that conscience, even amongst 
cell The inhabitants of Pelusium, a town in the borders of Egypt, now called Damiata; It was built by Peleus the fratricide, from whom the Citizens descended.  the Pelusians, was held a legal and politic punishment, that in Phalaris it was a Tyrannical devise, in Cain the Divine vengeance, and in Adam and Eve, the Justice of Nature. God, Nature, Reason, and fury itself (which in this case must not be defined madness,) do all bear witness, that selfe-condemnation, or the guilt of conscience is of all others the most bitter and avenging torment.  
Add to this, that the certainty of it is as infallible, and inevitable, as the extremity and fierceness of it are implacable: there was never any Tyrant so cruel, but would pardon some offender: There was none so severely inquisitive, but some might either escape from him, or deceive him: But the rigour of conscience permits neither favour, flight, nor fraud. It is utterly inexorable, and neither our feet will serve us to ran away, nor our hands to free us: whither shall a man ran from himself, from the secrets of his own spirit, from his life? No man can be an Impostor or dissembler with his own heart, no man can undo what he hath already done: to have sinned is the remediless plague of the Soul. It was a slow expression of Victor, that Vengeance is near to sin. It is swifter than so: It is not consectaneous, or in chase of it, but coetaneous with it, and its foster-sister The punishment hath the same birth with the offence, and proceeds from it; It is both the Sister, and the Daughter of it: Wickedness cannot be brought forth without its penalty: The breast that conceives the one, is big with the other, and when the one is borne, he is delivered of both. It is a fruitfulness like that of Mice, whose young ones are included the one in the other, and generate in the very womb. Conscience, while man thinks of Evil, even before he acts, doth rebuke that thought: so that the punishment is preaexistent to the crime, though in the reign of Virtue it is noiselesse and useless; as penal Laws are dead letters, until they are quickened by offenders. It is then in its minority, and without a sting, or else it is asleep, until the Cry of Sin awakes it. In the state of Evil, Conscience is the first and the last revenger: when small offences are wiped out, enormous crimes like capital letters will still remain.  
No man can find a Sanctuary to save him from himself. No evil doer can so fly for refuge, as to be secure, though he may be safe: He will be afraid in that place, where he thought not to fear: Though he fears not the friends of the murdered, yet he finds that within him, which makes him sore afraid: He may escape the Executioner and the sword, but he will be overtaken by himself; and being safe, he will be afraid even of his safety: Though he may find fidelity in his fellow-Tyrants, yet shall he find none in his own bosom, which is ever clamorous, and spews out blood and guilt. Nature deviseth such a punishment for evil doers, as that which tied living Malefactors unto the putrid Carcases of dead men, that the horror and stench of them might afflict their spirits, and the quick flesh be infected and devoured by the dead and rotten. The punishment sticks fast unto us after the offence, whose carcase is terror of Conscience, Shame, and a gnawing remorse, that feeds still upon the faulty, but is not satisfied. The guilty person can have no peace, 
But night and day doth his own life molest,  
And bears his Judge and witness in his breast.   
Add to this, that Reason which in all other pressures and misfortunes is the great Auxiliary and Guardian of man, is in an offended Conscience his greatest Enemy, and employs all her forces to his vexation and ruin.  
Fortune therefore is not the only cause of our contristation; we ourselves do arm adversities, and put a sword into the hand of grief to wound us with; we are sticklers against ourselves. Evil Actions afflict more than Evil Fortune; We are not only troubled that it was Chance, but that it was our Choice. It is the worst kind of misery, to be made miserable by our own approbation. That evil which we procure to ourselves, must needs grieve us more, then that which we casually suffer: No damage is so doleful, as a condemning conscience. Truly, I do believe, that the only misfortune of Man is Sinne. And so very bad and mischievous a Cheat it is, that when it is most punished, we think it most prospers; neither can Fortune be justly termed Evil, but when she is the Assistant of Evil men, and the surety for Evil doing. This permitted success makes the affairs of the most unrighteous to be esteemed Just: This is a felicity like that of beasts, which we put into pleasant and well watered pastures, that they may be fed for slaughter. Against this true misfortune, as well as the false and seeming, Patience must be our Antidote; not by bearing, but by abstaining from it. Patience in this Case must elevate itself, and pass into a virtuous anger and contempt of sinful prosperity: We must be piously impatient of all their proffers and poisonous allurements; Impatient, I say, that we may patiently overcome them.  
Therefore as I have formerly exhibited the Art of bearing well to be the only remedy against Fortune: So now I shall demonstrate to you, that the Art of abstaining well, is the sole medicine against these true and inward misfortunes: Differing diseases must have different cures. Patience is the poison that kills Fortune, and the Balm that heals her stripes: but a sacred impatience, or abstinence from Sin is the Antidote of Conscience; and the Basis or foundation of this holy impatience is transcendent and triumphant Patience. To mitigate or overcome Fortune is a trivial trick: Flattery will do it, if we can but descend to approve of, and commend all that she doth. To preserve the peace of Conscience, we must be rigid, and censorious: We must speak home, and truly: We must examine before we Act, and admit of no Action that will be a just cause but for to blush. The approaches of Fortune are abstruse: She moves not within the light of Humane wisdom; or if she doth, the strength of her Prerogative lies betwixt Willingness and Constraint: It is a kind of fatal fooling: Man plays with his Stars until they hurt him: But the cause of an evil Conscience is within our view, and may be prevented by Counsel; For no man can Sin against his Will, or without his Knowledge. One nail must drive out another: He that would avoid damnation, must avoid also those things which are damnable: He cannot grieve too much, that grieves only to prevent Eternal grief. The helps we use against Fortune are after-games. But the Salves of Conscience must precede the wound; the cure of spiritual diseases is their prevention. In the affairs of this World the best man is the experienced: But in the distresses and affairs of Conscience, he is the wisest that is most ignorant. A noxious Knowledge is death, and every Sinner is a Fool. The wised●me of Doves is innocence, and that which makes the light to shine is its simplicity. Light is a Type of Joy, and Darkness of Sorrow: Joy is the fruit of innocence, and sorrow of Sinne. The sorrow we take for Fortune is hurtful: Those tears, like tempestuous droppings, if not kept out, will rot the house: But the sorrow for sin is healing. Penitential tears are the O●le of the Sanctuary: God gives them, and afterwards accepts them: they both cleanse us and cherish us. When Marble weeps, it washeth off the dust: Worldly tears are the waters of Marah; the tree that sweetens them, must be showed by the Lord: The waters of the pool 
* the word in the He brew signifies, the house of pouring out: which in a secret Allegory may very well concern man.  Bethesda healed not, until the Angel stirred them; without true remorse tears profit not: but if they have that Ingredient, they are showers which the Lord hath blessed, and must not be stopped, although they might. As courage, and a joyful heart are the ripe fruits of innocence, so shame and sorrow are the hopeful buds and primroses of it. Contrition is the infancy of Virtue: Therefore that sadness must not be expelled which expelleth Vice. It is an invention of the Deity to destroy Sins: That they might be either unfruitful, or fruitful only to their own destruction: For this we have two instances from Nature, in the Mule and the Viper: Whereof the one is barren, and the other unhappily fruitful. Nature is careful that Evils may not multiply, or if they do, that they may not prosper. The Mule is barren, lest there should be an increase of Monsters. Apposite to this, is that saying of Gregory Cerameus, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 &c, Evils (saith he) are denied from God the power of propagating, as mules have not the faculty to preserve their kind by generating one another. The Viper notwithstanding is a mother, but she brings forth her own destruction: The birth of her young ones is her death. So sorrow, that is the child of sin, is the death of it also. Let therefore this saving destroyer of sins be made much off, let this godly sorrow be still cherished, and never rebuked: he that dries up his tears, before he is cleansed, takes delight in his filthiness, and like the loathsome drunkard, would sleep in his vomit: Penitent afflictions should never be resisted but by precaution.  
He then that would not drink of this Wormwood, must be sure to refuse the sugared venom of sin: No man is Evil for nothing. Every defect in life is occasioned by a defect of Patience: because we cannot endure to be constantly good: because we are impatient of continual holiness. Two Evils attend upon Sinners, the Evil of sin, and the Evil of Punishment, which is the Evil of sorrow: To escape the last, we must abstain from the first: we must be either impatient of the first, or else the patients of the last: Unless we will suffer a little to avoid offences, we must suffer much after we have fallen into them. A short displeasure is better than a long torment: This previous Patience of abstaining, frees us from two subsequent Evils: The pain of Conscience until we repent, and after that the pain of Penitence: These two are the Appendants, or retinue of every sin; A seasonable, innocent forbearance is the fence against them both: one small grief averts these two great ones: How wholesome and comfortable is that Patience which prevents sin and sorrow, the Consequent of it? But Virtue, when it is most healthful, is in the estimation of some reputed to be poison: For no other reason do they reject it, of whom Theodotus elegantly sings, 
Virtues fair cares some people measure  
For poisonous works, that hinder pleasure.   
This Patient abstinence from Evil is the Mother of holy Joy, it keeps the mind pleasant and serene: What is there, or what can there be more beneficial, or delightful to man, than a pure, innocent conscience, where all the Virtues (like busy Bees) are in constant action, as in a fair, flowery field, or rather in Paradise? where all is Divine, all Peaceful, nothing polluted, no fear, no distraction. In this state, as Theophanes saith, The wise man is adorned with a Godlike Conscience, and a mind becoming the very Deity. What is there more joyful, then to be master of such a Power, as cannot be violated by Tyrants and Torments? It was a golden and Victorious saying of Tiburtius: Every punishment is poor, when a pure Conscience keeps us company: For as the guilty can receive no comfort: So the Innocent cannot lose his Joy. The Joy of Conscience is Nature's recompense, the coalescent reward, or fruit of integrity, an entailed happiness, the native blandishment of life, and the minds mighty purchase: What happier gain can be, then to rejoice always, for what we have done but once? or what greater damage than an unrighteous gain? It was bravely said by Chilo, that the heaviest loss was to be chosen before base gain: That will grieve us but once, the other always. The loss of temporal goods will trouble us but for a time, but a lost Conscience will torment us Eternally. What greater liberty can there be, than not to fear any thing? And what can he be afeard of, that is not frighted by the guilt of his own spirit? when Periander was asked, what liberty was? he answered, A good Conscience. And another saith, that 
Man should with Virtue armed, and hearten, d be,  
And innocently watch his Enemy:  
For fearless freedom, which none can control,  
Is gotten by a pure and upright Soul.   
Sin makes remiss and cowardly spirits to be the constant slaves of misery: what liberty, yea, what joy can he have, or what dares he do, 
Whose guilty soul with terrors fraught, doth frame  
New torments still, and still doth blow that flame  
Which still burns him: nor sees what end can be  
Of his dire plagues, and fruitful penalty?  
But fears them living, and fears more to die.  
Which makes his life a constant Tragedy.   
Therefore to preserve the mirth and peace of Conscience, righteous, or honest Actions are mainly conducing, and should be always our employment; for this is the appointed task of man, and it is his mystery too. The hand is the best Sacrifice. The Ancient Portugals used to dedicate to their Gods the right hands of their captives; but offer thou thine own, and not another's. To be only without Vice, is a vicious commendation: Nay, it is not commendable at all, but self-indulgence, or a flattering of our own corrupt inactivity. To such a pass is man come, that he is not ashamed to do less for Virtue, than the vicious will do for Vice. It is a most poor and fordid glory, to be only not numbered amongst the bad: It is a base degree of praise, to be reputed only not base. To be without Vice, is not to be good: Not to be vicious, and to be Virtuous, are two things. To refrain from Evil, is scarce not Evil, especially if we proceed no further: For to be able to be good, and not to be throughly so, is, if not Evil, a neighbourhood to Evil. True praise consists not in a bare abstinence from Evil, but in the pursuance & the performance of good. It sufficeth not therefore that we do nothing which may afflict us, but we must withal do something that may exhilarate us. This we must remember, that to do good is one thing, and to become good is another; Although we cannot become good, unless we do good; But we become good, not because we have done good works, but because we did them well. Discretion, which considers the manner of doing good, order the Action so excellently, that oftentimes there is more goodness in the manner, then in the Action: What will it avail us to do good, if it be not well done? It is to write fair, and then to pour the Ink upon it. Actions cease to be good, unless well acted, they are like excellent colours ill-layed on. The more glorious thy intention is, the more carefully thou must manage it. Indiscretion is most evident in matters of importance: One drop of Oil upon Purple, is sooner seen, than a whole quart that is spilt upon Sackcloth.  
The Ermyn keeps his whiteness unstained with the hazard of his life: He values himself at a most sordid rate, that esteems less of Virtue, than this beast doth of his skin; that prefers a foul life to a fair death, that loves his blood more than his honour, and his body more than his Soul. Ennius saith, that the way to live, is, not to love life. Life is given us for another cause, then merely to live: he is unworthy of it, that would live only for the love of life; the greatest cause of life is Virtue: what more absolute madness can there be, then to make life the cause of sin, yea the cause of death, And for life's sake to lose the crow● of life?  
What greater unhappiness, then to die eternally by refusing death? The Virtuous youth Pelagius, rather than he would lose his Innocence, suffered the most exquisite and studied torments of that impure Tyrant Habdarrhagmanus: He suffered many deaths before he was permitted to die: He saw his limbs, his hands, and his sinews cut in sunder, and lying dead by him, while he yet lived. This preservation of their honour some chaste beauties have paid dearly for. It cost Nicetas his tongue, Amianus his Eye, Saint Bridget her face, Apollonia her teeth, and Agatha her breasts: The lovely Cyprian Virgin paid her life for it. 
Nature even for herself doth lay a snare,  
And handsome faces their own traitors are.   
The beauty of Chastity is best preserved by deformity, and the purity of life by a contemptible shape.  
The Shoemaker is careful of the neatness of a shoe, which is made to be worn in dirt and mire: And shall man be negligent to adorn his Soul, which is made for Heaven, and the service of the deity? Every artificer strives to do his work so, as none may find fault with it; And shall we do the works of life perfunctorily and deceitfully? All that makes man to be respected, is his work, as the fruit doth make the Tree: and a good work can never be too much respected. Keep thyself always in respect by doing good: Thy own dignity is in thy own power: If thy works be good, thou shalt be accounted good too; If better than any, thou shalt be acknowledged for the best. Man is the effect of his own Act, he is made by those things which he himself makes: He is the work of his own hands. A rare privilege, that permits men, and empowers them to make themselves: Thou hast leave to be whatsoever thou wouldst be. God would not limit thy happiness: He left thee power to increase it, to polish and beautify thyself according to thy own mind. Thy friend, or thy neighbour cannot do it: Thy own good must be thy own industry. Virtue, because she would be cross to Fortune, is not adventitious. It is our great happiness, that this great good must not be borrowed. Blessed be that Divine mercy which hath given us means to be saved without the assistance of our neighbours, who have endeavoured to damn us! That almighty hand which first Created man in the Image of his Creator, finished him not, but left some things for him to do, that he might in all things resemble his maker. It is one thing to be an Idol, or Counterfeit, and another to be a lively Figure and likeness: There are many Copies, which are not assimilant to their Originals, like Pictures that have not so much as an air of those faces they were drawn by. To the Politure and sweetening of the Divine Image, there are some lines expected from thine own hand. If some expert Statuary, suppose Phidias himself, should leave unfinished some excellent piece, like that Statue of Minerva at Athens, and out of an incurious weariness, give himself to some obscure and Artless employment, or to mere Idleness, wouldst not thou much blame and rebuke him for it? And canst thou deserve any less, if by a loose and vicious life thou wilt either totally deface the Image of God in thyself, or else leave it unfinished? Dost thou think that God is maimed, seeing thou dost leave his Image without hands, I mean, without good works? Dost thou think that he is blind, seeing thou dost extinguish, or put quite out that discerning light and informing wisdom which he hath given thee? He that doth not integrally compose himself, and will not carefully strive for perfection, would represent God to be imperfect, and a Monster. Virtuous manners (saith holy Maximus) are types of the Divine goodness, by which God descends to be represented by man, assuming for a body those holy habits, and for a soul the Innocent dictates of wisdom in the spirit, by which he makes those that are worthy, to become Gods, and seals them with the true character of Virtue, bestowing upon them the solid riches of his infallible and immortal Knowledge.  
Work then while it is day, while it is life-time; work and cease not: Finish this expectation, this great spectacle, not of men only, but of God and Angels. Remember that the rewards and applause of this World are but a Paint of eternity: The solid and permanent glory is given in Heaven, When every man shall have praise of God. The Limbner is careful to beautify and show his utmost skill in that piece, which he knows to be intended for judicious eyes: Thou art not to paint, but really to make a living Image of the Divine mind, which also must be examined and judged by that searching eye, from which nothing can be hidden: have a care that no ill mixture, nothing disproportionable, nothing uneven or adulterate may be found in it. The presents we offer to the true God, must be true and solid works, not the fictitious oblations of Jupiter Milichus: Why wilt thou delight in a maimed Soul, or which is worse, in a Soul whose best part is dead? Thou hadst rather have a member cut off, then hanging dead by thee: Thou wouldst then only wish for its company, when it would be no hindrance to thee. And canst thou endure the immortal Soul to be sick of death, to be sick in his best part, in the head? wilt thou suffer thy mind to drowse, to be paralytical and senseless, never thinking of God, nor of doing good? In such a liver, the beauty of his immortal part is crusted over with an incurable leprosy; and reason, which is the Souls Countenance, is most ingloriously eclipsed. The Task of life is to labour, and the Sacrament of the Soul is to work rationally. Idleness is a Parenthesis in the line of life: When we do nothing, we do not live.  
slothfulness is a dead Existence, a kind of sleep when we are awake: That life is empty, that is not filled with the care of living well. It was truly said by Possidonius, that one day of a learned man's life, was more pleasant, than all the years of the unlearned: One hour, one minute well spent, is to be preferred before a sinful, voluptuous forever. Time is a sacred thing: it flows from Heaven, it is a thread spun from thence by the motion and circumvolution of the spheres. It is an emanation from that place, where eternity springs. The right use of it, is to reduce it to its Original: If we follow time close, it will bring us to its Fountain. It is a clue cast down from Heaven to guide us thither. It is the younger brother of eternity, the one must be sought in the other. It hath some assimilation to Divinity: it is partly knowable, and partly not: We move in it, and we see it not: It is then most invisible; when most present. If we be careful of it, the benefit is ours: If we neglect it, we cast away ourselves. He lives not at all, that lives not well: And he that lives ill, shall die worse: He suffers a living and sensible death: It is death, because it wants the fruit of life; and it is sensible, because it is with loss and punishment. Many ill livers comfort themselves with a vain conceir, that the state of death is senseless: But Vice and Idleness are more malicious deaths, they carry with them the penalty of sense: They are fertile in evils, and barren of good, like a cursed ground that brings forth nothing but thorns and thistles.  
You expect grapes from your vines, & corn from your Fields, but no Fruit at all from yourselves: Were you made to be good for nothing? for shame be your own dressers, Manure yourselves, and prune your vain and noxious affections. Man himself is his own precious Soil, his own fruitful field, and thriving Plant: let him that expects fruits from extraneous things, taste first of his own. Good works are the apples of this Heavenly Plant. The Vine and the Field, though they bear not for themselves, pay their annual proventions. If they had been left to their first fruitfulness before the Curse, they had exceeded in a most uberous, spontaneous fertility; if they should yield nothing now, they would be good for nothing. Man bears fruit for himself, and may bear as much as he pleaseth: Will't thou then keep back thy own provision? Wilt thou pine thyself? or by burying thy talon in the dust, be an enemy to thy own soul, and envious towards others?  
Virtue in my opinion is like to Music: it pleaseth most of all the Virtuous man himself; and it pleaseth also the vicious, whose Conscience doth force him to admire that in others, which he neglects in himself. Music delighteth both the Musician, and the unskilful. Music built the Walls of Thebes; and Virtue must build the new Jerusalem. Music and Virtue are the performances of the hand, and the Cordials of the mind. Every lover of Virtue is Musical, that is so say, he is pleased with the suffrages of his own Conscience, and solaced with the Celestial flights of his pure Spirit: He loves the works of Virtue (not to gain the people's applause,) but for Virtue's sake, whose beauty and power are best seen in her works. Honesty is one of the liberal Arts, it is a trade of Conscience, not of gain. Craftsmen show their skill in their works: The Sculptor in his Cuts, the Painter in his limnings, and the Goldsmith in his Plate. To do something, not the manner of doing it, is their care: Their work may be well done, though negligently, and without much Art. The Limner may give a stroke in haste or anger, which neither Judgement, nor curiosity can ever match. Giotto's circle, though drawn perfunctorily, surpassed the most elaborate pieces of other Arrests. Virtue alone makes no use either of error or chance, and this she doth merely to oppose Fortune. In virtuous actions, if we err in doing, though we do good, yet the work of Virtue is not well done. In other Arts, one Exemplar, or Act may serve to show the Artificers skill, though he should never work more: But it is not so in Virtue; As we cannot know a skilful Musician, unless he plays upon some Instrument; so Virtuous men are not manifested until they Act: He that will give any proof of himself, must needs be active; but to be so once, is not activity.  
Virtue is a most useful thing, and the use of it dyeth not after it is used: For although all the actions of man are transitory, yet when they proceed from Virtue, they are permanent. I advise thee therefore to be permanent, yea to be immortal. Care not for those things which the World esteems to be enduring, as Gold, and the Wealth of Fortune; those will make them wings and fly away, when thou dost least look for it. Care thou for those things which the people, and their Hypocritital rulers value not, because they believe them to proceed from a sheepish and rewardlesse tameness, and not from grace, and the secret dispensations of the God of peace. Care, I say, for Righteousness and Innocence; Care that thy Actions be upright: These are the treasures which the World believing to be transient, shall find one day to be truly solid and permanent. Thou hast read sometimes that advice of the Apostle, Redeem the times: That is to say, what thou dost well at one time, thou shalt have it at all times: Thy good Actions, whithersoever thou goest, will bear thee company: They are Companions of a most rare fidelity, and will leave thee neither in the hour of death, nor after death. When our friends cannot follow us, then do our good works travel with us, they are then our best friends, and overcome our foes. Envy itself is appeased with death, it falls off with the body. Malice knows no posthume persecution, and the glory of Virtue in that state is above the reach of her Enemies: though they may disturb our temporal rights, they are too short to oppose our claim to immortality: The only peaceful possession of the dead, is his good life, and righteous dealings: what will it avail the rich oppressors of this World, to have their Carcases buried in the abundance of their treasures, unless they mean by it, to restore that unto the Earth which was digged out of her bowels? Gold and Silver are no ransom for unrighteousness. Virtue alone, which survives death, is the refreshment of the dead: He cannot be afeard to die, who is assured of a better subsistence after death: Their dissolution is only fearful to those, who lose all by it, and their life to boot. The Posthume Inheritance of man is his righteousness and integrity, which death takes not from him, but puts him in possession of them. Thou mayst gather, that good or Virtuous works are proper and necessary to the Soul, out of man's natural desire of fame, and that innate appetite of immortality which is planted in his Spirit: Nature desires nothing which is not rational, and her persuasions, even when they degenerate, strain, and point at some primitive delights, and innocent privileges which she was free to before her corruption. All secular glories die with the body, goodness only is above the power of death: That fair part of life is kin to the Supreme good, and death cannot hurt it; yea it is secured by death, which kills envy, and frees the virtuous both from the malice of their Enemies, and the possibility of failing in themselves.  
Therefore the best employment for man (if he will consider either his own benefit, or the approbation and liking of nature, which aims also at immortality) is the work of virtue, yea far better than the work of reason. Many, while they study the reason of virtuous works, pass by virtue itself. By a fruitless study how to do good, they lose their time, and do none at all. Theory is nothing so beneficial as Practise. It is a true saying that Jamblichus citys out of Pythagoras; Every good thing consists of substance and use, and not of mere knowledge. To be good, is to do good. The knowledge of a skilful Physician profits not the sick, unless he falls to practise, and gives him something towards his cure. Learned Aphorisms heal not the diseased, but bitter Medicines. That Soul which can reason subtly, and discourse elegantly, is not saved; but the Soul which doth good works: Knowledge and Faith without actual Charity are both dead.  
Nevertheless there is amongst men a certain covetousness of Wisdom and Knowledge, as well as of Money. The acquisition pleaseth them, but they will not set it out to use. As Usurers hoard up their money, laying it out neither in pious works, nor for their own necessities, but suffer it to lie under rust and darkness: So some Learned men neither practise those excellent rules of Living which they have learned, nor will they impart them unto others: They study still more curiosities, being in the mean time incurious of their salvation. I will say of them, as Anacharsis said of the Athenians, They know no use of money but to count it. There is no man poorer than the rich miser, and none more unlearned than the unpractised. Nature is contented with mediocrity: The World hath many things in it which humane affairs have no need of. Virtue also is perfected in few precepts: Though we fill the world with our Writings, it is not our Volumes that can make us good, but a Will to be so. Bookmen write out of no other design, but to reform and civilize Mankind: They make several Assays, numerous attempts, and then renew them. The Dice run not well always, the last cast may carry more than all the former. Therefore to stir up and incline the Will to goodness, many things are necessary; but to be good there is nothing needful but willingness. We suffer ourselves to be cheated by hope; we trust that when we have gathered so much knowledge as we covet, than we shall do all that we can desire. O foolish and vain procrastination. Alchuvius' terms it a Palsy, I am sure it is a madness. We stay like that foolish Beggar for a Mess from the King's table, and in the mean time starve. We care not to use this present life which is our own, but study the secrets of another, which as yet is not ours. We would learn Mysteries, and some things that are either out of our way, or else beyond it. Christian's should neither wander, nor sit down, but go on; What is that to thee? follow thou me. Content is a private sphere, but wants nothing, and is ever calm. They that study the world are (of the two) the worst Speculators. Popular, politic persons live always by events: Their ambition and firienesse makes their lives uneven, and uncertain: innocent, and undisturbed habits are the companions of Humility. Giant-spirits, though they may flash sometimes with fair thoughts, have always dark and stormy affections. Men, or the most part of men, are like Swans, whose feet though ever in a living Bath, are always black; but their wings and down, which keep above those streams, are pure white. That part of our lives which is ever paddling with the current of Time, is foul and defiled; but that which soars above it, is fair and holy. Worldly business is the Souls Idleness.  
Man, ordained to be King of the World's Republic, had been a mere cipher, if without Soul-imployment. He had been created to no end without this Aim. If he for whom all things were made, will not endeavour to secure himself being made, he was made in vain. An ornament to the World he cannot be: He was not made with any great gaiety, & his decays are both numerous and hasty. If to be seen only, were the duty of created things, the Stars should have been only fixed, and not moving. Stop (if thou canst) the course of the Sun, his restless and vast circumvolution: As motion makes him bright and lively (for he rejoiceth to run his race) so standing still, and slothtfulnesse would make him sad and sullied; the beauty of the Firmament would be darkened, the freshness of the earth would fade, and the whole family of Nature missing those cherishing beams, would pine and decay: Rivers would fall asleep, Minerals would prove abortive, and the mourning world would waste away under darkness and sterility. But the Sun though he should not move, would not be useless; his very sight is beneficial. He is the created light of the visible world, a marvellous vessel, and an ornament in the high places of the Lord. But man for whom all these things were made, without he b● active and serviceable to his own Soul, is good for nothing. There is nothing more pleasant, nothing more peaceful, nothing more needful than an industrious, Wise man, and nothing more impertinent, and useless than the sluggard. The rest of the mind is the motion of Virtue, and the idleness of the idle is the disturbance of his Spirit. He that doth nothing, is of less use, and by much worse than nothing itself. Wouldst thou be reduced into that unnatural Vacuity of not being, which is without form and void? Cease to do good, and it is done. The fruitless tree must be cut down: Dost thou ask why? That it may not be; yea, that it may be nothing, and not cumber the ground. Annihilation is more profitable than a fruitless being. In this Family of Nature, every one hath his task: None may be idle. The best and the Noblest are the most laborious. Consider Heaven, the first Exemplar of agility; the brightest and the most active Elements are the next to it, and above them move the Stars. Fire is the Suburb of Heaven: The Earth which is cold and dull, like an Island lies most remote, and cut off (as it were) from the neighbourhood of light. Nothing hath commerce with Heaven, but what is pure: he that would be pure, must needs be active: Sin never prevails against us, but in the absence of Virtue, and Virtue is never absent, but when we are idle. To preserve the peace of Conscience, we must not fear sufferings; if the hand of man wound us, God himself will cure us: But if we wound ourselves by resisting him, the hands of all his creatures will be against us, because ours was against his.  
Having now taught you how to master Adventitious, Personal Evils, and to prevent the Evils of Conscience; It orderly follows, that I should teach you how to subdue and triumph over Public Evils, or National Calamities. The sufferings of just persons wound the heart of a wise man, when his own cannot grate upon it. Fortune, that could neither hurt him by force, nor by fraud, draws blood from him through the sides of others. The righteous liver is troubled more with the losses of his neighbours, then with his own. He whose patience could not be overcome by passion, lies open and naked to the assaults of compassion. The life of the wise man is the most precious and profitable, he lives not only for himself, but for others, and for his Country: The safety of the imprudent is his care, as well as his own: He is not only their compatriot, but their patriot and defender. Excellent is that rapture of Menander, 
— True life in this is shown,  
To live for all men's good, not for our own.  He only truly lives, that lives not merely for his own ends. To live is not a private, but a public good: The Treasure of good living is diffusive. The Civil Guardian looks to the goods of his Wards: but the wise man is the natural Tutor of the people, and looks to the public good, and to the aged as well as those that are in their Minority. It will therefore be worthy our pains, to consider and inquire how such men should carry themselves in popular and grand mutations; Whither they should change their Nature, or their Manners, or retain them both, when both fortune, knaves and fools are most changing. In National alterations, a wiseman man may change his outward carriage, but not his inward: His mind must be dry and unmoved, when his Eyes flow with tears: He must bestow a compassionate, Fatherly look upon the afflicted, and those that are so weak, as to believe that temporal sufferings can make them miserable. But neither his tears, nor those that he bewails, must work so far upon him, as to break his inward peace by admitting of fear, or hope, or the desire of revenge; and though he himself stands in a secure station, from whence he can both distress & defeat Fortune, yet must he help also to redeem others; he must take the field with his Forces, and set upon her with open valour, doing good (as Tzetzes saith) to all men, and abolishing every where the power of Fortune. If he finds that the breasts of others are too narrow to entertain Royal Reason, he must labour by Stratagems, by Manuductions, and inducing circumstances to encourage and strengthen them; He must not leave them, until he hath secured them. Antisthenes' said, that a good man was a troublesome burden. Who but insipid wretches, that have no feeling of their misery, will assent to this position? A good liver is troublesome to none, but to the bad, and he is by so much the more precious and desirable. That wound which makes the patient senseless; is more dangerous than that which smarts and grieves him. But if their misery when it is made apparent to them by the good man is thereby diminished, and they acknowledge themselves to have been made so by their own vain opinion; it is just that they confess Virtue to be healing, and that by her means they found help from a stranger's hand, when their own were infirm and helpless. O Virtue, the great lenitive of mankind! Yea of those who are thine Enemies! Thy hand heals him, that would hurt thee, 
As Egypt's drought by Nilus is redressed,  
So thy wise tongue doth comfort the oppressed.   
Yea, the Evil by whose association thy purity was never defiled, thou dost help by the good. In every virtuous man I hold that saying to be true, which Venantius spoke of the great Captain Bonegissus: His hand restores, his Counsel secures: whom Fortune rejects or casts out of her arms, he taketh up and guards them in his. And hence I am induced to differ in my opinion from Philo, about that saying of the Jews Lawgiver, that a wise man hath heavy hands. What wonder is it if they be so, seeing the imprudent, the afflicted, and th● disconsolate, who are grievous and heavy to themselves, do all depend and hang ●pon his arms, like Infants upon their mothers?  
To help these hangers on, he must needs be bowed, and by speaking fair to their grievances, begin to redress them. This is the property, or rather the prerogative of the constant and wise man; He can descend safely from the Sphere of his own happiness to mingle with, and to comfort the miserable. No man by standing still can rescue one that is carried away by a violent torrent, and ready to be drowned; nor if he also be overcome by the same stream, can he save the other. It is one thing to be thrown down, and another to be bowed down. He that would not be thrown down, must look to the liberty of his Will, and not submit it to Fortune. But to restore, or raise up others, it is necessary that he must bow. No man can take up a Child that is fallen, but by bending himself: To cure the illaffected, we must in some things incline to their affections. Comfort is a potion of that nature, that heals not the sick, without an appearance of the same indisposition in the very Physician: The patient will otherwise suspect that for poison, which is meant for his health. He that is illaffected, will be unwilling to believe that another which is not so, can have any skill to cure him: And he that labours with the same disease, can neither cure others, nor himself. Therefore he that would minister comfort unto the distressed, must of necessity have his will above the Tyranny of Fortune, he must have a mind that is invulnerable, and yet seem to be very tender and sensible of her lightest strokes. It is one thing to be subject to these affections, and another to rule them: To be had of them, and to have them. He that would lose others, must not be bound himself. When Mus●nianus observed a Troop of horse, that was under his command, to halt, and make a stand, expecting some Omen from a bird that had suddenly pitched before them, he bent his bow, and riding up to the front of the Troop, shot at the bird, and killed him: Then laughing at their folly, he told them, that there was but little advice or help to be expected from such irrational creatures, that were not only ignorant of the destiny of others, but could not foresee their own ill luck. We must look first to our own safety, afterwards to others: The hand of the helper should make the first assay upon himself: He that experimentally knows, he can swim, is fi to save another that is in danger to be drtowned.  
But when I speak of tenderness, and a seeming compliance with the weakness of others; I mean not dissimulation. I allow a community of tears, but not of the cause of tears. Let the miserable bewail their misery, and let the wise man mourn with those that mourn, because they mourn amiss, not because they suffer. Let him not mourn for the power of Fortune, but for the weakness of man. When a friend of Solon found him weeping, he told him, That tears were not the potion against Fortune, and would therefore profit nothing; I know it well (said Solon) and that is it which I Lament. He bewailed the tears of others, not the cause of their tears: That is it which a wise man (the enemy and the avenger upon Fortune,) may justly bewail, to see men weep, when weeping avails not. He is troubled, not because they suffer, but because they will not be comforted; yea, because they will not be men: He thinks not that it is Evil to suffer worldly afflictions; Nay, he knows it is good, but he knows withal that worldly sorrows slay the Soul. This is the consideration that calls forth his tears: He wisely distinguisheth, that man is not made miserable by any outward accidents, but by his own opinion: For no man is made unhappy, because he exists, or is, but because he thinks himself to be so: The wise man bewails a greater Evil than the Evil of misfortune, and that is the inability of some men to bear Evil. He mourns not because they are Patients, but for their impatience. The true or real Evil which he knows to be in them, is their ignorance of false or reputed Evils. That which causeth him to weep, is their causeless weeping. He that disguiseth his constancy thus, dissembles not. I make not a wise man to be impassable, but enduring and compassionate, yea the Patient of compassions: Though I exempt him from the crowd and populacy; I place him not above Humanity: Though he is no peer of the Multitude, yet he descends to pity them: But we do not therefore disturb his peace and serenity, because he is merciful and condoling; but because it is his expectation, his desire. He is not stormy, nor treacherous, nor base, but courteous, liberal and happy; he is in all estates master of himself; he is kept fresh and pleasant by the secret Joys and vivifications of an unoffended Conscience. It was well said by the School-Divine; That the tears of the righteous were the smiles of their Souls.  
Gregory Nazianzen commended his Brother Cesarius for his honest dissimulation with the dissembling Court. He was inwardly an Anachorite, and outwardly a Courtier. In public and splendid affairs affairs (which are more seducing and inconstant then private,) this policy is necessary: We should always have a snare ready for them, that we may escape theirs. In the downright blows of Fortune, that is, in our own domestic losses, We should be sincere and naked; we should put on nothing but our native complexion, and a serene mind. In this Case, we should be so undaunted, as to look upon upon Fortune, and overcome her without any weapons, we should set naked upon her, not only without defensive arms, but without clothes. In the dangers of others, we must deal otherwise; we must use all means to secure them: We must deal with Fortune as she deals with us, by disguises and stratagems: All her wares are but gilded clouds, a Superficial wash; they are not that which they seem to be; to be true to ourselves, we must be false to these, we must not trust them. She cannot require more from us, or better, than what she gives: Her Good, and her Evil are both counterfeits, and he that dissembles with them, offends not. The riches of this world are not sound within: We may not for th●ir sakes corrupt our Souls, and be mad● like unto them. Let the peace of Co●●●●●nce shine within, upon a white and undefiled Throne, though we look mournful and ragged without. No Man deals better, or more justly with this World, than he that lends her his face, but keeps his heart. This is the Nature of the World, to give us a fair look, and an empty hand. Consider thyself: How often hast thou been that Creature, which thou didst not seem to be? All the accoutrements of Fortune, all her pomp, and the transitory course thereof, when laid out with the best advantage, seems to me but a Stage-play. Her most glorious favourits pass by like Whifflers, which carry Torches in their hands only to show the deformity of their vizards: They hasten away, and like To speedy posts, bear hence the Lamp of life.  
All the glory of this World, hath darkness, and treachery in it. It passeth gloomily by us, like high-way-men that traverse the road with veiled faces: he that will be even with this Counterfeit, must clap on a vizard too, and by an honest dissimulation, preserve himself.  
In the funerals of our friends, our kindred and benefactors, we may moderately mourn; but we must not lose our Patience, nor that Christian peace, which is the golden fruit of faith and hope. The great mercy of God hath so provided, that Evil when it sets upon us, is but an apparition; there comes good presently after it. To live well, we have in ourselves more then enough: we need not any extraneous help; our very desiring of it, makes us miserable. So excellently best is our condition, that the blessed life is ours gratis, but misery we must hunt after. The happy life needs neither riches nor wishes; Misery cannot be had without desiring, and it is never given without Covetousness, which is the price paid for it. We suffice of ourselves for a happy life; why not for mere life, which is something less? shall we think ourselves poor, because we abound with the means of happiness? As long as the batteries of Fortune cannot shake the mind, nor make the will to fly into shivers; the heart is whole, and our peace is secure: Her musters and preparations seem formidable but to children only: Take off the helmet, or vizard of Evil, and underneath it, you will find good: Hast thou lost a friend that took care for thee like a mother, and furnished the like a Father? that very loss is an occasion of greater gain, though at first it appears not. Parents sometimes to sport with their Children disguise themselves: The Child at the first sight is dejected, but having taken off the Masque, he finds his Mother: He laughs, kisseth and embraceth her, and if she comes again in that dress, he fears her not. Who would not be astonished at that furious Army of Evils, which fought against holy Job? It was a sad sight to see a Father, after the loss of his Children, and substance, to lie languishing under the Tyranny of a devouring Ulcer, And where? upon a dunghill, the very sink of uncleanness and corruption. But this frighted him not: He was so far from thinking it an Evil, that he played with the worms, and made that, which his friends esteemed for vengeance and misery, to be his meditation and mirth: He was sure that he was innocent, and retaining his integrity, he could not miss of joy. He saw through that Crust and Scab, the sure mercies of God: His beautiful and healing hand, shined through that loathsome Veil. He desired not the comforts of his kindred, nor his friends: he said to corruption, thou art my Father, and to the worms, you are my Sisters. This was only a shell, or seeming Evil; but the kernel, or substance that lay within it, was solid and real good. As Children deal with nuts, so good and wise men deal with Calamities; they break the shell, and eat the kernel: both the Good and Evil of this World have their fucus, and outside: He that knows that, and knows how to take it off, is a knowing man, and knows how to use them.  
This lesson Saint Paul taught the Citizens of Corinth. Let them that weep (saith he) be as though they wept not: and they that rejoice, as though they re●oyced not: And they that buy, as though they possessed not. He allows only an illusive and seeming commerce with the World: Hear his reason, and you will acknowledge his Justice: The fashion of this World (saith he) passeth away, or is transient and deceiving: That which men call fruition in this World, is but face-acquaintance: All temporal possession is but a looking on, the things themselves pass away. They are still in a Cryptical, unperceived motion, when we suppose them to be fast locked, and fettered in our arms: They creep from us like a mist or smoke, which in confused and silent Evolutions steals out at the top of the chimney, after it hath fouled it within.  

All worldly things, even while they grow, decay,  
As smoke doth, by ascending, wast away.  Saith Dionysius Lyrinensis. The Apostle would have us to put on the same disposition, and to be even with this great deceiver by a like deception. Let us give it but a glimpse, and half a face, as it gives us but a transient and flattering salute. Let us weep and not weep, rejoice and not rejoice, use it and not use it. This we can never Act handsomely without personating, or rather mocking this Arch-cheat. When our Eyes flow with tears, we must keep our Consciences smiling and pleasant: We must have Heraclitus his face, and Democritus his heart. The forehead is the Index of the mind; but the Soul of the just must shine, when his face is most clouded. We must not give our strength unto the World, that is to say, we must not seriously affect it: In all our negotiations with it, we must stand at a distance, and keep our affection for him, who must be loved with all the heart, with all the strength, and with all the Soul. Saint Paul (when he made use of this expression,) had respect, I believe, unto the rites of the Roman Theatre, the Comic and Tragic Laws of their Poets, which together with their Government, were dispersed into all civil climates: He applied to the various representations, sudden changes and successive shows of the Stage, where Truth moved in disguise, and the serious travels of the Sons of Men, were by Masquers and personating Counterfeits solidly Acted: Where the short flourish of humane affairs did wither by degrees, and ended in a sad Catastrophe, while the Poet's plot upbraided the vanity of statesmen's policy. The World is a mere Stage; the Master of the Revels is God; the Actors are Men; the Ornaments and flourishes of the Scenes are honour, power and pomp; the transitory and painted Streams of Mortality, which pass along with the current of time, and like flowers, do but only appear, when they stay longest: He that enjoys them most, doth but smell to them, and the shortest fruition permits as much.  
What else was the Majesty of the Assyrian Empire, but a tractitious, vanishing apparition, a slight Flash of transient glory? It shot by like a falling star, and was presently succeeded by the Medes and Persians: after them came the Macedon, and last of all the Roman. The Kingdoms of mortal men are not Immortal: they are no better than their Rulers. Where is Ninus now, where is Semiramis, Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, Antipater, Ptolemy, Julius Caesar, Octavian, and Tiberius? Where now are these Patriarches of amb●ition, these weak roots of the Assyrian, Median, Persian, Macedonian, Asian, Egyptian, and Roman greatness? What is become of these Primats of pride, these eldest Sons of Fortune, these prosperous disturbers of mankind's peace, before whom the world became dumb, like a Sparrow before a Kite? what a deep Silence! What a thick darkness is now drawn over them! Nothing remains of them but their names, and the bare Skeleton of glory: Their only boast, is, that they have been: Our only Knowledge, is, that they are vanished. Nay, it is most certain, that we 
a Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona multi; sed omnes Illach ymabiles urgentur, ignotique longâ nocte, carent quia vate sacro.  know not all their names; those we are acquainted with, are not many: so ruinous a thing is humane glory, though held by mortal men to be immortal. They are deceived: It leaves neither Relics, as their bodies do; nor Inscriptions, like their Sepulchers. The glory of men is more mortal than their Carcases. Their bones remain after ●heir Funerals, after the fire, & Executioner; And th●ir teeth may be seen, when they can neither snarls, nor bite. But their fame is edible, it is dev●●red by time without F●re, ●●a, without Air; for by no● re●●●●ing posterity, it becomes dumb, and missish their ●ongues, by whose speaking it lives. All the felicity of men is a dream, it comes on they know not how, and when it vanisheth, they cannot so much as discern its Backparts. If these recorded Empires, these famous Yokes and Burdens of the World came so suddenly to nothing; what will be the lot of these petty fetters, these leaden manacles that we are bound with? If those massy and mighty weights were so clearly blown off; what will become of these loose Packs, which have nothing to balasse them, but feathers, but chaff and motes? Those universal Monarchies founded upon the principal Cities of the World, whose Colony was the whole Earth: Those Cities whose bulwarks did threaten the Clouds, whose Armies and Fleets made the Earth to tremble, and the Seas to groan: whose Laws (like Oracles) were held sacred and unalterable; found no security against the Arm of God, which tears the Crown from the Head, and the Sceptre from the right hand of the Lawgiver. He considers in his dwelling pl●c●, like a cl●●r 〈◊〉 upon h●●bs: ●e 〈…〉 the things that are to c●●e: He ●●●●th the Nations with the S●ve of 〈◊〉: He brows upon them, and they w●th 〈◊〉 and ●hall not be planted. And why t●in●●ou the● that these dry and fading 〈…〉 flourish for ever? All temporal triumphs have their date: they pass away in a sure and uninterrupted course, and when they begin to decay and unloade themselves, than they are swiftest. All the pomp of this World, is but gilded emptiness, a nine day's blossom, whose beauty drops into the same Mould from whence it sprung. It is the Consciousness of their delusion, that makes these worldly honours fly from us so fast; lest if they should stay long, we should discover their Cozenage; the discoverer than would be ashamed of his dot age, and the discovered would blush at his deceit.  
Therefore Saint Paul, in these versible and transitory fashions of the World, would have us to personate Stage-players, who when they weep, grieve not; when they b●y, they possess not; when they command, they are without authority. Seeing the World is but a play, and a fable, he would not have us to act in earnest. Player's Act the lives of others, not their own: I wish that we could do so too. Excellent is that advice of the divine, To live a stranger unto life.  
Why should I be troubled with the affairs of others, more than with their Agues or Fevers? he that lives without the Affections of this life, is master of himself, and looks upon all things, as Spectators do upon Stageplays, who are without passion, because without Interest. The Actors care not how the Scenes vary: they know, that when the Play is ended, the Conqueror must put off his Crown in the same Wardrobe where the Fool puts off his Cap. Take this wholesome Counsel of resting quiet in the degree appointed thee, not from the mouth of Musonius, Teletes, or Epictetus, who adviseth thee to be a Pantomime, or shifting S in these worldly Interludes, but from the mouth of Saint Paul, that great Doctor of the Universe. Let every man wherein he is called, therein abide with God.  
That Supreme, Eternal mind is the master and deviser of this worldly Drama: He brings on the persons, and assigns them their parts. Art thou called to be a servant? be not troubled at it: Hath he ordained thy life to be short? desire not to have it lengthened: If poor, desire not to be made rich. What part soever he hath appointed for thee, be contented therewith, and Act it faithfully. It is thy duty to represent the person thou wert chosen for, and not to choose; that is the prerogative of thy great master. If it be his will, that thou shouldst Act a beggar, a sick man, or an afflicted, let it be thy care to act it well, and to meddle with no other action. The stageplayer is not commended, because he acts the part of a Prince, but because he acts it well, and like a Prince. It is more commendable to act a fool, a beggar, or a mourner to the life; then to act a King, or a Philosopher foolishly. In the beginning, the middle, and the end of thy Course, keep thou to thy part. The best way of acting is to make thy heart consentaneous to thy tongue, thy deeds to thy words, and thy conversation to thy doctrine. In all the tumults and combustions of this World, keep constant to thy station; comfort the afflicted, and envy not the wicked; despise not the one, and flatter not the other: remember thy Creator, and forget not thy end.  
Gloria tibi mitissime Jesus!   

OF LIFE and DEATH.  
THE People think Life to be the greatest good, and Death the greatest evil. They are mightily deceived: And as in the least blessings, so in this, which is the greatest, they greatly err. For Life, if thou livest not well, is the greatest evil; and Death, if thou diest not ill, is the greatest good; and die ill thou canst not, unless thou livest ill. A life that is not good increaseth evils and wickedness; and the death of the good sets an end to afflictions and miseries. Those that are sick of the Jaundis, judge the sweetest honey to be the most bitter: So evil men esteem Death to be evil, because of their evil conscience; but Death is not so to any, but to those only, whose evil lives end in the evil of endless death. This controversy I shall decide with such reasons as must not be numbered, bu● weighed. If we look upon Philosophy, it takes part with Death, and is the first that marcheth into the field against this popular error. It teacheth us that this hideous nothing, this imaginary fear of the multitude should be always contemned, and sometimes desired. How many wise men hath this contempt of Death made Immortal? For those, who by a continual remembrance of death, did compose and regulate their lives, are now by the memory of their virtuous lives vindicated from death. Socrates' perfected his wisdom by his willingness to die; Pythagoras by his gentleness; Anaxagoras died merrily; 
* One of the Indian Gymnosophists, who feeling himself a little sick made a great Bonfire, and in the presence of Alexander burnt himself therein. Alexander a little before asked him, What he would have? he answered, I shall see thee shortly. Which fell out, for he died at Babylon few days after.  Calanus resolutely; he would not stay to be tamely besieged by her, but sally edout, and took her. he surprised death and a●l of them despised her. No definitions we can give will suffice to make Death odious, every one will make it desirable. Whither you consider what Death is, or what are the effects, or consequents of it; whether the evil or the good attending it; or whether Death itself be a mere evil or mere good all make for it. For though it should be an evil, yet the good that comes by it exceeds that evil; and being evil, it cannot be so great an evil as all those evils it puts an end to.  
What one thing hath Life that is desirarable? Contentions, and obstinate, busy miseries, whose frequency and number hath made them less feared than Death, which comes but once: Whose assiduity, or daily malice to afflict us, hath by a long custom made us not valiant, but senseless and blockish. Orpheus' defined Life to be the penalty of Souls; and Aristotle added, That it was a punishment like to that, which tied the living to the dead, mouth to mouth, and breast to breast. The pure and eternal Soul is tied to the putrid and wasting carcase. If God should now suddenly create a man, giving him withal in that very instant the perfect and free use of his mind, and should then bring before him all Mankind (as he did all living creatures before the first man) and show him in this mixed multitude some weeping and sighing; some without eyes to weep; some without hands; others without legs; some sick and languishing; others eaten up with horrid, impure ulcers; some beging; others quarrelling; some plotting treason, and washing their hands in innocent blood; some old and decrepit, quivering, trembling, and leaning upon staves; some distracted, and bound up in chains; others plundered, tortured, murdered, and martyred; their murderers in the mean time pretending Religion, Piety, and the Glory of God: And after all this outward Scene, should so enlighten his eyes, that he might discover another inward one, I mean their secret thoughts, and close devices, their tyranny, covetousness, & sacrilege varnished outwardly with godly pretences, dissembled purity, and the stale shift of liberty of Conscience: Is there any doubt to be made, think you, but after such impious, and astonishing spectacles, he would quickly repent of his existence or being, and earnestly desire to be dissolved again, that he might rest in peace, and not be cast into this hospital, and valley of villainies which we call the World. It is for this cause, that wise Nature is so slow and niggardly in her dispensations of reason and maturity unto man, lest a sudden perfection should make us loathe her, and lest the necessary evils of life understood in gross, and upon our first entrance into life should discourage us from undergoing those miseries which by degrees, and successive conflicts we more willingly struggle with. Abner the Eastern King, so soon as his son was born, gave order for his confinement to a stately and spacious Castle, where he should be delicately brought up, & carefully kept from having any knowledge of humane calamities; he gave special command that no distressed person should be admitted into his presence; nothing sad, nothing lamentable, nothing unfortunate; no poor man, no old man, none weeping nor disconsolate was to come near his Palace. youthfulness, pleasures, and joy were always in his presence, nothing else was to be seen, nothing else was discoursed of in his company. A most ridiculous attempt to keep out sorrow with bars and walls, and to shut the gates against sadness, when life is an open door by which it enters. His very delights conveyed displeasure to him, and grief by a distaste of long pleasure found way to invade him. So constant is pleasure in inconstancy, that continual mirth turns it into sadness. Certainly though Abner by this device might keep all sorrows from the presence of his son, he could not keep them from his sense: He could keep out, and restrain external evils, but could not restrain his inherent affections. His son longed; this made him sad in the very midst of his joys. And what thinkst thou did he long for? Truly, not to be so cumberd with delights. The grief of pleasures made him request his father to lose the bonds of his miserable felicity. This suit of the Son crossed the intentions of the Father, who was forced to give over his device to keep him from sadness, lest by continuing it, he should make him sad. He gave him his liberty, but charged his attendants, to remove out of his way all objects of sorrow: The blind, the maimed, the deformed, and the old must not come near him. But what diligence is sufficient to conceal the miseries of Mortality? they are so numerous, that they may as soon be taken out of the world, as hidden from those that are in the world. Royal power ●●●vailed less here then humane infirmity; for this last took place in spite of the first. The Prince in his Recreations meets with an old man, blind, and leprous; the sight astonisheth him; he startles, trembles, and faints, like those that swound at the apparition of a Spirit; inquires of his followers what that thing might be? And being inwardly persuaded that it was some fruit of humane life, he became presently wise, disliked pleasures, condenmed mirth, and despised life. And that his life might have the least share here, where Fortune hath the greatest, he rejected the hopes and blandishments of life, yea that which is to many the price of two lives, his Kingdom, and royal Dignity: He laboured with all diligence to live so in the world as if he had been dead, that by avoiding sin, the cause of sorrow, he might be, though not safe, at least secure. If this single accident made him so much offended with life, what (think you) would he have done, had his liberty been universal, and unbounded? What if he had seen the inside of those stately Tombs we build for the worms to eat us in, where they feed upon such fat oppressors as have been fed here with the tears and pillage of the oppressed? What if he had narrowly searched every corner of the world, and seen those necessary uncleannesses in which the birth of man is celebrated, in which this misery is inaugurated, by the pains of the Mother, and the cries of the Infant? What if he had entered into their bedchambers and bosoms, where some sit weeping, others wishing; some surfeited and sick with fruition? where some mourn for their wives, others for their children; some pine and starve with want, others are full and vomit; some are troubled with lack of necessaries, and others are as much vexed with abundance and superfluity? What if after all this search, and wide disquisition he could not have found one house without some misfortune, and none without tears? What if he had been admitted into the breasts of all those, whom either domestic, hidden griefs, lingering diseases, worldly cares, or an insatiable covetousness is ever tormenting? Perhaps they sight of so many evils had driven him to a refusal of life, in which we do so die with miseries, and by which miseries do so live in us; at least he had earnestly wished and groaned for some means of redemption from so miserable a bondage. If any had brought him the joyful news of liberty, and affirmed that some were already made free, he had certainly envied them very much, and would have been impatient to know the means. But when it had been told him that the device and release was death, I do not only think, but I verily believe that he had both approved of it, and would have sought for it more than for hidden treasure. He had judged it not only desirable and convenient, but necessary, and the greatest felicity, and favour that the living could expect.  
If some solitary traveller, shut up in a wilderness, and surrounded with wild beasts, should on the one side see a Tiger making towards him, on the other a Lion, and from some third place a scaly, winding Serpent, or a Basilisk, which kills with ●is very looks, 
Whose hissings fright all Nature's monstrous Ills,  
His eye darts death, more swift than poison kills.  
All Monsters by instinct to him give place,  
They fly for life, for death lives in his face;  
And he alone by Nature's hid commands  
Reigns Paramont, and Prince of all the sands.   
If these, with a thousand more, as Bears, Leopards, Wolves, Dragons, Adders, and Vipers were gathered together about him, and ready to seize upon him, what would not he give to be freed from the violence and rage of such destroyers? What greater felicity could he desire, then to be redeemed from such an horrid and fatal distress●? And is it a lesser blessing to be delivered from greater evils? We are surrounded with calamities, torn by inordinate wishes, hated by the world, persecuted, pressed, and trodden upon by our enemies, disquieted with threatenings, which also torture and dishearten some; for in pusillanimous dispositions fear makes words to be actions, and threats to be torments. Death is a divine remedy which cures all these evil Death alone is the cause that temporal miseries are not eternal. And I know not how that came to be feared, which brings with it as many helps, as the world brings damages. Danger itself is a sufficient motive to make us in love with security. Death only secures us from troubles: Death heals, and glorifies all those wounds which are received in a good cause. When Socrates had drank off his potion of hemlock, he commanded that sacrifices should be offered to Aesculapius, as the Genius of Medicine. He knew that Death would cure him. It was the Antidote against that poisonous Recipe of the Athenian Parliament. Tyranny travels not beyond Death, which is the Sanctuary of the good, and the Lenitive of all their sorrows.  
Most ridiculous were the tears of Xerxes, and worthily checked by his Captain Artabazus; when seated on the top of an hill, and viewing his great Army (wherein were so many hands as would have served to overturn the world, to level mountains, and drain the seas, yea to violate Nature, and disturb Heaven with their noise, and the smoke of their Camp) he fell to a childish whining, to consider in what a short portion of time all that haughty multitude, which now trampled upon the face of the earth, would be laid quietly under it. He wept to think, that all those men (whose lives notwithstanding he hastened to sacrifice to his mad ambition) should die within the compass of an hundred years. The secular death, or common way of mortality, seemed very swift unto him, but the way of war & slaughter he minded not. It had been more rational in him to weep, because death was so slow and lazy, as to suffer so many impious, inhuman soldiers to live an hundred years, and disturb the peace and civil societies of Mankind. If as he saw his Army from that hill, he had also seen the calamities and mischief they did, with the tears and sorrows of those that suffered by them, he had dried his eyes, and would not have mourned, though he had seen death seizing upon all those savages, and easing the world of so vast an affliction. He would not have feared that, which takes away the cause of fear: That is not evil, which removes such violent and enormous evils. If I might ask those that have made experiment of life and death, whither they would choose (if it were granted them) either to live again, or to continue in their state of dissolution, I am sure none would choose life but the wicked, & those that are unworthy of it; for no pious liver did ever repent of death, and none ever will. The Just desire not this life of the unjust, which (were it offered them,) they would fear it more, (now being at rest,) then ever they feared death, when they lived. The story runs that Stanislaus the Polonian, a man of marvellous holiness and constancy; had the opportunity to put this question, and the respondent told him, that he had rather suffer the pains of dissolution twice over again, then live once: He feared one life, but did not fear to die thrice.  
Having this Solution from the experienced, it is needless, and fruitless to question on the living. If Souls were Preaexistent, as one Origen dreamt, as Cebes, Plato, Hermes, and other Philosophers, the great Fathers of Heretics, have affirmed; We might have reason to conclude, that they would obstinately refuse to be imprisoned in the wombs of women, and wallow in Seminal humours. What if it were told them, that they must dwell nine months in a thick darkness, and more than nine years (perhaps all the years of their sojourning) in hallucinations, and the darkness of ignorance? what if the pains, the exigencies, the hunger and thirst they must endure, before they can be acquainted with the miseries of life, were laid before th●m? The Infant while he is yet in the womb, is taught necessity. Quest for food makes him violate that living Prison, and force his way into the World. And now comes he forth, (according to the Sentiment of Hypocrates,) to seek for Victuals; the provision which proceeded from his Mother, being grown too little for him. But he comes from one prison into another, and breaks through the first to enlarge his own, which he carries with him: But if the Souls ●hus incarcerated (like Prisoners through a grate) might behold the various plagues and diseases of those that are at liberty, as Palsies Passions of the heart, Convulsions, Stranguries, the Stone, the Gout, the Wolf, the Phagedaena, and an hundred other horrid incurable Evils, such as Pherecides, Antiochus, and Herod were tormented with, or that fearful sickness of Leuthare, which was so raging and furious, that she did eat her own flesh, and drink her blood in the extremity of the pain: Or if they might see those Evils, which man himself hath sought and found out for himself; as emulations, wars, bloodshed, confusion, and mutual destruction; Is there any doubt to be made, think you, but they would wish themselves freed from such a miserable estate; or that their intellectual light were were quite extinguished, that they might not behold such horrid and manifold calamities. Plato imputed the suspension of Reason in Infants, and the hallucinations of Childhood to the terror and astonishment of the Souls, which he supposed them to be possessed with, because of their sudden translation from the Empyreal light, into the dark and gross prisons of flesh, and this inferior World; as if such a strange and unexpected change (like a great and violent fall,) had quite doted them, and cast asleep their intellectual faculties. Proclus assisted this conjecture of Plato, with another argument drawn from the mutability, and the multitude of Worldly Events, which in the uncertain state of this life, the Souls were made subject unto. Add to this, that the merriest portion of life, wihch is youth, is in both sexes bedewed with tears, and the flowers of it are sullied, and fade away with much weeping, and frequent sadness. Children also want not their sorrows: The Rod blasteth all their innocent joys, and the sight of the Schoolmaster turns their mirth into mourning. Nay that last Act of life, which is the most desirable to the Soul, I mean old Age, is the most miserable. 
The plenteous Evils of frail life fill the old:  
Their wasted Limbs the loose skin in dry folds  
Doth hang about; their joints are numbed and through  
Their veins not blood, but rheums and waters flow.  
Their trembling bodies with a staff they stay,  
Nor do they breathe, but sadly sigh all day:  
Thoughts tyre their hearts, to them their very mind  
Is a disease; their Eyes no sleep can find.   
Add to these usual infirmities, the confluence of adventious maladies: For all the former distempers and corruptions of life gather themselves together, and make head in old age; when the inward strength, and expulsive power of Nature is decayed, when we are almost dead, then do they revive and rage most of all. Rivers are no where more full, nor more foul then towards the Channell-end. But this general decay I acknowledge to be a great benefit, because it drives away all voluptuous and unseemly delights from the aged, that their Souls may be lively and in health, when the hour of dissolution comes. And indeed it is necessary, that griefs and unpleasantness should lay hold upon age, because men (who are always unwilling to think of dying,) may be thereby weaned from the delights of life, and learn to die before the day of death. Seeing then, that the temporal life is in all its portions so full of misery, it is not irrational to conclude, that Souls (if they were preaexistent,) would be very unwilling to submit to this sad Bondage of flesh and blood. Nor do I wonder that Isis, in his sacred Book, writes, that the Souls, when they were commanded to enter into the bodies, were astonished, and suffered a kind of Deliquium, or trance; and that they did hiss and murmur, like to the suspirations of wind. Camephes sets down their complaints: 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, etc. Miserable wretches! in what have we so foully trespassed, what offence so heinous and worthy of so horrible a punishment have we committed, as to be shut up and imprisoned for it, in these moist and cold carcases? Our Eyes from henceforth shall not behold the Divine spirits, for we shall only peep through two small Spheres made of gross and corrupt humours. When we look towards Heaven, we shall have only the liberty to groan for the presence of our Creator, but see him we may not; for we shall see then by a Secondary light, which is the light of the lower World, and not be permitted to use our own discerning light, etc. We shall hear our Kindred rejoicing in the air, and mourn that we are not partakers of their liberty, etc. But thou great Father and maker of Spirits, who dost dispose of all thy works as it pleaseth thee, appoint we beseech thee some term to our sad bondage, and let this punishment pass quickly over us, that we may be restored again to our celestial liberty, to behold (without obstruction) the perfect beauty of all thy works, etc. They comforted themselves with the thought of the body's dissolution, and petitioned before th●ir captivity, that their enlargement might be hastened: when they were excluded from the heavenly life, there was no greater blessing than the death of the body, which sets an end to the earthly. He that loves death, hates a transitory corrupt condition, and he that hates his own life here, shall keep it unto life erernall.  
I do verily believe, that to him that throughly considers it, no part of life can be desirable. It is altogether so full of sorrows; It is a piece weaved of calamities and troubles, yea, life itself is its own vexation. As those that travel in rough, uneven and mountainous roads are always gasping and weary, which makes them sit down often, to recover their spent breath, and refresh themselves, that having reached the brow and crown of the hill, they may walk onwards with more delight, and be at leisure to feed their Eyes with the beauteous prospect, and freshness of those green & flowery plains which lie extended before them: So this troublesome and tumultuous life hath need of death, for its ease and repast, as a state in which it doth repair and strengthen itself against the fair Journey and progress of eternity. Frail and weary life cannot last, and hold out until the Indiction of immortality; So long a journey cannot be performed without subsiding; A resting place must be had: Death is the Inn where we take up, that we may with more cheerfulness set forwards, and be enabled to overtake, and to keep company with eternity. Nay, so frail is life, that it cannot expect, or stay for the day of death without some prevening recreations: It travels by Stages, and Periodical Courses, where it breathes, and gathers strength against the next motion. As tired travellours make frequent Pauses in the very Road, and cannot stay for the refreshment of lodging; So life, by reason of the importunity, and the multitude of humane troubles, cannot endure or hold out till it reacheth the Inn, which is death; but is driven to rest in the shade upon the wayside; for sleep (the shadow of death) is nothing else but a reparation of weary and fainting life. So much more excellent than life is death, that life is driven to be sustained by so many deaths, that is to say, the mortal life is necessarily preserved by sleep, which is the usher & Masquerade of death. Reeds, because they are very weak and brittle, are strengthened with distinct knots or joints, which makes their length firm, and keeps them from cleaving: So life, if it were not refreshed and mantained still by successive, set allevations of certain prolusions of death, would fall asunder and vanish upon its first appearance.  
Hitherto we have discoursed of life, let us now consider death, and compare it with life. If death in its shadow and projection be the recreation of life, how delightful will it be at home, or in itself! Weariness is a preparative which makes rest pleasant: That Recipe which succeeds bitterness, must needs be sweet. Charidemus used to say, That through all temporal things there was a chain drawn, whereof one link was pain, and the other pleasure: That these succeeded one another, and so (said he) after great sorrows there come greater joys. What greater sorrows can there be, than the sorrows of life? There is therefore no greater pleasure than the pleasure of death, which succeed those great sorrows. Phalaris said, That men held life to be pleasant, because they suspected death to be grievous and irksome. He speaks after the sense of the people, and abuseth life, not esteeming it to be good, but because he thinks death to be Evil. I shall cross his saying, and infer that death should be esteemed pleasant, because we are sure that life is painful: But there is an appearance of something like error, because we see many here, that pass through their whole lives without any troubles or discontents. That felicity is rare and adulterate, and happens most commonly to those that desire it not: look not upon those few which escape in this storm, but upon those which are drowned: these last are innumerable, thought it is thought otherwise, because they are sunk into the bottom, and cannot be seen.  
Admit not, I beseech thee, for a testimony against Death, those ejulations and tears which darken Funerals, and make foul weather in the fairest faces. Opinion makes the people compassionate, and they bewail not the party that is dead, but their own frailty. Call not for evidence to the tears of strangers, because thou knowest not whence they flow; but call for it to thine own, for none of us is happy or miserable but in his own sense which makes us any thing. What reason hast thou to think life better than death, because others mourn when thou diest, who when thou wert born, didst weep thyself? It is madness to judge ourselves miserable, because others think so. The solemnities of death are contrary to the ceremonies of life. At the birth of man others laugh, but he himself weeps. At his death others weep, but surely he rejoiceth, unless his ill life hath made his death deadly. Nor must thou think that his joy is either little or none at all, because it is not manifested unto thee: Thou mayst lie watching by the side of one that dreams of Heaven, & is conversing with Angels, but unless he tells it thee when he is awaked, thou canst discover no such thing while he sleeps. The Infant that is born weeping, learns to laugh in his sleep, as Odo and Augustine have both observed: So, he that bewailed his birth with tears, welcomes the shadow of his death with smiles: He presaged miseries to follow his nativity, and beatitude his dissolution. Weeping is natural; tears know their way without a g●ide: Mirth is rude, and comes on slowly, and very late, nor comes it then without a supporter and a leader: It must be taught, and acquired. Weeping comes with the Infant into the world; Laughing is afterwards taught him; the Nurse must both teach, and invite him to it. When he sleeps, than he sips and tasteth joy; when he dies, than he sucks and drinks it. Mourning and grief are natural, they are born with us; Mirth is slow-paced, and negligent of us: The sense of rejoicing (if we believe Avicenna) comes not to the most forward child till after the fortieth day. Men therefore weep at thy death, because it is an experiment they have not tried; and they laugh at thy birth, because the miseries of thy life must not be born by them. Thou only art the infallible diviner of thy own frail condition, who refusest it with tears, which are the most proper expressions of unwilling, & constrained nature.  
But as the ceremonies of Life and Death are contrary, so he that is born, and he that dies, have different events. Death to some seems to destroy all, but she restores all: By discomposing things she puts them in their order: For he that inverts things that were be●ore inverted, doth but reduce them to their right Positure. The Funeral rite of the T●bitenses (who are certain East-Indians) is to turn the inside of their garments outward; they manifest that part which before was hidden, and conceal that part which before was manifest; by which they seem, in my opinion, to point at the liberty of the soul in the state of death, and the captivity of the body, whose redemption must be expected in the end of the world. This inversion by death is reparation, and a preparative for that order wherein all things shall be made new. Most true is that saying of the Royal Preacher, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. A good name is above precious ointment, and the day of death is better than the day of ones birth. But thou wilt ask, To whom is the day of death better than the day of his nativity? It is in the first place to him that dies; True (thou wilt say) if he be a just and holy man; Yea (say I) though he be wicked. Who doubts that there can happen in all their lives a better day to the just and honest, than the day of death, which frees them both from seeing, and from feeling the miseries which are in this world? As for the unjust, it is most certain, that no day can be more beneficial to them, then that which sets an end to their impieties, tyranny, perjury, and sacrilege. To deny a sword to one that would murder himself, is benevolence; to deny money to a Gamester that would presently cast it away, is courtesy; and to deny life to those that would use it to their own damnation, is Mercy, and not Judgement. But to whom besides these is the day of death better than the day of life? Certainly to God Almighty; because in that day when the wicked dye, his Justice on them, and his Mercy towards his own are conspicuous to all, and acknowledged by all. And to whom else? Not to speak of the rich and ambitious, It is good to all men, to the whole Creation, and to Nature itself: For in that day the fair order and prerogative of Nature is vindicated from the rage and rape of lustful, intemperate persons: It becomes constant, consonant, and inviolable, by putting off those gross vestments which make her productions subject to the assaults and violence of man, who is the most perverse and shameless defacer of God's Image in himself, and the most audacious and abominable contemner of his Ordinances in his works, by using them to a contrary end, and quite different from that which their wise Creator made them for.  
But let us not consider the goodness of death by those evils only which it freeth us from, but by the blessings also which it brings along with it. Their souls are by some men less valued than Fortune and temporal power; Some cast away their lives to win a Crown, yea the Crown, and the Kingdom of another. They plot to forfeit a Crown of Eternal glory, by usurping a transitory one: They murder their own souls by shedding the blood of some innocent persons, permitted to be overcome by men, that they might have power with God, and prevail. Shall the short sovereignty and sway of some small corners and spots of earth be compared to the everlasting triumphs in the Kingdom of Heaven? The death of the sufferer is in this case the most gainful; the more he loseth by it upon earth, his gain is by so much the greater in heaven. The shorter our stay is here, our time above (if reckoned from the day of our death) is the longer, but hath no end at all; and the more our sufferings are, the greater shall our glory be. Hegesias the Cyrenian, when he praised death, promised not these blessings of Immortality, but only an end of temporal miseries; and yet he did so far prevail with his Auditors, that they preferred death to life; they contemned the one, and so lusted after the other, that they would not patiently expect it, but did impatiently long for it; they fell upon their own swords, and forced death to come on, by turning life out of doors before her lease was out; and had not Ptolemy by a special Edict silenced his Doctrine, he had robbed him of more subjects than ever War or the Plague could have taken from him. Before the blessed Jesus had made his entrance through the veil, and opened the way to heaven, the reward of righteousness and sanctity was long life, the peculiar blessing of the Patriarches: It was a favour then not to appear before perfect purity, a Judge of infinite, and allseeing brightness, without an Advocate or friend to speak for us, in the strength and heat of irregular youthfulness, when not so much as time had subdued or reform the affections; but now b●cause Christ is gone thither before, and hath provided a place for us, the greatest blessing, and highest reward of holiness is short life, and an unseasonable, or a violent death: For those harsh Epithets (which are but the inventions of fearful, and sinful livers) are swallowed up of immortality, & an unspeakable heavenly happiness which crowns and overflows all those that die in Christ. We consider not those blessings which death leads us to, and therefore it is, that we so frequently approve of our most frivolous, worldly wishes, and sit weeping under the burdens of life, because we have not more laid upon us. A certain groundless suspicion, that death is evil, will not suffer us to believe it to be good, though the troubles of life make us compliment, and wish for it every day. This foolish fear and inconstancy of man, Locmannus (one of the most ancient Sages of Persia, and admitted also into the Society of the Arabian Magis,) hath pleasantly demonstrated in the person of an Old man, loaded ●ith a gr●at burden of Wood; which having quite tired him, he threw down, and called for death to come and ease him: He had no sooner called, but death (which seldom comes so quickly to those that call for it in earnest,) presently appeared, and demands the reason, why he called? I did call thee (said he) to help me to lift this burden oft wood upon my back, which just now fell off. So much are we in love with miseries, that we fear to exchange them with true happiness: we do so dote upon them, that we long to resume them again, after we have once shaked them off; being either faithless and wavering, or else forgetful of those future joys, which cannot be had without the funeral and the death of our present sorrows.  
What man distressed with hunger, if he sat upon some Barren and Rocky bank, bounded with a deep River, where nothing could be expected but Famine, or the Fury of wild beasts; and saw beyond that stream a most secure and pleasant Paradise, stored with all kinds of bearing Trees; whose yielding boughs were adorned and plenteously furnished with most fair and delicate fruits; If it were told him that a little below, there was a boat, or a bridge to pass over, would refuse that secure conveyance, or be afeard to commit himself to the calm and perspicuous streams, choosing rather to starve upon the brink, then to pass over, and be relieved? O foolish men! For Gold, which is digged out of the Suburbs of Hell, we trust ourselves to the raging and unstable Seas, guarded with a few planks, and a little pitch; where only a Tree (as Aratus faith) is the partition betwixt death and us: And after many rough disputes with violent perils, and the fight ●f so many more; we perish in the unhappy acquisition of false happiness; the Sea either resisting, or else punishing our covetousness. But to pass into our Heavenly Country, into the bosom and embraces of Divinity, into a Realm where Fortune reigns not, we dare not so much as think of it. Who after long banishment, and a tedious pilgrimage, being now come near to his native Country, and the house of his Father, where his Parents, his brethren, and friends expect him with longing, would then turn back, and choose to wander again, when he might have joy, when he might have rest? God the Father expects us, the blessed Jesus expects us, the mild and mourning Dove doth long and groan for us: The holy Virgin-mother, the Angels our friends, and the Saints our kindred, are all ready to receive us. It is through death that we must pass unto them: Why grieve we then, yea, why rejoice we not to have this passage opened?  
But let us grant that death were not inevitable, yea, that it were in the power of man, and that every one had a particular prerogative given him over destiny; So that this greatest Necessity were the greatest freedom, yea, that man could not die, though he desired death: Yet in this very state, would he be troubled with Fortune and Hope. He would be a fool that would not venture to die, to enjoy true felicity: That would choose rather to live always in the changeable state of most unchangeable and lasting miseries, then to put an end to them all by dying once. It is madness to fear death, which (if it reigned not upon the Earth) we would both desire and pray for. It was wisely adjudged by Zaleucus, that death ought to be publicly proclaimed, though men had been immortal. Had death been arbitrary, and at every man's pleasure, I believe we had esteemed it as desirable as any other joy; now because it is Imperial, and above us, let it not seem too much, if we grant it to be tolerable. It was absurdly said by on●, that death was a necessary Evil, and aught therefore to be patiently born. His Inference was good, though from a bad Principle: Death is rather a necessary good: And if necessity makes Evils to be tolerable, there is more reason, it should make good so. Death because it is good, should be made much of; and we should rejoice that it is necessary, because that makes it certain. How great a good is that, by which it is necessary that we be not miserable! Which frees the captive without ransom, dismisseth the oppressed without the consent of the oppressor, brings home the banished in spite of the banisher, and heals the sick without the pain of Physic: Which mends all that Fortune marred; which is most just; which repairs and makes even all the disorders and inequalities made by time and chance; which is the blessed necessity that takes away necessary Evils? He had erred less●, if he had mentioned a necessity of bearing life patiently, whose more proper definition that sorry proverb is; for it casts us into necessary Evils against our will, and is the cause that we wilfully meddle with Evils that are unnecessary. It is a discreet method of nature, that infuseth the Souls into the body in such a state that is not sensible of their captivity, lest they should murmur at the decrees of the great Archiplast. What wise man that were near the term of his appointed time, if he were offered to have life renewed, would consent to be born again, to be shut up in flesh, & fed for nine months with excrementitious obscenities, to bear all the ignominies of Nature, all the abuses of Fortune, to resume the ignorance of Infancy, the fears of Childhood, the dangers of youth, the cares of manhood, and the miseries of old age? I am of ●eliefe that no man did ever live so happily, as to be pleased with a repetition of past life. These Evils which with our own consent we would not have reiterated, we are driven into without our consent: They are necessarily inferred, that they may be willingly borne, to show the necessity of Patience. We are born on condition, that we must die. Death is the price or reward of life: It is the Statute-law of mankind, and that ought to be born as a public good, which (were it not already enacted) would be the spontaneous petition of all men. Certainly if life were without the Jubilee of death, it were just to refuse it, as a servitude which hath no year of release.  
Let us now clearly prove, that death is not Evil, out of her assimilation and conformity to those things, which are most excellently good. None lead a better life, than those that live so, as if they were dead, Rom. C●ap. 6. ver. 7. For he that is dead, is freed from Sinne. Therefore that which is the exemplar of goodness, cannot be Evil: The only true praise of the living, is to assimilate death: He is the most commendable liver, whose life is dead to the World, and he is the most honest that lives the least to it; whose Soul listens not to the body, but is at a constant distance from it, as if they were dissolved; or though it sojourns in it, yet is not defiled by it, but is separated from sensuality, and united to Divinity. What is the reason (thinkest thou,) that the Divine Secrets are revealed to men most commonly in their sleep; because that similitude of death is most pleasing to God. Life is a wild and various madness, disturbed with passions, and distracted with objects; Sleep (like death) settles them all; it is the minds Sabbath, in which the Spirit, freed from the Senses, is well disposed and fitted for Divine intimations. The Soul is then alive to itself, while the body reigns not, and the affections are eclipsed in that short Interlunium of the temporal life.  
Philosophy, or humane Knowledge is nothing else but a Contemplation of death; not to astonish or discourage men, but first to inform, and then to reform them: for the fruit of Philosophy is Virtue, and Virtue is nothing else but an imitation of death, or the Art of dying well, by beginning to die while we are alive. Virtue is a certain Primrose, a prolusion or Assay of dying. Therefore that by which man becomes immortal and eternal is the preface, and the Inchoation of death. This is the main drift of Philosophy, to make life comfortable by conforming it unto death, and to make death immortality by regulating life. Death is intolerable to him only that hath not mortified his desires, while he yet lives; but expects to swallow up death, and all the powers of it at once; that is to say, in the hour of death. We cut our meat, and feed on it by bits, lest we should be choked by swallowing it whole; so death, if it be assayed and practised by degrees, will be both pleasant in the taste, and wholesome in the digestion; if we mortify one affection to day, and another to morrow. He that cannot carry a great burden at once, may carry it all by portions. Philosophy acts the part of death upon the Stage of life: it kills sensuality, and makes death most easy to be born by teaching us to die daily. What can be more grievous than death unto him, who together with his own, feels the pain of a thousand other dying cupidities? We fail not to bewail the loss of one thing, whither honour, pleasure, or a friend: How much more when we lose all at a blow, and lose eternal life in one short minute? The Soul of the wise man frees herself from the body in an acceptable time, she casts off the delectations of the flesh, and the cares of this World while it is daylight, that she may enjoy herself, and be acquainted with God before the night comes. She finds by experience, that her forces are more vigorous, and her light more discerning, when she is not sullied with Earthly negotiations, and the gross● affections of the body; she finds that covetousness, love and fear permit her not to see the truth, and that the affairs of the body are the Remora's of the Spirit: and therefore she concludes, that he must neglect the cries of the flesh, and be attentive only to the voice of God; and upon these considerations, she shakes off that Bondage; she deserts the familiarity and consultations of blood, that she may advise with, and discern the most clear light of truth; she casts off pleasures, by which even Spirits are made subject to sense and pollution. The truth is most pure, and will not be manifested, but to the pure and the undefiled: Therefore all the scope and the end of Virtue is, to separate the Soul from the body, and to come as near death as possibly may be, while we are yet alive. This is the cause that wise men do so much love and long for death, at least they fear it not. How can he fear death, who by dying passeth into the life of the blessed? Who hath already delivered himself from more fears and inconveniences than death can free him from? Yea from those dangers which make death fearful? Who before his dying day, hath disarmed and overcome death? Shall he that all his life-time desired to be separated from the body, repine at the performance and fullfilling of it? It were most ridiculous, if hasting towards home, thou wouldst refuse the help of another to convey thee thither with more speed, and be angry at thy arrival in that Port, whither thou didst bend thy course since the first day thou didst set forth. There is no man that seeking for a friend, will not rejoice when he hath found him. No man will be angry if another perfects what he did begin, but was not able to finish. Nature by death perfects that which Virtue had begun in life, and the endeavour dies not, but is continued, and thrives by a necessary transplantation. While he yet lived, he denied himself the use of the body, because it hindered the course of the Soul; and the body dying, he doth but persist in the same just denial. It is a greater pleasure to want, than not to use what we do not want.  
This Correlation of Death and Virtue I shall exhibit, or lay out to your view, by a discussion of those honours which each of them procures. As Virtue by the Consideration of death, ordereth and preserves her Majesty; so by imitating death, she obtains the reverence and admiration of all: What more reverend thing can we labour for, then that, which by our reverence of it, makes the worst livers to be reputed not bad? As those who are Evil, are loath to believe themselves to be such, because of an innate reverence due from every man to Virtue, which makes them love the repute of Excellency, though not inherent, and rejoice to be accounted good of themselves, or in their own esteem, though they be evil, taking pleasure in that self-deception: So those who have been vicious in their lives (out of the reverence we owe to death,) we dare not speak evil of when they are once dead; Nay, it is not civil, nor pious, to mention the dead without commendation, either by praise, or else by prayer, & our Christian well wishes, as if they had been most deserving in their lives. So powerful is the Majesty of death, that it makes the most contemptible, venerable. Those we most envy while they live, we speak well of when they are dead. Excellent is that observation of Mimnermus, 
Against the Virtuous man we all make head,  
And hate him while he lives, but praise him dead.   
Envy pursues us not beyond the grave, and our honour is not free and secure till we are laid in it. That humble and quiet dust stops the lying and malicious mouth. Socrates foresaw that his draught of hemlock would (after his death) make his very enemies his worshippers: He saw his Statues erected by the same decree that did cast him down: And what was the motive (thinkst thou) that made his enemies worship him dead, whom they persecuted living? There is amongst the people a secret tradition that whispers to them, that those who are freed from the miseries of this life, live happily in another world. Now happiness even in their opinion is worthy of honour; therefore the honour or veneration which death exacts, is a certain tribute, or a debt rather that is due to happiness; and if for this thou wilt advise with thy Aristotle, he will not deny it. The Lacedæmonians bestowed the Olympic palms and honours (which whosoever won in his life time, he was accounted most happy) upon all that died, without exception, or extenuation; adorning the statutes of some, and the tombs of all with the green and flourishing Laurel, esteeming every one of the dead as happy as the most fortunate Victor that lived. The ancient Romans held the greatest honour of the living to consist in the renown of their dead Ancestors: They judged him to be highly honoured, that was enjoined by any dying persons to perform some extraordinary service for them, as an Embassy, or some other weighty negotiation: And 
* One of the Counsellors of Alexand the great.  Callistratus in his first book of Questions affirms, That Ambassadors so employed are the most honourable; because that the suffrages and election of dying men is most venerable, as being then upon the borders of immortality, and discerning more than those who are yet in the midst of life, and more in the clouds of thick-sighted humanity. That honour is the greatest which is done us by the honourable. Nor is this glory of death a Relative of the Soul only; Look well upon the body, that provision of the worms, a frail and perishing objects, but full of Majesty. We are nothing so moved, nor do we so gravely compose ourselves at the presence of a King, as at the sight of a dead body. With how much awfulness doth it lie along! with what a secret mysterious command doth it check all about it! It is a silent, abstruse Philosopher, and makes others so too: Nor is it only venerable, but sacred, and the Depositum, and Index of an almighty Restauratour. The honour of Sepulture is a part of Religion.  
Now, if it be argued that goodness consists only in utility, or benefits, it follows that nothing is good, but that which profiteth: Death then is the best, and the greatest subordinate good of all; for the death of others benefits those that see it, and their own death is most profitable to those that mind it. The Lamae (who are the Priests of the Tehitenses) are in this point the most excellent Philosophers in the world: When they prepare to celebrate prayers, 
The pipes of death used by the Lamae.  they summon the people together with the hollow, whispering sounds of certain Pipes made of the bones of dead men; they have also Rosaries, or Beads made of them, which they carry always about them, and they drink constantly out of a Skull: Being asked the reason of this Ceremony by Antony Andrada, who first found them out; one that was the chiefest amongst them, told him, that they did it, Ad Fatorum memoriam. They did therefore pipe with the bones of dead men, that those sad whispers might warn the people of the swift and invisible approach of death, whose Music they termed it, and affirmed it to be the most effectual of any; That the Beads they wore did put them in mind of the frail estate of their bodies, and did in prayer-time regulate and humble their thoughts; That a constant commemoration of death was as beneficial to the Soul as devotion, & therefore they carried them always about them as the powefull Momento's of their approaching departure out of the Land of the living. To this he added, that their drinking in a skull did mortify their affections, repress pleasures, and embitter their taste, lest they should relish too much the delights of life; Lastly, he added that this constant representation of death, was an Antidote against all the sinful Excesses and deviations of man. With the same Medicine they secured themselves from other iniquities: When they were to swear concerning any thing, they laid their hands upon certain Images set with the bones of dead men, by which ceremony they were put in mind of the last Judgement, and the Account which the dead and the Quick must give in that great, that impartial and censorious day. Certainly this was no barbarous, but a very humane and elegant Philosophy, which taught men to season, and redeem all the days of their lives, with the memory of the one day of their death. Admirable was the memory of Mithridatés, who was master of two and twenty Languages, and could readily discourse in every one of them; and no less happy was that of Cyrus, Themist●cles and Seneca; but a constant memory of man's miseries, and his death exceeds them all. As the roots of the tree in the I'll of Malega, upon that side which looks towards the East, are an Antidote or preservative, but those which spread Westward are poisonous and deadly: So the Cogitations of a Christian, which are the Roots by which he sticks to Heaven (for every Christian is a Tr●e reversed,) when they look towards the West, or setting point of life, are healing and salutiferous; but those which reflect still upon temporal things, and his abode in this World are destructive and deadly. Nature doth every minute commend unto us this memorial of death. Hermes in his sacred book contends, that respiration was given to man, as a sign of that last efflation, in which the Soul parts from the body. We should therefore as often as we breath, remember death, when we shall breathe our last, when the Spirit shall return unto him that gave it. Our whole life is nothing else but a repeated resemblance of our last expiration; by the emission of our breath we do retain it, and (as I may say) spin it out. God gave it not continual and even, like fluent streams, or the calm and unwearied Emanations of light, but refracted and shifting, to show us that we are not permanent but transitory, and that the Spirit of life is but a Celestial Gale lent us for a time, that by using it well, we may secure it Eternally. Another Hermetist adviseth us, Adorare relliquias ventorum, to make much of, and to honour our Souls, which are the breathe, and last dispensations of the still fruitful, and liberal creator: This we can never do but by a frequent study of our dissolution, and the frailty of the body. Of such an effectual goodness is death, that it makes men good before it comes, and makes sure of Eternity by a virtuous disposing of time. Think not that evil, which sends from so far the beams of its goodness. There is no good liver but is a debtor to death, by whose lend, and premunitions we are furnished and fitted for another world.  
The certainty of it, and the incertainty of the time and manner, (which is the only circumstance that seems to offend us,) if it were seriously considered, deserves to be the most pleasing & acceptable; for amongst all the wondrous Ordinances of Divine providence, there is none more Excellent for the Government of man then death, being so wisely disposed of, that in the height of incertainty it comprehends and manifests an infallible certainty. God would have us to be always good, to keep in his likeness and Image: Therefore it is his will, that we should be always uncertain of our most certain death. Such is his care of us, lest the knowledge of a long life, and a late death should encourage us to multiply our transgressions, as the notice of a swift dissolution might dishearten and astonish us. But being left now in a possibility of either, we are taught to live soberly, and to expect the time of our change in all holiness and watchfulness. The possibility of dying shortly, doth lessen the cares of life, and makes the difficulties of Virtue easy. Bondage and Slavery (if it be but short,) is to those that suffer it the lighter by so much: And a large allowance of time makes us slow to Virtue, but a short portion quickens us, and the incertainty of that very shortness makes us certain to be good. For who would weep, and vex himself for worldly provisions, if he certainly knew that he should live but one month? and how dares he laugh, or be negligent of his Salvation, that knows not whither he shall live to see one day more, yea, one hour? The incertainty of death makes us suspect life, and that suspicion keeps us from sinning. The world was never fouler, nor more filled with abominations, then when life was longest, when abused Nature required an Expiation by waters, and the general submersion of her detestable defilers. Theophrastus' did unjustly to rail at Nature, and condemn her of partiality▪ when he envied the long life of some plants and inferior creatures, as the Oak, the Hart, the Ravens; some of which live to feed and fly up and down in the World above five hundred years. He quarrelled with the wise dispensations of Divinity, because a slight suit of feathers, and a renewed dress of green leaves could wear out a building that lodged a rational Soul, and the breath of the Almighty. Both his wish and his reason were erroneous: He erred in desiring long life, and in judging happiness to consist in the multitude of years, and not the number of good works. The shortness of life is lengthened by living well: When life was reckoned by centuries, the innumerable sins of the living so offended God, that it repented him to have made impenitent man: Those that sinned out of confidence of life he punished with sudden destruction. That long lived generation had made the world unclean, and being polluted by their lives, it was purged by their deaths. He shortened afterwards the lease of life, reducing it to an hundred and twenty years, that by the diligence of frequent death, he might reform the past disorders of long life, and prevent them for the future, teaching both sexes to amend their lives by giving them death for their next neighbours. So beneficial is death, so much profits the certainty of it, and as much the incertainty: The ignorance of the day of death is in effect the same with the knowledge of it; the first makes us watch, lest it come upon us unawares; and the last (though it might name the day to us) yet could it not arm us better against it, perhaps not so well. This incertainty of dying, certainly secures us from many errors; it makes us prudent, provident, and not evil. Death therefore is a device of the Almighty, and a wise instrument of divine policy. Zaleucus so highly approved of it, that he was about to enact and proclaim a Law for dying, had he not found it already published by the edict of Nature: And in his Preface to those Laws made for the Locrenses, he warns them, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, etc. To have always before their eyes that time, which is to every one the end of life, because a hearty repentance for all former injuries seizeth upon all men that think of death, and an earnest desire or wishing, that all their actions in life had been just. Wherefore it is expedient that in all our dealings and thoughts death should act a part, and be our familiar counsellor, ever present with us; so shall we be careful to do all things virtuously and justly. Death then is most necessary to govern mankind, because the memory of it keeps us in awe, and conformable to virtue. All Commonwealths that follow the method of Nature, must approve of this Law of Zaleucus, and death in all their consultations should guide their lives.  
Certainly in the Government of the rebellious Generation of Man, Death hath been the most awful Engine of the Deity; without this stern he guided them not: When man was immortal, God saw it necessary to preserve his immortality by death; he enjoined the Law of Abstinence to Adam, under the penalty of dying, which is continued still by the same artifice of death, lest iniquities should be immortal, & wickedness should escape punishment: by the patience and submission of his only Son to death he restored dead men to life, he conferred upon him all his lost honours, renewed and confirmed his old prerogative, and together with the salvation of his Soul gave him a sure promise, that his body also should be made Immortal; but in all these favours, and after full reconciliation, he would not remove death, but continued it still, and the incertainty as well as the certainty of it. This divine devise of death so pleased God, and was so necessary for the good of man, that though by the merits of his dying Son he changed all the former things, blotting out ordinances, abolishing Ceremonies, & opening the gates of Heaven to all believers, yet would not he Exterminate death. It was out of his mercy that he refused to abrogate it, that while corruption reigned, death also might reign over it, lest this poison should want its Antidote. We have therefore no just cause to complain of death, which is an Invention conducing to our great good, and the incertainty of the time (though it most vexeth us) is notwithstanding the most beneficial Circumstance that attends it. The time of life is certainly known, & there is but one entrance to the light of this World: The Ceremony of dying is not formal; It keeps not to one time, nor one manner, but admits of all times, and many manners. Life comes into the World but one way, but hath many ways to go out. It was the benevolence of God to open so many doors to those that fly for refuge. One way is more then enough to find out dangers, but to escape them, many are but necessary. Death is not a burden of seven or nine months, but life must have time before it sets forth. And what are the first encounters of it? Tears ●nd Bonds. It cannot avoid Evils, and it is afeared to bear them; therefore it delays time, and when it cannot lurk any longer, it comes forth Crying. Death leads us forth to joy and liberty: Therefore it stays not, it seeks no corners nor protractions. Nor doth death free us only from suffering Evils, but keeps us also from doing any: To be good every day, thou m●st die daily. The incertainty also of the time of death, and the manner of it, like a busy Monitour, warns thee to do good, and to be good at all times, and in every place, private or public: And the inevitablen●sse of it takes away all Excuse or pretensions for thy impreparation.  
The Glory of death, is also much augmented by its facility, in redressing the difficulties of life. It is not without the Divine counsel, and a special privilege that the Soul of man is so easily parted from the body; the life of beasts is more tenacious, and will suffer much indignity and fury before it leaves them. There is n● living creature more frail, none more weak than man; the lightest stroke fells him; the Soul is very nice, and will quickly cast off the body if it persists but in the least Indisposition. A single hair killed Fabius, and a Grape Anacreon; these contemptible instruments destroyed them as effectually as the thunderbolt did Esculapius. Coma died as easily as he could wish, and Baptist a Mirandulus as he could think: His Soul quitted his body without any grudging, without a disease, without poison, without violence, or any fatal mischance. No door can keep death out, it defeats life with its own weapons, and kills us with the very Cordials and comforts of it. Perhaps no kind of death is more violent than th●● which sets upon us with the forces o● l●●e, because it kills when life is most vigorous and pleasant. Their own wishes have destroyed many: And life hath oftentimes perished by her own contrivements. Clidemus was killed with honour, Diagoras with joy, Plato with rest, and Philemon with laughter. This last is both a merry, and a frequent destroyer, and freed Sicily from one Tyrant. Death also makes use sometimes of our very virtues to exanimate us: Shame killed Diodorus, and the Mother of Secundus the Philosopher died with blushing, and an excessive modesty. Life is a frail possession, it is a flower that requires not rude and high winds, but will fall in the very whispers and blandishments of fair weather. It is folly to labour to retain that which will away; to fly from that which will meet us every where, yea, in the way we fly, is a vain and foolish industry. Whither we seek death or avoid it, it will find us out: Our way to fly, and our very flight end both in death; by hasting from it, we make haste to it. Life is a journey, whose end cannot be missed; it is a steady aiming at dissolution: Though we fetch wide Compasses, and traverse our way never so often, we can neither lengthen it, nor be out of it: What path soever we take, it is the Port-roade to death. Though youth and age are two distant Tropics of life, yet death is as near to the one, as to the other: And though some live more, and some less, yet death is their equal neighbour, and will visit the young as soon as the old. Death is a Cross, to which many ways lead, some direct, and others winding, but all meet in one Centre: It matters not which thou takest, nor whither thou art young or aged: But if thou be'st young, thou mayst come sooner thither, than the old, who is both doting and weary. It was necessary that a Sanctuary being provided for the distressed, the way to it should be easy, pervious, and at an indifferent distance from all parts. Good should be diffusive, and the gate that leads to it, must be without doors and bolts. The entrance into this life, is narrow and difficult, it is difficultly attained, difficultly retained, and lies always in the power of another. Every man may take life from us, none can take death. Life is subject to the Tyranny of men, but death is not; life makes Tyrants, and death unmakes them. Death is the slaves prerogative ●oyall, and the Sabbath of the afflicted. Leo Iconomachus the Emperor, made the birth of both sex's tributary: but death never paid taxation. It was not lawful in his reign to get Children without paying for them; every Infant so soon as borne, was to give him contribution, they paid then the Excise of life. Death only frees us from these Impositions of Tyrants.  
And wilt thou then condemn liberty, and that maturity of death by which it ripens every age? wilt thou the divine liberality blame, because thy life is short, or may be so? thou hast no reason to find fault with the years already given thee, because thou shalt not have more: thou mayst as well quarrel with Nature, because she made not thy dimensions larger, and thy body heavier by eighty or a hundred pounds: he that measured thy proportion, measured thy time too: and too much of this last would have been as troublesome and unwieldy as too much of the first: for 
Long life, oppressed with many woes,  
Meets more, the further still it goes.   
Death in every age is seasonable, beneficial, and desirable: It frees the old man from misery, the youthful from sin, and the infant from both. It takes the aged in the fullness of their time; It turns the flowers of youth into fruit; and by a compendious secret improvement, matures infancy, leading it into the Gate of Heaven, when it cannot go one step upon Earth, and giving it the wings of a Dove to fly, and be at rest, before it can use its feet.  
To these past arguments of the goodness of death, I shall add another. Death in the old world, (before the manifestation of God in the flesh,) was the public index, or open sign of hidden divinity. It is the gift of God, who gives nothing but what is good. The Devil playing the Ape, and labouring to imitate the Inimitable Jehovah, did by asserting death to be the greatest good, mainly fortify those abominable rites and honours conferred upon him by his blind worshippers: When they petitioned him for the greatest blessing that the Gods could give to man, he (by the permission of the true God whom they had deserted) would within three days strangle them in their beds, or use some other invisible means to set an end to their days. Thus he served Triphonius, Agamedes, and Argia for her three Sons: This miserable mother requested of him, that he would give the best thing to her children, that could be given to men: her petition was granted, and within a very short time they received that which she thought to be the worst, namely death. So great is the odds betwixt seeming to be, and being really: betwixt opinion and truth: yea that death which we judge to be the worst, I mean the immature, is oftentimes the best. 
What greater good had decked great Pompey's Crown  
Then death, if in his honours fully blown,  
And mature glories he had died? those piles  
Of huge success, loud fame & lofty styles  
Built in his active youth, long, lazy life  
Saw quite demolished by ambitious strife:  
He lived to wear the weak and melting snow  
Of luckless Age, where garlands seldom grow.  
But by repining fate torn from the head.  
Which were them once, are on another shed.   
Neither could I ever grant that the death of Infants and Children, though commonly bewailed as unseasonable, were the parents misfortunes, but the courtesies rather, and mercies of the almighty. To omit Amphiaraus, and other Ethnic instances; I shall make use of a true and Christian History, which in these later years, was the great admiration of King Philip's Court. Didacus Vergara, a most noble hopeful ●outh, adorned with all those virtues which beautify a blooming life, was famous in the mouths of all good men, and as dear in their hearts. But what was the reward (thinkest thou) of his virtuous life? An immature and almost a sudden death; So that it is not to be doubted, but it was a divine favour. Being to go into bed, he spoke to his sister, O what manner of night will this be unto me! I beseech you, dear sister, furnish me with some candles, and leave one to burn by me. About midnight he suddenly called, so that all the family was awaked, and got up; to whom he told that he should die that night; and desired them to send presently for his Confessor. They all imagined that he had been troubled with some dream, especially his Father, a most renowned Physician, when he felt his pulse to beat well and orderly. But notwithstanding all this, they omitted not to send for his Confessor, who was Gasper Pedroza: He (as if touched with some Divine presension) was at that dead time of the night awake, and being come to the sorrowful Father, he told him, that Didacus was expected in another World before day, that the Virgin-Q●eene of Heaven had revealed so much to him, and that he would be gone as soon as the Sacraments could be administered unto him. It fell out just so: For those sacred solemnities were no sooner ended, but he was dissolved, as if he had stayed only for that spiritual refection to strengthen him in his Journey. He left this dark and low World towards the first breaking's of the day, and ascending to eternity upon the wings of the morning. He might have passed from thence with lesser noise, and in a shorter time; but he expired more solemnly than so; and yet without weary accessions, and the Tyranny of sickness: He stayed for the saving institutions of his redeemer, the business that detained him so long, was Heaven, and not the tumults of a tiring and obstinate dissolution; all this proves it to have been the hand of God, and not an unfortunate, sudden death; the precise Actions of the deity must be attended with unusual circumstances. 
Whom God doth take care for and love,  
He dies young here, to live above.   
There is room enough for life within the compass of few years, if they be not cast away: Think not that to last long, and to live long is the same thing: every one that hath stayed long upon earth, hath not lived long.  
Some men find fault with death, because no experiment can be made of it, without an absolute dissolution: they would die twice, to try what kind of state it is, that they may be fitly furnished against the second time, when they must die in earnest. But this is madness, and were it granted them, the good they pretend would not be performed. For he that will cast away one life without preparing for death, will not fear to hazard another; desperate malefactors will take no warning by r●prieves. Besides, what benefit would there be by dying twice, seeing that of necessity they must live twice too, and so be twice miserable, if not twice impious? It is strange, that these men who fear death, and adjudge it to be evil, should desire to have it doubled, and that which, by their good will, they would not taste once, they will beg to chew and swallow down twice; whereas if death were an Evil, it would be so much the lesser by coming but once. The miseries of life are nothing so civil; they are instant, importunate, and outrageous; they will reinforce themselves, and set upon us twice or thrice, yea, a thousand times. Death is more modest, she wearies us not as long as we are well: When our disorders have turned the harmony of life into discord and noise, than she comes to cast those murmurers asleep, and to give the Soul peace: He is no troublesome guest that comes but once. But it were a great happiness, thou wilt say, if men did experimentally know what it is to die: Truly this Felicity is not wanting: Death is a most admirable, ingenious Excogitation: Though we die but once, yet do not we die at once: We may make, yea we do make many assays or trials of dying: Death insinuates itself, and seizeth upon us by peecemeals; it gives us a taste of itself: It is the Cronie, or Consort of life: So soon as we begin to be, w●e begin to waste and vanish; we cannot ascend to life, without descending towards death: Nay we begin to die before we appear to live; the perfect shape of the Infant is the death of the Embryo, childhood is the death of Infancy, youth of Childhood, Manhood of youth, and old age of Manhood. When we are arrived at this last stage, if we stay any long time in it, and pay not the debt we owe, death requires interest; she takes his hearing from one, his sight from another, and from some she takes both: The extent and end of all things touch their beginning, neither doth the last minute of life do any thing else, but finish what the first began. We may know also what death is, by the apparition or Image of it. We see it, and make trial of it assiduously: we cannot act life one day, but we must act death at night: Life is a Terrace-walke with an Arbour at one end, where we repose, and dream over our past perambulations. This lesser rest, shows us the greater; the Soul watcheth when we sleep, and Conscience in the Just as well as the unjust will be ruminating on the works of life, when the body is turned into dust. Sleep is nothing else but death painted in a night-piece; it is a prelibation of that deep slumber, out of which we shall not be awaked until the Heavens be no more: We go to bed under a Scene of Stars and darkness, but when we awake, we find Heaven changed, and one great luminary giving light to all: We die in the state of corruption, errors, and mistiness: But we shall be raised in glory, and perfection, when these clouds of blackness that are carried about with divers winds, and every Enemy of truth shall vanish for ever, and God alone shall be all in all. We affect sleep naturally, it is the reparation of man, & a laying by of cares. The Copy cannot match the pattern: if we love sleep then, why should we hate the Idea of it; why should we fear death, whose shadow refresheth us, which nature never made, nor meant to fright us with? It was her intention to strengthen our hope of dying, by giving us the fruition of this resemblance of death; lest we should grow impatient with delay, she favoured us with this shadow and Image of it, as Ladies comfort themselves with the pictures of their absent lovers. There is no part of life without some portion of death, as dreams cannot happen without sleep, so life cannot be without death. As sleep is said to be the shadow of death; So I think dreams to be the shadows of life, for nothing deceives us more frequent than it: When we shall be raised from death, we shall not grieve so much because the joys of life were not real, as because there were none at all. It was said by one, that he had rather dream of being tormented in Hell, then glorified in Paradise: for being awaked, he should rejoice to find himself in a soft featherbed, and not in a lake of unquenchable fire: But having dreamt of Heaven, it would grieve him that it was not real. Paracelsus writes, that the watching of the body is the sleep of the Soul, and that the day was made for Corporeal Actions, but the night is the working-time of Spirits. Contrary natures run contrary courses: Bodies having no inherent light of their own, make use of this outward light, but Spirits need it not. Sunbeams cannot stumble, nor go out of their way. Death frees them from this dark Lantern of flesh. Heraclitus used to say, that men were both dead and alive, both when they died, and when they lived: when they lived their Souls were dead, and when they died, their Souls revived. Life then▪ is the death of the Soul, and the life of the body: But death is the life of the Soul, and the death of the body.  
I shall return now to prosecute the Commendations of death, because it comes but once. Death (like the Phoenix) is only one, lest any should be ill. That which comes but once, is with most longing looked for, and with most welcome entertained. That poor man, the owner of one Ewe, nourished her in his bosom, she did eat of his meat, and drank out of his Cup, as Nathan exemplified. The Father that hath but one Son, hath more cares, than he that hath many; so should we be more careful to provide for death which comes but once, then for the numerous and daily calamities of life: By providing for that one, we turn the rest all into so many joys. Whatsoever is rare, whatsoever is precious, it is single, and but one. There is nothing so rare, nothing that is comparable to a good death. But it is not the universality or diffusiveness of it that makes it so, but the contempt and the subduing of it; h●s death is most precious, by whom death is contemned. Dissolution is not a mere merit, but a debt we owe to nature, which the most unwilling must pay. That wisdom which can make destiny to be her servant, which can turn necessity into virtue, Mortality into Immortality, and the debt we owe to nature into a just right and Title to eternal glory, is very great. What greater advantage can there be, then to make Heaven due to us, by being indebted to nature, and to oblige Divinity by paying a temporal debt? Clemens called them Golden men, who died thus; that is to say, when it was necessary to die. They made necessity their free will, when either the public liberty, the prerogative of reason, or the word of God called for their sufferings: For though death be a debt due to Nature, yet in these causes, Nature doth willingly resign her right, and God becomes the Creditor. If we pay it unto him before the time of pure resolution, Nature is better pleased with that anticipation, then if we kept our set day: He is the best debtor, that pays before the time of payment. The day of payment by the Covenant of Nature is old age, but the good man pays before the day. If the nobleness of thy mind will not incite thee to such a forward satisfaction; let the desire of gain move thee, for the sooner thou payest, the more thou dost oblige. He that suffers an immature death for the good of his Country, for the sacred laws, or the vindication of the truth of God, and not for his own vain glory, doth free himself from the Natural debt, and doth at the same time make God his debtor, and all mankind? To a man that dies thus, all men are indebted: God owes him for the Cause, and men for the effect: The last doth at least set us an example, and the first improves the faith, and gives life to Charity.  
Add to this, that this great good of a passive death, is a voluntary imitation of the Son of God, who laid down his life for the life of the World: And it is also done without our industry; this great virtue, this glorious perfection requires not our care and activity to bring it about. This death is most precious and the best, because it is executed by others, and not by ourselves: To suffer death, not to die, is glorious. If prisoners break their chains, it is neither their glory, nor their security, but augments their Gild, and hastens their condemnation: So he that violates his own body, and makes way for the Soul to fly out with his own hands, is damned by the very Act: but if another doth it to him, it is both his Salvation and his Crown. The heathens esteemed it no honour for Captives to have their bonds loosed: It was their freedom, but not their glory. When the judged himself did break off their Chains, that they accounted honourable. By this Ceremony did Vespasian and Titus acknowledge the worth of Joseph the Jew: This vindicated his integrity: By cutting his bonds with their Imperial hand, they freed him both from captivity and disgrace. Titus said, that if they would break off his fetters, and not stay to take them off, his honour would be so perfectly repaired by it, as if he had been never bound, nor overcome. The same difference (in point of honour) is betwixt the natural death and the violent: betwixt dying when we are full of days, and the death which Tyrants impose upon us, when we are mangled and grinded by their fury. This honour is then greatest, when the body is not dissolved, but distorted and broken into pieces. Certainly the best men have ever perished by the violence of Tyrants; nature (to preserve her innocence) being very backward and unwilling (as it were) to take away such great and needful examples of goodness. Treachery and violence were ordained for the just in the d●ath of Abel; who died by the wicked. This better sort of death was (in him) consecrated to the best men; those persons whom Nature respects, and is loath to meddle with, envy lays hands upon: Whom the one labours to prefer, the other plotteth to destroy. Nor deals she thus with the good only, but with the eminent and mighty too: thus she served Hector Alexander and Caesar: the goodliest object is always her aim. When Thrasybulus the ginger told Alexander the Roman, that he should end his days by a violent death, he answered, that he was very glad of it, for then (said he) I shall die like an Emperor, like the best and the greatest of men, and not sneak out of the World like a worthless, obscure fellow. But the death of these Glorioli was not truly glorious: I have only mentioned them, because that a passive death (though wanting religion) hath made their honour permanent. That death is the truly glorious, which is sealed with the joy of the sufferers spirit, whose Conscience is ravished with the kisses of the Dove: Who can look upon his tormentor with delight, and grow up to Heaven without diminution, though made shorter on Earth by the head.  
This is the death which grows precious by contempt, and glorious by disgrace: Whose sufferer runs the race set before him with patience, and finisheth it with joy. We are careful that those things which are our own, may be improved to the utmost; and why care we not for death? what is more ours then mortality? Death should not be feared, because it is simply, or of itself, a great good, and is evil to none but to those that by living ill make their death bad: What ever evil is in death, it is attracted from life. If thou preservest a good Conscience while thou livest, thou wilt have no fear when thou diest, thou wilt rejoice and walk homeward singing. It is life therefore that makes thee fear death: If thou didst not fear life, if life had not blasted the joys of death, thou wouldst never be afraid of the end of sorrows. Death therefore is of itself innocent, sincere, healthful, and desirable. It frees us from the malignancy and malice of life, from the sad necessities and dangerous errors we are subject to in the body. That death, whose leaders are Integrity and virtue, whose cause is Religion, is the Elixir which gives this life its true tincture, and makes it immortal. To die is a common and trivial thing, for the good and the bad dye, and the bad most of all: but to die willingly, to die gloriously is the peculiar privilege of good men. It is better to leave life voluntarily, then to be driven out of it forcibly: let us willingly give place unto posterity. Esteem not life for its own sake, but for the use of it: Love it not, because thou wouldst live, but because thou mayst do good works while thou livest. Now the greatest work of life is a good death. If life than ought to be less esteemed then good works, who would not purchase a good death with the loss of life? why should we be afeared of politic, irreligious Tyrants, and an arm of flesh though guarded with steel? Nature itself threatens us with death, and frailty attends us every hour: Why will we refuse to die in a good cause when 'tis offered us, who may die ill the very next day after? let us not promise ourselves a short life, when our death assures us of eternal glory.  
But if it were granted that death were neither good nor honourable, but evil and fearful, why will not we take care for that which we fear? Why do we neglect that which we suspect? Why, if it be evil, do not we arm and defend ourselves against it? we provide against dangerous contingencies, we labour against casual losses, and we neglect this great and enevitable peril. To neglect death, and to contemn death are two things: none are more careful of it, than those that contemn it; none fear it more than those that neglect it; and which is strange, they fear it not because they have neglected it, but they neglect it, when they fear it: they dare not prepare for it, for fear of thinking of it. O the madness and Idleness of mankind! to that, which they adjudge to be most Evil, they come not only unprepared, but unadvisedly, and without so much as forethought. What mean we, what do we look for? Death is still working, and we are still idle, it is still travelling towards us, and we are still slumbering and folding our hands. Let us awake out of this dark and sleepy state of mind, let us shake off these dreams and vain propositions of divers lusts: let us approve of truth and realities, let us follow after those things which are good; let us have true joy made sure unto us, and a firm security in life, in death. 
Sickness and death, you are but sluggish things,  
And cannot reach, a heart that hath got wings.   
FINIS.   

THE WORLD CONTEMNED, IN A Parenetical Epistle written by the Reverend Father EUCHERIUS, Bishop of Lions, to his Kinsman VALERIANUS.  
Love not the World, neither the things that ar● in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  1 joh. 2.15. 
They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.  Chap. 4. vers. 5. 
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.  joh. 15. verse 18. 
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own, but because ye are not of the world, out I have chosen you out of the world; therefore the world hateth you.  ver. 19 
Remember the word that I said unto you, the Servant is not greater than the Lord: if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: If they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.  v. 20. 
London, Printed for Humphrey Moseley, at the Prince's Arms in Saint Paul's Churchyard. 1654.   

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HEribert Rosweyd published this piece at Antwerp 1621. It is mentioned by Gennadius cap. 63. ●e Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis; and Erasmus (long before Ros-weyd's Edition) writ some Notes upon it. The Author Eucherius was a Roman Senator, but being converted to the Faith, he left the Senate, and lived in a poor Cell by the river Druentium, where his Wife Galla died. His two daughters, Consortia, and Tullia, having learned Christ, continued both in the Virgin-life, & signorum gloriâ claruerunt. He sat Bishop in the chair of Lions (as I find him placed by Helvicus) in the year of our Lord 443. Some will have him a Century lower, but that difference weakens not the certainty of it. The piece itself (in the Original) is most elaborate and judicious, and breaths that togatam elegantiam which in most of the Roman Senators was not more acquired▪ than natural. What this Valerian was (more than our Author's Kinsman, by whose pen his name lives) is not certainly known. Some will have him to be Priscus Valerianus, the Perfect, or Deputy of France, mentioned by Sidonius Apollinaris: Others are willing to let him pass for that Valerian, whose Homilies now extant were published by Sirmondus. But as it is not determinable, so is it not material: This we may safely conclude, that he was a very eminent, noble. Personage, and one that followed too much after temporal pomp, and the powers of this world; though neither of them could lend him so much light, as would keep him from obscurity. To bring down these top-branches, Eucherius lays the Axe to the root of the tree, by showing him the vanity, and the iniquity of riches and honours, the two grand enticements of popular spirits. And this he doth with such powerful and clear reasons, that to virtuous and peaceful minds he hath rendered them not only contemptible, but odious. Much more might have been spoken against them, but (seeing the Age we live in, hath made all his Arguments, Demonstrations) he hath in my judgement spoken enough.  
H.U.S.   

EUCHERIUS to his Kinsman VALERIANUS, etc.  
THEY are happily linked in the bond of blood, who are held together by the bond of love. And for this gift (which is descended upon us from the Father of lights,) both you and myself may greatly rejoice: Whom love as well as kindred hath united, and those two fair obligations have betrothed in one entire affection. One of them we took from the Fathers of our flesh, and the other from our private dispositions. This double tye by which (love binding us on the one side, and blood on the other,) we are mutually knit together; hath enforced me to enlarge myself in this Epistle with some excess more than usual; that I might commend unto your Consideration the Cause of your own Soul, and assert the work of our profession to be, that Supreme beatitude which is only true, and capable of those things which are Eternal.  
And indeed your own pious propension is not repugnant to the profession of holy living, who already by a forward felicity of manners have in some points prevented, and met with many things which are taught un●o us by sacred learning: So that by the means of provident and discreet Nature, you seem unto me to have seized upon many duties of Religion; as the Concessions and Indulgences of our good God towards you, whose gift it is, that the Divine wisdom should partly find in you, and partly confer upon you the riches of his Kingdom.  
But although (by the hands of your Father, and Father in law,) you have been already advanced and seated upon the highest pinnacles of temporal honours, and are still adorned and surrounded with illustrious titles descending from them both; Yet I desire, and long to find in you a thirst of greater and far higher honours, and shall now call you not to Earthly, but Heavenly honours, not to the dignities and splendour of one short age, but to the solid and enduring glories of eternity: For the only true and indelible glory is, to be glorified in Eternity.  
I shall therefore speak unto you, not the wisdom of this World, but that secret and hidden wisdom which God ordained before the World unto our glory. I shall speak with much care and affection towards you, and with very little respect or animadversion of myself; for I have in this attempt considered more, what I wish to see perfected in you, than what I am able to do in myself.  
The first duty of Man ordained and brought forth into this World for that end, (my most dear Valerian!) is to know his Creator, and being known, to confess him, and to resign or give up his life (which is the wonderful and peculiar gift of God,) to the service and worship of the giver; that what he received by God's free donation, may be employed in true devotion, and what was conferred upon him in the state of wrath and unworthiness, may by an obedient resignation make him precious and beloved. For of this saving opinion are we; That as it is most certain, that we came forth first from God, so should we believe it, and press on still towards him: Whereupon we shall conclude, that he only, rightly and divinely apprehends the purpose of God in making man, who understand it thus, That God himself made us for himself.  
It is then our best course, to bestow our greatest care upon the Soul; So shall that which is the first and highest in dignity, be not the lowest, and last in consideration. Amongst us Christians, let that which is the first in order, be the first cared for; let Salvation which is the chiefest profit be our chiefest employment. Let the safeguard and the defence of this, take up all our forces; let it be not only our chiefest, but our sole delight. As it surpasseth all other things in excellency, so let it in our care and consideration.  
Our Supreme duty is that which we owe to God, and the next to it appertains to the Soul. And yet these two are such loving correlates, that though every one of them is a duty of Supreme consequence, and such as by no means we may presume to neglect or omit, yet cannot we possibly perform any one of them without the other. So that whosoever will serve God, doth at the same time provide for his own Soul; and he that is careful for his own Soul, doth at the same time serve God. So that the state of these two sovereign duties in man, is by a certain compendious dependency and co-intention rendered very easy, while the faithful performance of the one, is a perfect consummation of both: For by the unspeakable tenderness and mercy of God, the good we do to our own Souls, is the most acceptable service and sacrifice that we can offer unto him.  
Much Physical curiosity, much care and many strict observations are bestowed upon the body; much pain it undergoes in hope of health; and deserves the Soul no Medicine? If it be but fit and necessary, that divers helps and means of healing are sought for the body, for the recovering only of a temporal and transitory health, is it not unjust that the Soul should be excluded, and be suffered to languish and putrify with deadly and spiritual diseases? Shall the Soul only be a stranger to those proper and precious remedies ordained for it by the great Physician? Yea rather, if so many things are provided for the body, let the provision for the Soul be far more abundant: for if it was truly said by some, that this fleshly frame is the servant, and the Soul the Mistress, then will it be very undecent and injurious, if we shall prefer and place the servant before the Mistress. It is but a just claim, that the better part should require the better attendance; for with constant and intentive diligence should we look on that side, where the greater dignity and our most precious treasure is laid up. It is not agreeable to reason, and it takes from the honour of our employment, that we should subject it to the unworthier party. The flesh being always inclined to viciousness, draws us back to the Earth, as to its proper centre and Original: But the Soul being descended from the Father of lights, is like the sparks of fire still flying upwards. The Soul is the Image of God in us, and the precious pledge of his future munificence. Let us employ all our innate forces, and all outward Auxiliaries for the preservation of this: if we manage▪ and defend it faithfully, we take care for, and protect the entrusted pledge and purchased possession of God. What conveniency can we have to build, unless we do first of all lay the foundation? but to him that hath designed a superstructure of true blessings, the fundamental must be Salvation. And if he hath not laid that foundation, upon what can the Consequences he hopes for be builded? how shall he be filled with the Increase of those remunerations and after-blessings, that wants the first fruits, and denies the rewarder? what portion can he have in the joys of Eternity, that will be wanting to his own Salvation? How can he live the life of the blessed, that will not rise from death? or what will it benefit him to heap up temporal provision, and the materials of this World; when he hath stored up nothing for the comfort of his Soul? Or as our Lord JESUS CHRIST hath said, What is a man profited, if he gain the whole World, and lose his own Soul? There can therefore be no cause for sparing and laying up, where it is manifest, that the Soul is already lost; where Salvation is forfeited, what gain or profit can be hoped for? Or wherein shall the true treasure be laid up, or wherewith shall he receive it, when the Souls precious vessel, and the storehouse of Eternal joys is utterly ruined and broken? let us therefore while we have time, labour for true riches, and make earnest haste to that holy and Heavenly commerce, which is worth our looking and longing after.  
Eternal life may be obtained in a very few days: Which days though they should be blest with an inoffensive and untainted holiness of life, yet because they are but few, are to be lightly esteemed of: for nothing can be rich in value, which is but short in duration: Nor can that procure any long or durable joys, whose time of existence or abode is narrow and transient. The short Accommodations of this life have but short effects. It seems therefore but just unto me, that to the joys of this present life (if it hath any) we should prefer the true and indubitable joys of that which is everlasting. For the felicity we enjoy here, is at best but temporal, but the other is eternal; and the fruition of a transitory, uncertain happiness is but a frailty and accident; but the possession of inviolable and never ending joys, is triumph and security.  
It is clear then, that the Eternal life is most blessed; for what other thing can be named, or thought upon, that is more happy than everlasting life? As for this present short life, it is so very short, that it is withal most miserable. It is pressed and assaulted on every side with surrounding, inevitable sorrows, it is distressed with many evil defects, and tossed to and fro by secret and penal accidents. For what is there in all the whole World that is so uncertain, so various, and so replenished with troubles, as the course of this life? Which is full of labour, full of anguish, fraught with cares, and made ominous with dangers: which is distracted with violent and sudden mutations, made unpleasant with bodily distempers, afflicted with thoughtfulness, and mental agonies, and lies naked and open to all the Whirlwinds of time and Chance? What benefit then, yea, what reason have you to turn aside, and run away from Eternal joys, that you may pursue and follow after temporal miseries.  
Do not you see, my dear Valerian, how every one that is provident (even in this life,) doth with plenty of all necessaries furnish that cottage or field, where he knows he shall reside? and where he abides but for a short time, his provision is accordingly, where he intends a longer stay, he provides likewise a greater supply? unto us also, who in this present World (being straightened on every side) have but a very short time, are Eternal ages reserved in the World which is to come; if so be that we competently provide for an Eternal state, and seek only what is sufficient for the present, not perversely bestowing the greatest care upon the shortest and smallest portion of time, and the smallest care upon the time of greatest and endless extent.  
And indeed I know not, which should soon, or most effectually incite us to a pious care of life Eternal, either the blessings which are promised us in that state of glory, or the miseries which we feel in this present life. Those from above most lovingly invite and call upon us; these below most rudely and importunately would expel us hence. Seeing therefore that the continual Evils of this life, would drive us hence unto a better, if we will not be induced by the good, let us be compelled by the Evil: Both the good and the bad agree to incite us to the best, and though at difference amongst themselves; yet both consent to make us happy. For while the one invites us, and the other compels us, both are solicitous for our good.  
If some eminent and powerful Prince having adopted you for his Son, and copartner, should forthwith send for you by his Ambassador; you would (I believe) break through all difficulties, and the wearisome extent of Sea and Land, that you might appear before him, and have your adoption ratified. God Almighty, the Maker and the Lord of Heaven and Earth, and all that is in them, calls you to this adoption, and offers unto you (if you will receive it,) that dear stile of a Son, by which he calls his only begotten, and your glorious Redeemer. And will you not be inflamed and ravished with his Divine love? will you not make haste, and begin your Journey towards Heaven, lest swift destruction come upon you, and the honours offered you be frustrated by a sad and sudden death?  
And to obtain this adoption, you shall not need to pass through the unfrequented and dangerous Solitudes of the Earth, or to commit yourself to the wide and perilous Sea: When you will, this adoption is within your reach, and lodgeth with you. And shall this blessing, because it is as easy in the getting, as it is great in the consequence, find you therefore backward or unwilling to attain it? How hard a matter to the lukewarm and the dissembler will the making sure of this adoption prove? for as to the faithful and obedient it is most easy, so to the hypocrite and the rebellious, it is most difficult.  
Certainly, it is the love of life that hath enslaved us so much to a delectation, and dotage upon temporal things. Therefore do I now advise you, who are a lover of life, to love it more. It is the right way of persuading, when we do it for no other end but to obtain that from you, which of your own accord you desire to grant us. Now for this life which you love, am I an Ambassador; and entreat that this life which you love in its transient and momentary state, you would also love in the Eternal. But how, or in what manner you may be said to love this present life, unless you desire to have it made most excellent, perfect, and etternally permanent, I cannot see; for that which hath the power to please you when it is but short and uncertain, will please you much more, when it is made eternal and immutable: And that which you dearly love and value, though you have it but for a time, will be much more dear and precious to you, when you shall enjoy it without end. It is therefore but fit, that the temporal life should look still towards the Eternal, that though the one, you may pass into the other. You must not rob yourself of the benefits of the life to come, by a crooked and perverse use of the present. This life must not oppose itself to the damage and hurt of the future: For it were very absurd and unnatural, that the love of life should causse the destruction and the death of life.  
Therefore whither you judge this temporal life worthy of your love, or your Contempt; my present argument will be every way very reasonable. 
* An excellent Dilemma.  For if you contemn it, your reason to do so, is, that you may obtain a better: and if you love it, you must so much the more love that life which is eternal.  
But I rather desire, that you would esteem of it, as you have found it; and judge it to be (as it is indeed) full of bitterness and trouble, a race of tedious and various vexations; and that you would utterly forsake and renounce both it, and its occupations. Cut off at last that wearisome and endless chain of secular employments, that one and the same slavery, though in several negotiations. Break in sunder those cords of vain cares, in whose successive knots you are always entangled, and bound up, and in every one of which you travel is renewed and begun again. Let this rope of sands, this coherency of vain causes be taken away: In which (as long as men live) the tumult of affairs (being still lengthened by an intervening succession of fresh cares) is never ended, but runs on with a fretting and consuming solicitousness, which makes this present life, that is already of itself short and miserable enough, far more short and more miserable. Which also (according to the success or crossness of affairs) lets in divers times vain and sinfully rejoicings, bitter sorrows, anxious wishes, and suspicious fears. Let us last of all cast off all those things which make this life in respect of their employment but very short, but in respect of cares and sorrows very long. Let us reject, and resolutely contemn this uncertain world, and the more úncertain manners of it, wherein the Peasant as well as the Prince is seldom safe, where things that lie low are trodden upon, and the high and lofty totter and decline. Choose for yourself what worldly estate you please: There is no rest either in the mean, or the mighty. Both conditions have their miseries, and their misfortunes: The private and obscure is subject to disdain, the public and splendid unto envy.  
Two prime things I suppose there are, which strongly enchain, and keep men bound in secular negotiations; and having bewitched their understanding, retain them still in that dotage; the pleasure of riches, & the dignity of honours. The former of which ought not to be called pleasure, but poverty; and the latter is not dignity, but vanity. These two (being joined in one subtle league) set upon man, and with alternate, ensnaring knots disturb and entangle his goings. These (besides the vain desires which are peculiar to themselves) infuse into the mind of man other deadly and pestiferous lustings, which are their consequents; and with a certain pleasing enticement solicit and overcome the hearts of Mankind.  
As for Riches (that I may speak first of them) what is there, I pray, or what can there be more pernicious? They are seldom gotten without Injustice; by such an Administrator are they gathered, and by such a Steward they must be kept; for Covetousness is the root of all evils. And there is indeed a very great familiarity betwixt these two, Riches 
* Divitiae & Vitia.  and Vices in their names, as well as in their nature. And are they not also very frequently matter of disgrace, and an evil report? Upon which consideration it was said by one, that 
a Every rich man is either a tyrant himself, or the son of a tyrant.  Riches were tokens of Injuries. In the possession of corrupt persons they publish to the world their bribery and unrighteousness, and elsewhere, they allure the eyes, and incite the spirits of seditious men to rebellion, and in the custody of such they bear witness of the sufferings, and the murder of innocent persons, & the plundering of their goods.  
But grant that these disasters should not happen, can we have any certainty, whither these things that make themselves wings, will fly away after our decease? He layeth up treasure (saith the Psalmist) and knoweth not for whom he gathers it.  
But suppose that you should have an heir after your own heart, doth he not oftentimes destroy and scatter what the Father hath gathered? doth not an illbred son, or our ill choice of a Son-in-law prove the frequent ruin of all our labours and substance in this life? What pleasure then can there be in such riches, whose collection is sin and sorrow, and our transmision, or bequeathing of them anxious and uncertain?  
Whither then at last will this wild and devivos affection of men carry them? You know how to love accidental and external goods, but cannot love your own self. That which you so much long for is abroad, and without you; you place your affection upon a foreigner, upon an enemy. Return, or retire rather into yourself, and be you dearer, and nearer to your own heart then those things which you call yours. Certainly if some wiseman, and skilful in the affairs of this world, should converse, and come to be intimate with you, it would better please you, that he should affect your person, then affect your goods; and you would choose, that he should rather love you for yourself, then for your riches; you would have him to be faithful unto man, not to his money. What you would have another to perform towards you, that do you for yourself, who ought to be the most faithful to yourself. Ourselves, ourselves we should love, not those things which we fantastically call ours.  
And let this suffice to have been spoken against Riches.  
As for the Honours of this world (to speak generally, and without exception▪ for I shall not descend to particulars) what dinity can you justlt attribute to those things which the base man, and the bad, as well as the noble and good, promiscuously obtain, and all of them by corruption and ambition? The same honour is not conferred upon men of the same merits, and dignity makes not a difference betwixt the worthy and the unworthy, but confounds them. So that which should be a character of deserts, by advancing the good above the bad, doth most unjustly make them equal; and after a most strange manner there is in no state of life less difference made betwixt the worst men, and the best, then in that state which you term honourable. Is it not then a greater honour to be without that honour, and to be esteemed of according to our genuine worth, and sincere carriage then according to the false gloss of promiscuous, deceiving honours?  
And these very things (how big soever they look) what fleeting and frail appearances are they? We have seen of late men eminently honourable, seated upon the very spires, and top of dignity, whose incredible treasures purchased them a great part of the world; their success exceeded their own desires, and their prodigious fortunes amazed their very wishes: But these I speak of were private prosperities. Kings themselves with all their height and imperiousness, with all their triumphs and glory shined but for a time. Their cloathings were of wrought of gold, their diadems sparkled with the various flames, and differing relucencies of precious stones; their Palaces were thronged with Princely attendants, their roofs adorned with gilded beams, their Will was a Law, and their words were the rules and coercive bounds of Mankind. But who is he, that by a temporal felicity can lift his head above the stage of humane chances? Behold now, how the vast sway and circumference of these mighty is no where to be found! their riches and precious things too are all gone, and they themselves the possessors and masters of those royal treasures! most late, and most famous Kingdoms (even amongst us) are now become a certain fable. All those things which sometimes were reputed here to be very great, are now become none at all.  
Nothing I think, nay I am sure, of all these riches, honours, powers went along with them from hence: All they took with them was the precious substance of their faith and piety. These only (when they were deprived of all other attendants) waited on them, and like faithful, inseparable companions, traveled with them out of this wrold. With this provision are they now fed; with these riches, and with these honours are they adorned. In these they rest, and this goodness is now their greatness.  
Wherefore, if we be taken at all with honours and riches, let us be taken with the true and durable ones: Every good man exchangeth these earthly dignities for those which are celestial, and earthen treasures for the heavenly. He lays up treasure there, where a most exact and inconfused difference is made betwixt the good and the bad; where that which is once gotten shall be for ever enjoyed; where all things may be obtained, and where nothing can be lost.  
But seeing we are fallen into a discourse of the frailty of temporal things, let us not forget the frail condition of this short life. What is it, I beseech you, what is it? Men see nothing more frequently than death, and mind nothing more seldom. Mankind is by a swift mortality quickly driven into the West, or setting point of life, and all posterity by the unalterable Law of succeeding ages and generations follow after. Our fathers went from hence before us; we shall go next, and our children must come after. As streams of water falling from high, the one still following the other, do in successive circles break and terminate at the banks; so the appointed times and successions of men are cut off at the boundary of death. This consideration should take up our thoughts night and day; this memorial of our frail condition should keep us still awake. Let us always think the time of our departure to be at hand; for the day of death, the farther we put it off, comes on the faster, and is by so much the nearer to us. Let us suspect it to be near, because we know not how far. Let us, as the Scripture saith, make plain our ways before us.  
If we make this the business of our thoughts, and meditate still upon it, we shall not be frighted with the fear of death▪ Blessed and happy are all you who have already reconciled yourselves unto Christ! no great fear of death can disturb them, who defsire to be dissolved that they may be with Christ; who in the silence of their own bosoms, quietly, and long since prepared for it, expect the last day of their pilgrimage here. They care not much how soon they end this temporal life, that pass from it into life eternal.  
Let not the populacy and throng of loose livers, or hypocritical time-pleasers persuade us to a neglect of life, neither be you induced by the errors of the many to cast away your particular salvation. What will the multitude in that day of God's judgement avail us, when every private person shall be sentenced, where the examinations of works, and every man's particular actions, not the example of the common people shall absolve him? Stop your ears, and shut your eyes against such damnable Precedents that invite you to destruction. It is better to sow in tears, and to plant eternal life with the few, then to lose it with the multitude. Let not therefore the number of sinful men weaken your diligence of not sinning; for the madness of those that sin against their own souls, can be no authority unto us; I beseech you look always upon the vices of others as their shame, not your example.  
If it be your pleasure to look for examples, seek them rather from that party, which though the least, yet if considered as it is a distinct body, is numerous enough: Seek them (I say) from that party, wherein you shall find those ranged, who wisely understood, wherefore they were born, and accordingly while they lived, did the business of life; who eminent for good works, and excelling in virtue, pruned and dressed the present life, and planted the future. Nor are our examples (though of this rare kind) only copious, but great withal, and most illustrious.  
For what worldly nobility, what honours, what dignity, what wisdom, what eloquence, or learning have not betaken themselves to this heavenly warfare? what sovereignty now hath not with all humility submitted to this easy yoke of Christ? And certainly it is a madness beyond error and ignorance for any to dissemble in the cause of their salvation. I could (but that I will not be tedious to you) out of an innumerable company produce many by name, and show you what eminent and famous men in their times have forsaken this World, and embraced the most strict rules of Christian Religion. And some of these (because I may not omit all,) I shall cursorily introduce.  
Clement the Roman, of the stock of the Caesars, and the Ancient Lineage of the Senators, a person fraught with Science, and most skilful in the liberal Arts, betook himself to this path of the just; and so uprightly did he walk therein, that he was elected to the Episcopal dignity of Rome.  
Gregory of Pontus, 
Gregorius Thaur●aturgus.  a Minister of holy things, famous at first for his humane learning and eloquence, became afterwards more eminent by those Divine Graces conferred upon him. For (as the Faith of Ecclesiastical History testifies,) amongst other miraculous signs of his effectual devotion, he removed a Mountain by prayer, and dried up a deep lake.  
Gregory Nazianzen, another holy Father, given also at first to Philosophy and humane literature, declined at last those Worldly rudiments, and embraced the true and Heavenly Philosophy: To whose industry also we owe no meaner a person than Basil the Great; for being his intimate acquaintance, and fellow-student in secular Sciences, he entered one day into his Auditory, where Basilius was then a Reader of Rhetoric, and leading him by the hand out of the School; dissuaded him from that employment with this gentle reproof, Leave this Vanity, and study thy Salvation. And shortly after both of them came to be famous and faithful Stewards in the house of God, and have left us in the Church, most useful and pregnant Monuments of their Christian learning.  

Thou hast his life annexed to this Epistle: as a precedent after these precepts.  Paulinus Bishop of Nola, the great Ornament and light of France, a person of Princely revenues, powerful eloquence, and most accomplished learning, so highly approved of this our profession, that choosing for himself the better part, he divided all his Princely Inheritance amongst the poor, and afterward filled most part of the World with his elegant and pious writings.  
Hilarius of late, and Petronius now in Itaelie, both of them out of the fullness of Secular honours and power, betook themselves to this Course; the one entering 
a Hilarius about this time (which was 435. years after Christ) did lead a monastical life; but upon the death of Honoratus, he was elected his successor in the Bishopric of Orleans, in which dignity he continued not long, for being addicted to solitariness, he resigned it, and turned into the Wilderness.  into the religion, the other into the Priesthood.  
And when shall I have done with this great cloud of witnesses, If I should bring into the field all those eloquent Contenders for the Faith, Firmianus, Minutius, Cyprian, Hilary, chrysostom and Ambrose? These I believe spoke to themselves in the same words which 
a St. Augustine.  another of our profession used as a sparre to drive him●elfe out of the Secular life into this blessed and Heavenly vocation; They said, I believe: What is this? The unlearned get up, and lay hold upon the Kingdom of Heaven, and we with our learning, behold where we wallow in flesh and blood. This (sure) they said, and upon this consideration they also rose up, and took the Kingdom of Heaven by force.  
Having now in part produced these reverend witnesses, whose zeal for the Christian faith hath exceeded most of their successors, though they also were bred up in secular rudiments, persuasive eloquence, and the Pomp and fullness of honours; I shall descend unto Kings themselves, and to that head of the World, the Roman Empire. And here I think it not necessary that those Royal, religious Ancients of the old World should be mentioned at all. Some of their posterity, and the most renowned in our Sacred Chronicles I shall make use of; as David for Piety, Josiah for Faith, and Ezechias for Humility. The later times also have been fruitful in this kind, nor is this our age altogether barren of pious Princes, who draw near to the Knowledge of the only true and Immortal King, and with most contrite and submissive hearts acknowledge and adore the Lord of Lords. The Court, as well as the Cloister, hath yielded Saints, of both Sexes. And these in my opinion are more worthy your Imitation, than the mad and giddy Commonalty; for the examples of these, carry with them in the World to come Salvation, and in the present World, Authority.  
You see also how the days and the years, and all the bright Ornaments and Luminaries of Heaven, do with an unwearied duty execute the commands and decrees of their Creator; and in a constant, irremissive tenor continue obedient to his ordinances. And shall we (for whose use th●se lights were created, and set in the firmament,) seeing we know our Masters will, and are not ignorant of his Commandments, stop our ears against them? And to these Vast members of the Universe it was but once told, what they should observe unto the end of the World; but unto us line upon line, precept upon precept, and whole volumes of God's Commandments are every day repeated. Add to this, that man (for this also is in his power) should learn to submit himself to the will of his Creator, and to be obedient to his Ordinances; for by paying his whole duty unto God, he gives withal a good example unto men.  
But if there be any that will not return unto their maker and be healed, can they therefore escape the Arm of their Lord, in whose hand are the Spirits of all flesh▪ Whither will they fly, that would avoid the presence of God? What Covert can hide them from that Eye which is every where, and sees all things? Let them hear thee, holy David, let them hear thee. Psalm 139. 
Whither shall I go from thy presence, or whither shall I flee from thy Spirit?  
If I ascend up into Heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in Hell, behold thou art there.  
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Sea;  
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand stall hold me.  
If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me: even the night shall be light about thee.  
Yea the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.   
Therefore (willing or unwilling) though they should absent themselves from the Lord of all the world by their Wills, yet shall they never be able to get their persons out of his Jurisdiction and Supreme right. They are absent from him indeed in their Love and affections: But he is present with them in his prerogative and anger. So then being ranagates, they are shut up, and (which is a most impious madness) th●y live without any consideration or regard of God, but within his power. And if these being earthly Masters, when their servants run away from them; with a furious and hasty search pursue after them; or if they renounce their service, prosecute them for it, and become the assertors of their own right over them; why will not they themselves render unto their Master which is in Heaven his most just right? Why will they not stay in his Family, and freely offer themselves unto his service, and be as impartial Judges in the cause of God as in their own?  
Why with so much dotage do we fix our Eyes upon the deceitful looks of temporal things? Why do we rest ourselves upon those thorns only, which we see beneath us? Is it the Eye alone that we live by? Is there nothing useful about us but that wanderer? We live also by the ear, and at that Inlet we receive the glad tidings of Salvation, which fill us with earnest groans for our glorious liberty and the consummation of the promises; Whatsoever is promised, whatsoever is preached unto us, let us wait for it with intentive wishes, and most eager desires. That faithful one, the blessed Author of those promises assures us frequently of his fidelity and performance, let us covet earnestly his best promises.  
B●t notwithstanding this which hath been spoken, if a sober and virtuous use were made of the Eye, we might by that very faculty be drawn to a certain sacred longing after Immortality, and the powers of the World to come; if that admiration, which by contemplating the rare frame of the World we are usually filled with, were returned upon the glorious Creator of it, by our praises and benediction of him; Or if we would meditate what a copious, active and boundless light shall fill our eyes in the state of Immortality, seeing so fair a luminary is allowed us in the state of corruption: Or what transcendent beauty shall be given to all things in that eternal World, seeing this transitory one is so full of Majesty and freshness; There can be no excuse for us, if we solicit the faculties of these members to abuse and perverseness: Let them rather be commodiously applied to both lives, and so minister to the use of the temporal, as not to cast off their duty to the Eternal.  
But if pleasure and love delight us, and provoke our Senses, there is in Christian Religion, a love of infinite comfort, and such delights as are not nauseous and offensive after fruition. There is in it, that which not only admits of a most vehement and overflowing love, but aught also to be so beloved; namely, God, blessed for evermore, the only beautiful, delightful, immortal and Supreme good, whom you may boldly and intimately love as well as piously; if in the room of your former earthly affections, you entertain Heavenly and holy desires. If you were ever taken with the magnificence and dignity of another person, there is nothing more magnificent then God. If with any thing that might conduce to your honour and glory; there is nothing more glorious than him: If with the splendour and excellency of pompous shows, there is nothing more bright, nothing more excellent. If with fairness and pleasing objects, there is nothing more beautiful. If with verity and righteousness, there is nothing more just, nothing more true. If with liberality, there is nothing more bountiful. If with incorruption and simplicity, there is nothing more sincere, nothing more pure than that Supreme goodness. Are you troubled that your treasure and store is not proportionable to your mind? The Earth and the fullness thereof are under his lock: Do you love any thing that is trusty and firm? There is nothing more friendly, nothing more faithful than him: Do you love any thing that is beneficial? There is no greater benefactor. Are you delighted with the gravity or gentleness of any object? there is nothing more terrible than his Almightiness, nothing more mild than his goodness. Do you love refreshments in a low estate, and a merry heart in a plentiful? Joy in prosperity, and comforts in adversity are both the dispensations of his hand. Wherefore it stands with all reason, that you should love the giver more than his gifts, and him from whom you have all these things, more than the things themselves. Riches, Honours, and all things else, whose present lustre attracts and possesseth your heart, are not only with him, but are now also had from him.  
Recollect your dispersed, and hitherto ill-placed affections, employ them wholly in the Divine service. Let this dissolute love and compliance with worldly desires become chaste piety, and wait upon sacred affairs. Call home your devious and runagate thoughts, which opinion and custom have sadly distracted; and having suppressed old errors, direct your love to his proper object, bestow it wholly upon your Maker. For all that you can love now is his, his alone, and none else. For of such infiniteness is he, that those who do not love him, deal most injuriously: because they cannot love any thing, but what is his.  
But I would have an impartial judgement to consider, whether it be just for him to love the work, and hate the Workman; and having cast by, and deserted the Creator of all things, to run and seize upon his creatures every where, and without any difference, according to his perverse and insatiable lust. Whereas it behoved him rather to invite God to be gracious and loving to him, by this very affection to his works, if piously laid out. And now man gives himself over to the lusts and service of his own detestable figments, and most unnaturally becomes a lover of the Art, and neglects the Artificer, adores the Creature, and despiseth the Creator.  
And what have we spoken all this while of those innumerable delights which are with him? or of the infinite and ravishing sweetness of his ineffable Goodness? the sacred and inexhaustible treasure of his Love? or when will it be that any shall be able to express or conceive the dignity and fullness of any one Attribute that is in him? To love him then is not only delightful, but needful: For not to love him, whom even then when we love, we cannot possibly requite, is impious; and not to return him such acknowledgements as we are able, whom if we would, we can never recompense, is most unjust: For what shall we render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards us? What shall we render unto him for this one benefit, that he hath given salvation to man by faith, and ordained that to be most easy in the fact, by which he restored hope to the subjected world, and eternal life unto lost man?  
And that I may now descend unto those things which were sometimes out of his Covenant, I mean the Nations and Kingdoms of the Gentiles, do you think that these were made subject to the Roman power, and that the dispersed multitude of Mankind were incorporated (as it were) into one body under one head for any other end, but that (as Medicines taken in at the mouth are diffused into all parts of the body) so the Faith by this means might with more ease be planted and penetrated into the most remote parts of the world. Otherwise by reason of different powers, customs, and languages, it had met with fresh and numerous oppositions, and the passage of the Gospel had been much more difficult. Blessed Paul himself describing his course in planting the Faith amongst this very people, writes in his Epistle to the Romans, That from Jerusalem and round about to Illyricu● he had fully preached the Gospel of Christ. And how long (without this preparation in the fullness of time) might this have been in doing, amongst Nations, either innumerable for multitude, or barbarous for immanity? Hence it is that the whole earth now from the rising of the Sun unto the going down thereof, from the farthest North and the frozen sea breaks forth into singing, and rings with the glorious name of Jesus Christ. Hence it is, that all parts of the world flock and run together to the Word of Life: The Thracian is for the Faith, the African for the Faith, the Syrian for the Faith, and the Spaniard hath received the Faith. A great argument of the divine clemency may be gathered out of this, that under Augustus Caesar, when the Roman power was in the height, and Acmie, than the Almighty God came down upon the earth and assumed flesh. Therefore that I may now make use of those things, which you also are versed in, it may be clearly proved (if any skilled in your Histories would assert the truth) that from the first foundation of the Roman Empire (which is now one thousand one hundred and eighty five years ago) what ever additions and growth it gathered either in the reign of their first Kings, 
This letter was written in the year of our Lord 435.  or afterwards under the administration of Consuls, all was permitted by the only wise, and almighty God to prepare the world against the coming of Christ, and to make way for the propagation of the Faith.  
But I return thither, from whence I have digressed. Love not the world (saith St. John) neither the things that are in the world; for all those things with delusive, ensnaring shows, captivate our sight, and will not suffer us to look upwards. Let not that faculty of the eye which was ordained for light, be applied to darkness, being created for the use of life, let it not admit the causes of death. Fleshly lusts (as it is divinely spoken by the Apostle) war against the soul, and all their accoutrements are for the ruin and destruction of it. A vigilant guard do they keep, when they are once permitted to make head, and after the manner of foreign and expert enemies, with those forces they take from us, they politicly strengthen and increase their own.  
Thus hitherto have I discoursed of those splendid allurements, which are the chiefest and most taking baits of this subtle world, I mean Riches and Honours. And with such earnestness have I argued against them, as if those blandishments had still some force. But what beauty soever they had, when cast over heretofore with some pleasing adumbrations, it is now quite worn away, and all that paint and cozenage is fallen off. The world now hath scarce the art to deceive. Those powerful and bewitching looks of things, beautiful sometimes even to deception, are now withered, and almost loathsome. In former times it laboured to seduce us with its most solid and magnificent glories, and it could not. Now it turns cheat, and would entice us with toys, and slight wares, but it cannot. Real riches it never had, and now it is so poor, that it wants counterfeits. It neither hath delectable things for the present, nor durable for the future; unless we agree to deceive ourselves, the world in a manner cannot deceive us.  
But why delay I my stronger arguments? I affirm then that the forces of this world are dispersed and overthrown, seeing the world itself is now drawing towards its dissolution, and pants with its last gasps, and dying anhelations. How much more grievous and bitter will you think this assertion, that for certain it cannot last very long? What should I trouble myself to tell you that all the utensils and moveables of it are decayed and wasted? And no marvel that it is driven into these defects, and a consumption of its ancient strength, when now grown old and weary it stoops with weakness, and is ready to fall under the burden of so many ages.  
These latter years and decrepitness of time are fraught with evils and calamities, as old age is with diseases. Our forefathers saw, and we still see in these last days the plagues of famine, pestilence, war, destruction, and terrors. All these are so many acute fits and convulsions of the dying world. Hence it is that such frequent signs are seen in the firmament, excessive Eclipses, and faintings of the brightest Luminaries, which is a shaking of the powers of heaven; sudden and astonishing Earthquakes under our feet, alterations of time● and governments, with the monstrous fruitfulness of living creatures; all which are the prodigies, or fatal symptoms of time going indeed still on, but fainting, and ready to expire. Nor is this confirmed by my weak assertions only, but by sacred authority and the Apostolical Oracles: For there it is written, that upon us the ends of the world are come, 1 Co●. 10.11 Which divine truth seeing it hath been spoken so long ago, what is it that we linger for, or what can we expect? That day, not only ours, but the last that ever the present world shall see, calls earnestly for our preparation. Every hour tells us of the coming on of that inevitable hour of our death, seeing a double danger of two final dissolutions threatens every one in particular, and all the world in general. Wretched man that I am! the mortality of this whole frame lies heavily upon my thoughts, as if my own were not burdensome enough. Wherefore is it that we flatter ourselves against these sure fears. There is no place left for deviation: A most certain decree is passed against us, on the one side is written every man's private dissolution, and on the other the public and universal.  
How much more miserable than is the condition of those men (I will not say, in these out-going, or last walks of time, but in these decays of the world's goodly things) who neither can enjoy aught that is pleasant at the present, nor lay up for themselves any hope of true joys hereafter. They miss the fruition of this short life, and can have no hope of the everlasting: They abuse these temporal blessings, and shall never be admitted to use the eternal. Their substance here is very little, but their hope there is none at all. A most wretched and deplorable condition! unless they make a virtue of this desperate necessity, and lay hold on the only sovereign remedy of bettering their estate, by submitting in time to the wholesome rules of heavenly and saving reason. Especially because the goodliest things of this present time, are such rags and fragments, that he that loseth the whole fraught, and true treasure of that one precious life which is to come, may be justly said to lose both.  
It remains then, that we direct and fix all the powers of our minds upon the hope of the life to come. Which hope (that you may morefully and clearly apprehend it) I shall manifest unto you, under a type or example taken from temporal things. If some man should offer unto another five pieces of silver this day, but promise him five hundred pieces of gold, if he would stay till the next morning, and put him to his choice, whither he would have the silver at present, or the gold upon the day following, is there any doubt to be made, but he would choose the greater sum, though with a little delay? Go you and do the like: Compare the Crumbs and perishing pittance in this short life, with the glorious, and enduring rewards of the eternal: And when you have done▪ choose not the least and the worst, when you may have the greatest and the best. The short fruition of a little is not so beneficial, as the expectation of plenty. But seeing that all the frail goods of this world are not only seen of us, but also possessed by us: It is most manifest that hope cannot belong unto this world, in which we both see and enjoy those things we delight in: For Hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? Rom. 8. ver. 24. Therefore however hope may be abused, and misapplyed to temporal things, it is most certain that it was given to man and ordained for the things that are eternal; otherwise it cannot be called hope, unless something be hoped for, which as yet (or for the present life) is not had. Therefore the substance of our hope in the world to come is more evident and manifest, than our hope of substance in the present.  
Consider those objects which are the clearest and most visible; when we would best discern them, we put them not into our eyes, because they are better seen and judged of at a distance. It is just so in the case of present things and the future: For the present (as if put into our eyes) are not rightly and undeceivably seen of us; but the future, because conveniently distant, are most clearly discerned.  
Nor is this trust and Confidence we have of our future happiness built upon weak or uncertain Authors, but upon our Lord and Master JESUS CHRIST, that almighty and faithful witness, who hath promised unto the just, a Kingdom without end, and the ample rewards of a most blessed eternity. Who also by the ineffable Sacrament of his humanity, being both God and Man, reconciled Man unto God, and by the mighty and hidden mystery of his passion, absolved the World from sin. For which cause he was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of Angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed upon in the World, and received into glory. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, 
Philip. Chap. 2. ver. 9, 10.  and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of JESUS every knee should bow, of things in Heaven, and things in Earth, and things under the Earth. And that every tongue should confess that the Lord JESUS is in glory, both God and King before all ages.  
Casting off then the vain and absurd precepts of Philosophy, wherein you busy yourself to no purpose, embrace at last the true and saving Knowledge of Christ. You shall find even in that, employment enough for your eloquence and wit, and will quickly discern how far these precepts of piety and truth surpass the conceits and delirations of Philosophers. For in those rules which they give, what is there but adulterate virtue, and false wisdom? and what in ours, but perfect righteousness and sincere truth? Whereupon I shall Justly conclude, that they indeed usurp the name of Philosophy, but the substance and life of it is with us. For what manne● of rules to live by could they give, who were ignorant of the first Cause, and the Fountain of life? For not knowing God, and deviating in their first principles from the Author, and the Wellspring of Justice; they necessarily erred in the rest: Hence it happened, that the end of all their studies was vanity and dissension. And if any amongst them chanced to hit upon some more sober and honest Tenets, these presently ministered matter of pride and superstitiousness, so that their very Virtue was not free from vice. It is evident then, that these are they, whose Knowledge is Earthy, the disputers of this world, the blind guides, who never saw true justice, nor true wisdom. Can any one of that School of Aristippus be a teacher of the truth, who in their Doctrine and Conversation differ not from swine and unclean beasts, seeing they place true happiness in fleshly lusts? whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame. Can he be a Master of Sobriety and Virtue, in whose School the riotous, the obscene, and the adulterer are Philosophers? But leaving these blind leaders, I shall come again to speak of those things which were the first motives of my writing to you.  
I advise you then, and I beseech you, to cast off all their Axioms, orgeneral Maxims collected out of their wild and irregular disputations, wherein I have known you much delighted; & to employ those excellent abilities bestowed upon you in the study of holy Scripture, & the wholesome instructions of Christian Philosophers. There shall you be fed with various and delightful learning, with true and infallible wisdom. There (to incite you to the Faith) you shall hear the Church speaking to you, though not in these very words, yet to this purpose, He that believes not the word of God, understands it not. There you shall hear this frequent admonition; Fear God, because he is your Master, honour him because he is your Father. There it shall be told you, that the most acceptable Sacrifice to God are justice and mercy. There you shall be taught, that, If you love yourself, you must necessarily love your neighbour; for you can never do yourself a greater Courtesy, then by doing good to another. There you shall be taught, that, there can be no worldly cause so great, as to make the death of a man legal or needful. There you shall hear this precept against unlawful desires. Resist lust as a most bitter enemy, that useth to glory in the disgrace of those bodies he overcommeth. There it will be told you of Covetousness, That it is better not to wish for those things you want, than to have all that you wish. There you shall hear, that he that is angry, when he is provoked, is never not angry, but when not provoked. There it will be told you of your Enemies, Love them that hate you, for all men love those that love them. There you shall hear, that he lays up his treasure safeliest, who gives it to the poor, for that cannot be lost which is lent to the Lord. There it will be told you, that the fruit of holy marriage is chastity. There you shall hear, that the troubles of this World happen as well to the just, as the unjust. There it will be told you, that it is a more dangerous sickness to have the mind infected with vices, than the body with diseases. There to show you the way of peace and gentleness you shall hear, that amongst impatient men, their likeness of manners is the cause of their discord. There to keep you from following the bad examples of others, it will be told you, That the wise man gains by the fool, as well as by the prudent: the one shows him what to imitate, the other what to eschew. There also you shall hear all these following precepts. That the ignorance of many things is better than their Knowledge; and that therefore the goodness or mercy of God is as great in his hidden will, as in his revealed. That you should give God thanks as well for adversity, as for prosperity; and confess in prosperity, that you have not deserved it. That there is no such thing as Ear; and for this let the Heathens examine their own● Laws, which punish none but wilful and premeditating offenders. There to keep you stable in faith, it will be told you, That he that will be faithful, must not be suspicious; for we never suspect, but what we slowly believe. There also you shall hear, that Christians when they give any attention to the noise and enticements of their passions, fall headlong from Heaven unto Earth. It will be also told you there, that seeing the wicked do sometimes receive good things in this world, and the just are afflicted by the unrighteous, those that believe not the final Judgement of God after this life, do (as far as it lies in them) make God unjust, and far be this from your thoughts. There it will be told you about your private affairs, that what you would have hidden from men, you should never do, what from God, ye should never think. There you shall here this rebuke of deceivers; It is lesser damage to be deceived, then to deceive. Lastly you shall hear this reproof of self-conceit, or a fond opinion of our own worth; fly vanity, and so much the more, the better thou art: all other vices increase by viciousness, but vanity is oftentimes a bubble that swims upon the face of Virtue. These few rules, as a taste and invitation, I have (out of many more) inserted here for your use.  
But if you will now turn your Eyes towards the sacred Oracles, and come yourself to be a searcher of those Heavenly treasures, I know not which will most ravish you, the Casket, or the Jewel, the Language or the Matter. For the Book of God, while it shines and glitters with glorious irradiations within, doth after the manner of most precious gems, drive the beholder's Eyes into a strong and restless admiration of its most rich and inscrutable brightness. But let not the weakness of your Eyes make you shun this Divine light, but warm your Soul at the beams of it, and learn to feed your inward man with this mystical and healthful food.  
I doubt not but (by the powerful working of our merciful God upon your heart,) I shall shortly find you an unfeigned lover of this true Philosophy, and a resolute opposer of the false; renouncing also all worldly oblectations, and earnestly coveting the true and eternal. For it is a point of great impiety and imprudence, seeing God wrought so many marvellous things for the Salvation of man, that he should do nothing for himself: and seeing that in all his wonderful works he had a most special regard of our good, we ourselves should especially neglect it. Now the right way to care for our Souls, is to yield ourselves to the love and the service of God: For true happiness is obtained by contemning the false felicities of this World, and by a wise abdication of all earthly delights, that we may become the chaste and faithful lovers of the Heavenly. Wherefore henceforth let all your words and actions be done either to the glory of God, or for God's sake. Get Innocence for your Companion, and she is so faithful, that she will be also your defendresse. It is a worthy enterprise to follow after Virtue, and to perform something while we live, for the example and the good of others: nor is it to be doubted, but the mind, by a virtuous course of life, will quickly free itself from those entanglements and deviations it hath been formerly accustomed to. That great Physician to whose cure and care we offer ourselves, will daily strengthen and perfect our recovery.  
And what estimation or value (when in this state) can you lay upon those glorious remunerations that will be laid up for you against the day of recompense? You see that God, even in this life, hath mercifully distributed unto all (without any difference) his most pleasant and useful light. The pious and the impious are both allowed the same Sun, all the creatures obediently submit themselves to their service: And the whole Earth with the fullness thereof is the indifferent possession of the just and unjust. Seeing then that he hath given such excellent things unto the impious, how much more glorious are those things which he reserves for the pious? he that is so great in his free gifts, how excellent will he be in his rewards? He that is so Royal in his daily bounty, and ordinary magnificence; how transcendent will he be in his remunerations and requitals? Ineffable and beyond all conception are those things which God hath prepared for those that love him; And that they are so is most certain: For it is altogether incomprehensible, and passeth the understanding of his most chosen vessels to tell, how great his reward shall be unto the just, who hath given so much to the unthankful and the unbelieving.  
Take up your Eyes from the Earth, and look about you, my most dear Valerian; spread forth your sails, and hasten from this stormy Sea of Secular negotiations, into the calm and secure harbour of Christian Religion. This is the only Haven into which we all drive from the raging Surges of this malicious World. This is our shelter from the loud and persecuting whirlwinds of time: Here is our sure station and certain rest: Here a large and silent recess, secluded from the World, opens and offers itself unto us. Here a pleasant, serene tranquillity shines upon us. Hither when you are come, your weatherbeaten Vessel (after all your fruitless toils) shall at last find rest, and securely ride at the Anchor of the Cross.  
But it is time now that I should make an end. Let then (I beseech you,) the truth and the force of Heavenly Doctrine Epitomised here by me, be approved of and used by you to the glory of God and your own good. These are all my precepts at present: pardon the length, and acknowledge my love.  
Gloria tibi mitissime Jesus!   

Primitive Holiness, Set forth in the LIFE of blessed PAULINUS, The most Reverend, and Learned BISHOP of NOLA:  
Collected out of his own Works, and other Primitive Authors by Henry Vaughan, Silurist.  2 Kings cap. 2. u.r. 12. 
My Father, my Father, the Chariot of Israel, and the Horsemen thereof.  
LONDON, Printed for Humphrey Moseley at the Prince's Arms in St. Paul's Churchyard, 1654.   

TO THE READER.  
IF thou lovest Heaven, and the beauty of Immortality, here is a guide will lead thee into that house of light. The earth at present is not worth the enjoying, it is corrupt, and poisoned with the curse. I exhort thee therefore to look after a better country, an inheritance that is undefiled and fadeth not away. If thou dost this, thou shalt have a portion given thee here, when all things shall be made new. In the mean time I commend unto thee the memory of that restorer, and the reward he shall bring with him in the end of this world, which truly draws near, if it be not at the door. dote not any more upon a withered, rotten Gourd, upon the seducements and falsehood of a most odious, decayed Prostitute; but look up to Heaven, where wealth without want, delight without distaste, and joy without sorrow (like undefiled and incorruptible Virgins) sit clothed with light, and crowned with glory. Let me incite thee to this speculation in the language of Ferarius: Define tandem aliquando prono in terram vultu, vel praeter naturam brutum animal, vel ante diem silicernium videri. Coelum suspice, ad quod natus, ad quod erectâ staturâ tuendum tenendumque factus es. Immortalia sydera caducis flosculis praefer, aut eadem esse Coeli flores existimato nostratibus Amaranthis diuturniores. Farewell, and neglect not thy own happiness.  
H.U.   

THE LIFE OF HOLY PAULINUS, THE BISHOP of NOLA.  
Been Sirach finishing his Catalogue of holy men (to seal up the sum, and to make his list complete) brings in Simon the Son of Onias: And (after a short narration of his pious care in repairing and fortifying the Temple) he descends to the particular excellencies, and sacred perfections of his person. Which to render the more fresh and sweet unto posterity, he adorns with these bright and flowery Encomiums.  
1. He was as the Morningstar in the midst of a cloud, and as the Moon at the full.  
2. As the Sun shining upon the temple of the most high, and as the Rainbow giving light in the bright clouds.  
3. As the flower of Roses in the spring of the year, as Lilies by the rivers of waters, and as the branches of the Frankincense-tree in the time of summer.  
4. As fire and Incense in the Censer, and as a vessel of beaten gold set with all manner of precious stones.  
5. As a fair Olive-tree budding forth fruit, and as a Cypress tree which groweth up to the clouds.  
6. When he put on the robe of honour, and was clothed with the perfection of glory, when he went up to the holy Altar, he made the garment of holiness honourable.  
Most great (indeed) and most glorious Assimilations, full of life, and full of freshness! but in all this beauty of holiness, in all these spices and flowers of the Spouse, there is nothing too much, nothing too great for our most great and holy Paulinus. The Saints of God (though wand'ring in sheepskins, and goatskins, in caves, and in mountains) become eminently famous, and leave behind them a more glorious and enduring memory, than the most prosperous tyrants of this world; which like noisome exhalations, moving for a time in the Eye of the Sun, fall afterwards to the earth, where they rot and perish under the chains of darkness. The fame of holy men (like the Kingdom of God) is a seed that grows secretly; the dew that feeds these plants comes from him, that sees in secret, but rewards openly. They are those trees in the Poet, 
Which silently, and by none seen,  
Grow great and green.   
While they labour to conceal, and obscure themselves, they shine the more. And this (saith Athanasius in the life of Antony the great) is the goodness of God, who useth to glorify his servants, though unwilling, that by their examples he may condemn the world, and teach men, that holiness is not above the reach of humane nature. Apposite to my present purpose is all this prolusion, both because this blessed Bishop (whose life I here adventure to publish) was a person of miraculous perfections and holiness, and because withal he did most diligently endeavour to vilify his own excellent abilities, and to make himself of no account. But Pearls, though set in lead, will not lose their brightness; and a virtuous life shines most in an obscure livelihood.  
In the explication of his life I shall follow first the method of Nature, afterwards of Grace: I shall begin with his Birth, Education, and Maturity; and end with his Conversion, Improvements, and Perfection. To make my entrance then into the work, I find that he was born in the City of Bordeaux in Gascoigne, in the year of our Lord three hundred and fifty three, Constantius the Arian reigning in the East, and Constans in the West, and 
* He subscribed to the damnable heresy of Arius, as both Hierome and Athanasius testify against him.  Liberius being Bishop of Rome: In a Golden Age, when Religion and Learning kissed each other, and equally flourished. So that he had the happiness to shine in an age that loved light, and to multiply his own by the light of others. It was the fashion then of the Roman Senators to build them sumptuous houses in their Country-living, that they might have the pleasure and conveniency of retiring thither from the tumult and noise of that great City, which sometimes was, and would be yet the head of the World. Upon such an occasion (without doubt) was Bordeaux honoured with the birth of Paulinus, his Father's estate lying not far off, about the town of Embrau, upon the River Garumna, which rising out of the Pyrene hills washeth that part of Guienne with a pleasant stream, and then runs into the Aquitane sea. By this happy accident came France to lay claim to Paulinus, which she makes no small boast of at this day. But his Country indeed (if we follow his descent, which is the right way to find it) is Italy, and Rome itself; his Ancestors were all Patricians, and honoured (by a long succession) with the Consular purple. His Patrimonies were large, and more becoming a Prince than a private man; for besides those possessions in the City of Bordeaux, and by the River Garumna, he had other most ample Inheritances in Italy about Narbone and Nola, and in Rome itself. And for this we have a pregnant testimony out of Ausonius, who labouring to dissuade him from Evangelical poverty, and that obscure course of life (as he is pleased to term it) lays before him (as the most moving arguments) the desolation of his ancient house, with the ruin and sequestration (as it were) of his large possessions; his words are these. 
Ne raptam sparsamque domum, etc.  
Let me not weep to see thy ravished house  
All sad & silent, without Lord or Spouse,  
And all those vast dominions once thine own,  
Torn 'twixt a hundred slaves to me unknown.   
But what account he made of these earthly possessions, will appear best by his own words in his fifth Epistle to Severus: Ergo ●ihil in hunc mundum inferentibus substantiam rerum temporalium quasi tonfile v●ll●s apposite, etc. God (saith he) lays these temporal accommodations upon us that come naked into this world, as a fleece of wool which is to be sheared off. He puts it not as a load to hinder us, whom it behoves to be born light and active, but as a certain matter which rightly used may be beneficial. And when he bestoweth any thing upon us, that is either dear or pleasant to us, he gives it for this end, that by parting with it, it may be a testimonial, or token of our love and devotion towards God, seeing we neglect the fruition of our best present things for his sake, who will amply reward us in the future.  
He had conferred upon him all the ornaments of humane life which man could be blest with. He was nobly born, rich, and beautiful, of constitution slender and delicate, but every way fitted for virtuous employment; of an excellent wit, a happy memory, and, which sweetened all these gracious concessions, of a most mild and modest disposition. To bring these seeds to perfection, his Father (having a care of him equal to his degree) caused him to be brought up under the regiment of Decius magnus Ausonius, a famous Poet and Orator, who at that time kept a School of Grammar and Rhetoric in the City of Bordeaux. The Ingenuity and sweetness of Paulinus so overcame and ravished Ausonius, that he used all possible skill and diligence, to adorn and perfect those natural abilities which he so much loved and admired in this hopeful plant. The effect was, that he exceeded his Master. Ausonius' upon this being called to the Court by the old Emperor Valentinian; Paulinus gave himself to the study of the Civil Law, and the acute and learned plead of that age, wherein he was so excellent, that the Emperor taking notice of his Abilities, took order for his Election into the Senate, and this a very long time before his Tutor attained to that honour. This praecedence of eloquence and honour 
* Cedimus ingenio quantum praecedimus aeyo, Assurgit Musae nostra Camaena tuae. Sic & fastorum titulo prior, & tua Romae Praecessit nostrum sella curulis ebur.  Ausonius himself confesseth; but having a greater witness, I shall leave his testimony to the Margin, to make room for the other. Take then (if it please you) the Judgement of that glorious and Eloquent Doctor Saint Hierome, for thus he writes in his thirteenth Epist. to Paulinus, O si mihi liceret istiusmodi ingenium non per Aonios montes & Heliconis vertices, ut poetae canunt, sed per Zion, etc. O that I were able (saith he) to extol and publish your ingenuity and holy learning, not upon the Aonian hills, or the tops of Helicon (as the Poets sing) but upon the Mountains of Zion and Sinai; that I might preach there what I have learned from you, and deliver that sacred mysteries of Scripture through your hands; I might then have something to speak, which learned Greece could never boast of. And in another place, A most pregnant wit you have, and an infinite treasure of words, which easily and ap●ly flow from you, and both the easiness and the aptness are judiciously mixed.  
To these Divine favours already conferred upon him, God added another great blessing, the Crown of his youth, and the Comfort of his age; I mean Therasia, a Noble Roman Virgin, whom he took to wife in the midst of his honours, and who afterwards (of her own free will) most joyfully parted with them all, and with her own pleasant possessions to follow Christ in the regeneration.  
At this height of honours, & growing repute, he was employed (upon some concernments of the Empire) into Italy, France, and Spain; Where he was detained (together with his dear consort) for the space of almost fifteen years; during which time, he secretly laboured to make himself acquainted with the glorious Fathers of that age, and (the Spirit of God now beginning to breath upon him) he was strongly moved to embrace the Christian Faith. In these travels of his, it was his fortune to arrive at Milan, where Saint Augustine, and Alypius, the Bishop of Tagasta in afric, did the Sojourn; here by accident he was known of Alpyius, though unknown to him; as we see it often fall out, that great persons are known of many, which to them are unknown.  
Much about this time (which was the eight and thirtieth year of his age,) he retired privately with his wife into the City of Bordeaux. And the hour being now come, that the singing of birds should be heard, and the lips which were asleep should speak: He was there by the hands of holy Delphinus (who then sat Bishop in the Sea of Bordeaux,) publicly baptised, from which time forward he renounced all his Secular acquaintance, associating himself to the most strict and pious livers in that age, especially to Saint Ambrose the Bishop of Milan, and Saint Martin the Bishop of Tours. That he was baptised about the eight and thirtieth year of his age, is clear by his own words in his first Epistle to Saint Augustine, Nolo in me corporalis ●rtus, magis quam spiritalis exortus aetatem consideres, etc. I would not (saith he) that you consider my temporal age, so much as my spiritual; my age in the flesh is the same with that Cripple, who was healed in the beautiful gate by the power of Christ working by his Apostles; but my age in the regeneration is the same with the blessed Infants, who by the wounds intended for Christ himself, became the first fruits unto Christ, and by the loss of their innocent blood, did foreshow the slaughter of the Lamb, and the passion of our Lord. Now for the first, Saint Luke tells us, That the Cripple upon whom this miracle of healing was shown, was above forty years of age (Acts Chap. 4. ver. 22.) and for the Infants, the Evangelists words are, that Herod sent forth his messengers, and slew all the Male Children that were in Bethlem, and the Coasts thereof, from two years old and under. So that considering all the Circumstances which offer themselves for the clearing of this point, it will evidently appear, that he was baptised (as I have said before) in the eight and thirtieth year of his age. The only Instrument which God was pleased to ordain, and employ upon the Earth for his Conversion, was his dear and Virtuous Wife Therasia; Which makes me conjecture, that she was borne of Christian parents, and had received the faith from her infancy. This Ausonius his old Tutor, (who was scarce a good Chrihian,) forgot not to upraid him with in most injurious terms, calling her Tanaquil, and the Imperatrix of her Husband: To which passionate passages (though sadly resented) Paulinus replied with all the humanity and sweetness which language could express. Thus Ausonius barks at him. 
Undè istam meruit non foelix Charta repulsam?  
Hostis ab hoste tamen, etc.  
— how could that paper sent,  
That luckless paper, merit thy contempt?  
Even foe to foe (though furiously) replies;  
And the defied, his Enemy defies:  
Amidst the swords and wounds there's a Salute.  
Rocks answer man, and though hard, are not mute.  
Nature made nothing dumb, nothing unkind:  
The trees and leaves speak trembling to the wind.  
If thou dost fear discoveries, and the blot  
Of my love, Tanaquil shall know it not.   
To this Poetical fury, Paulinus reposeth with that Native mildness, which he was wholly composed of: 
Continuata meae durare silentia linguae,  
Te nunquam tacito memoras; placit amque latebris  
Desidiam exprobras; neglectaeque insuper addis  
Crimen amicitiae; formidatamque Jugalem  
Objicis, & durum iacis in mea viscera versum, etc.  
Obdurate still, and tongue-tied you accuse  
(Though yours is ever vocal) my dull muse;  
You blame my Lazy, lurking life, and add  
I scorn your love, a Calumny most sad;  
Then tell me, that I fear my wife, and dart  
Harsh, cutting words against my dearest heart.  
Leave, learned Father, leave this bitter Course,  
My studies are not turned unto the worse;  
I am not mad, nor idle; nor deny  
Your great deserts, and my debt, nor have I  
A wife like Tanaquil as wildly you  
Object, but a Lucretia, chaste and true.   
To avoid these clamours of Ausonius, and the dangerous solicitations of his gr●at kindred and friends, he left Bordeaux and Nola, and retired into the Mountainous and solitary parts of Spain, about Barcin●e and Bilbilis upon the River Sale. Two journeys he made into Spain, this last, and his first (before his baptism) upon the Emperor's affairs; he Sojourned then in new Casti●e, in the City of Complutum now called Alcala de henares, where his wife Therasia was delivered of her only Son Celsus, who died upon the eighth day after his birth. Holy Paulinus in his Panegyric upon the death of Celsus the Son of Pneumatius, by his Wife Fid●lis, takes occasion to mention the early death of this blessed infant, 
Hoc pignus commune superno in lumine Celsu  
Credit vivorum lacte favisque frui.  
Aut cum Bethlaeis infantibus in Paradiso  
(Quos malus Herodes perculit invidiâ,)  
Inter odoratum ludit nemus, etc.  
This pledge of your joint love, to Heaven now fled,  
With honey-combs and milk of life is fed.  
Or with the Bethlem-Babes (whom Herod's rage  
Killed in their tender, happy, holy age)  
Doth walk the groves of Paradise, and make  
Garlands, which those young Martyrs from him take.  
With these his Eyes on the mild lamb are fixed,  
A Virgin-Child with Virgin-infants mixed.  
Such is my Celsus too, who soon as given,  
Was taken back (on the eighth day) to Heaven,  
To whom at Alcala I sadly gave  
Amongst the Martyr's Tombs a little grave.  
He now with yours (gone both the blessed way,)  
Amongst the trees of life doth smile and play;  
And this one drop of our mixed blood may be  
A light for my Therasia, and for me.   
These distant and obscure retirements he made choice of, because he would not be known of any, nor hindered in his coarse; Which at Nola, and the adjacent parts of Rome (where his Secular honours an I ancient descent made all the people obsequious to him) could not possibly be effected Besides very few in those Western parts (especially of the Nobility) had at that time received the Christian Faith; for they looked upon it as a most degenerate, unmanly profession: such a good opinion had those rough times of peace and humility. This made him less looked after by the Inhabitants of those parts; and his own friends not knowing what became of him, began to give him over, and not only to withdraw from him in their care, but in their affections also, giving out that he was mad, and besides himself. But all this moved him not: he was not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, he counted all things dung that he might gain his Saviour, and he fainted not, but endured, as seeing him that is invisible. The first step to Christianity (saith Saint Hierome) is to contemn the censures of men. 
St. Hierome Ep. 26.  This foundation he laid, and upon this he built; he had given himself wholly to Christ, and rejected the world; he took part with that man of sorrows, and suffered the scoffs and reproaches of these men of mirth. The people are the many waters, he turned their froth and some into pearls, and wearied all weathers with an unimpaired Superstitie. He was sounded upon that Rock, which is not worn with time, but wears all that oppose it. Some dispositions love to stand in rain, and affect wind and showers beyond Music. Paulinus sure was of this temper; he preferred the indignation and hatred of the multitude to their love, he would not buy their friendship with the loss of Heaven, nor call those Saints and propagators, who were Devils and destroyers. What courage he had in such tempests, may be seen in every line almost of his works; I shall insert one or two out of his 6th Epistle to Severus: Utinam, frater mi, digni habeamur qui maledicamur, & notemur, & conteramur, atque etiam interficiamur in nomine Jesu Christi, dum non ipse occidatur Christus in nobis. etc. I would (saith he) my dear brother, that we might be counted worthy to suffer reproach, to be branded and trodden upon; Yea, and to be killed for the name of Christ, so that Christ be not killed in us. Then at last should we tread upon the Adder, and the Dragon, and bruise the head of the old Serpent. But (alas!) we as yet relish this World, and do but pretend to love Christ; we love indeed to be commended and cherished for professing his name, but we love not to be troubled and afflicted for his sake. And in his first Epistle to Aper; O blessed displeasures (saith he) to displease men by pleasing Christ! Let us take heed of the love of such, who will be pleased without Christ. It is an observation of the Readers of Saint Cyprian, quoth in ejus scriptis singula propè verb● Martyrium spirant, that through all his writings, almost every word doth breath Martyrdom. His expressions are all Spirit and Passion, as if he had writ them with his blood, and conveyed the anguish of his sufferings into his writings. I dare not say so much of Paulinus, nor of any other Father of the Church; but I fear not to say that Paulinus both durst, and (had he been called to it) would have laid down his life for the love of Christ.  
Four years he spent in these remote parts of Spain, during which time, he did lead a most solitary and austere life, labouring by all means to conceal and vilify himself. But a City that is built upon a hill cannot be hidden; his holiness and humility had so awaked the Common people dwelling about the place of his abode, that they would not rest again till they had him for their Minister. This most honourable and sacred charge he would by no means adventure to undergo, judging himself a most unworthy vile sinner, not fit to deal in holy Scripture, much less to handle and administer the mystical Elements of life. But God, who had ordained him for it, would not suffer this. For the people (not without violence and some rudeness,) carried him away to Barcinoe, where holy Lampius, then Bishop of that Sea, did upon Christmas day by the laying on of his hands, consecreate him a faithful steward and learned dispenser of the Mysteries of God. This passage we have fully related in his sixth Epistle to Severus, Nos modo in Barcinonensi (ut ante Scrips●ram) civitate consistimus, etc. I live now (saith he) as I formerly writ to you in the City of Barcinoe, where (since the last letters received from you) I was by the violence of the people (God, I believe, having foreordained it) compelled to enter into holy Orders upon that day in which our Lord was born. I confess it was done against my will, not for any dislike that I have to the place (for Christ is my witness, that my highest desire was to begin my employment in his house with the office and honour of a doorkeeper) but having designed myself (as you know) 
* For Nola.  elsewhere, I was much terrified with this sudden and unexpected pleasure of the Divine will: However I refused it not, but submitted with all humility, and have put my neck into the Yoke of Christ, though altogether unworthy and unable. I see now that I have meddled with things that are too wonderful for me; I am made a Steward of the Secrets of the Almighty, and honoured with the dispensation of Heavenly things, and being called nearer to my Master, I am exercised about the Body, about the Spirit, and the glory of Jesus Christ. The narrowness of my understanding cannot comprehend the signification of this high and sacred dignity, and I tremble every minute (when I consider my own infirmities) to think of the great burden that is laid upon me. But he that gives wisdom to his little ones, and hath perfected praise out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, is able to finish what he begun in me, that by his mighty working, I may be made worthy, who was most unworthy to be called. The Priesthood is an Office belonging to the Kingdom of Heaven. It is an honour that is ranged upon holy ground, and by itself. Worldly dignities, which are but humane inventions, are, and may be acquired (with less offence) by humane means, as bribery, ambition, and policy. But to take hold of this white robe with such dirty hands, is nothing less than to spit in the face of Christ, and to dishonour his Ordinance. He that doth it, and he that permits it to be done, agree like Herod and Pilate, to despise and crucify him. They that Countenance and ratify such disorders, take care to provide so many Judasses' to betray Christ, and then vote the treason to be lawful. Every man can speak, but every man cannot preach: Tongues and the gift of tongues are not the same things: The wisdom of God hath depth and rich●s, and things hard to be spoken, as well as milk, and the first principles of his Oracles. We have amongst us many builders with hay and stubble, but let them, and those that hired them, take heed how they build; The trial will be by fire, and by a consuming fire. The hidden things of dishonest, the walking in Craftiness, and the handling deceitfully of the word of God they are well versed in; b● true sanctify, and the Spirit of God (which Saint Paul thought he had) I am very sure they have not.  
A modest reader would now think that Paulinus had removed himself far enough from the elaborate temptations, and clamorous pursuits of Ausonius; But even in this will he be deceived. For at the fourth years end, did the Incantations of this busy and obstinate Charmer find him out. God (no doubt) providing for the security of his servant all that while, by delaying them in several regions, or else by concealing the abode of his beloved votary, from this pursuer of Souls. For with all the artifice and strength of wit, did he set upon him in this last letter, which the divine providence suffered not to come into his hand, till he had set both his hands to the plough, and sealed his conformation with that indelible Character. And now having set a hedge about his beloved, he suffered this Fowl of the Evening to fly over, which chattered to him in these melodious numbers. 
Vertistis, Pauline, tu●s dulcissim● mores? etc.  
Sweet Paulinus, is thy nature turned?  
Have I so long in vain thy absence mourned?  
Wilt thou, my glory, and great Rome's delight,  
The Senate's prop, their oracle, and light,  
In Bilbilis and Calagurris dwell,  
Changing thy Ivorie-chair for a dark Cell?  
Wilt bury there thy Purple, and contemn  
All the great honours of thy noble stem?   
To this Roman Magic, and most pernicious Elegancy, Paulinus replied with a certain sacred and serene simplicity, which proved so piercing, and powerful, that he was never after troubled with the Poetry of Ausonius. 
— Revoe andum me tibi credam,  
Cum steriles fundas non ad divina percatus?  
Castatidis supplex averso numine musis, etc.  
Shall I believe you can make me return,  
Who pour your fruitless prayers when you mourn,  
Not to your Maker? Who can hear you cry:  
But to the fabled Nymphs of Castalie?  
You never shall by such false Gods bring me  
Either to Rome, or to your company.  
As for those former things you once did know,  
And which you still call mine, I freely now  
Confess, I am not he, whom you knew then;  
I have died since, and have been borne again.  
Nor dare I think my sage instructor can  
Believe it error, for redeemed man  
To serve his great redeemer. I grieve not,  
But glory so to err. Let the wise knot  
Of worldlings call me fool; I slight their noise,  
And hear my God approving of my choice.  
Man is but glass, a building of no trust,  
A moving shade, and, without Christ, mere dust:  
His choice in life concerns the Chooser much:  
For when he dies, his good or ill (just such  
As here it was) goes with him hence, and stays  
Still by him, his strict Judge in the last days.  
These serious thoughts take up my soul, and I  
While yet 'tis daylight, fix my busy eye  
Upon his sacred Rules, life's precious sum,  
Who in the twilight of the world shall come  
To judge the lofty looks, and show mankind  
The difference 'twixt the ill and well inclined.  
This second coming of the world's great King  
Makes my heart tremble, and doth timely bring  
A saving care into my watchful soul,  
Lest in that day all vitiated and foul  
I should be found: That day, times utmost line,  
When all shall perish, but what is divine.  
When the great Trumpets mighty blast shall shake  
The earth's foundations, till the hard Rocks quake,  
And melt like piles of snow, when lightnings move  
Like hail, and the white thrones are set above.  
That day, when sent in glory by the Father,  
The Prince of life his blessed Elect shall gather;  
Millions of Angels round about him flying,  
While all the kindreds of the earth are crying,  
And he enthroned upon the clouds shall give  
His last just sentence, who must die, who live.  
This is the fear this is the saving care,  
That makes me leave false honours, and that share  
Which fell to me of this frail world; lest by  
A frequent use of present pleasures I  
Should quite forget the future, and let in  
Foul Atheism, or some presumptuous sin.  
Now by their loss I have secured my life,  
And bought my peace even with the cause of strife.  
I live to him, who gave me life & breath,  
And without fear expect the hour of death.  
If you like this, bid joy to my rich state,  
If not, leave me to Christ at any rate.   
Being now ordained a Minister of holy things, and a feeder of t●e flock of Christ, that he might be enabled to render a joyful account at the appearance of the great Shepherd, he resolved with all convenient expedition to sell and give away all his large and Princely Possessions in Italy and France; which hitherto he had not disposed of; for he looked upon his great Patrimonies as matters of distraction and backsliding, the thoughts and solicitousness about such vast revenues disturbing his pious affections, and necessarily intruding into his most holy exercitations. Upon this rare resolution he returns with his faithful Consort into France, leaving Barcinoe and holy Lampius in much sorrow for his departure. For though he had entered there into the Ministry, yet was he no member of that Diocese. And here (saith Uranius, who was his Presbyter, and wrote a brief narration of his life) did he open his Treasuries to the poor and the stranger. He did not only refresh his neighbours, but sent messengers into other remote parts to summon the naked, and the hungry to this great Feast, where they were both fed and clothed with his own hands. He eased the oppressed, freed the captives, paid the debts of whole families, and redeemed divers persons that were become bondslaves to their creditors. Briefly, he sold all that he had, and distributed the money amongst the poor, not reserving one penny either for himself, or his dear Therasia. Saint Ambrose in his thirtieth Epistle to Sabinus confirmeth this relation: Paulinum splendore generis in partibus Aquitaniae nulli secun●um, venditis facultatibus tam ●uis quametiam conjugalibus; etc. Paulinus (saith he) the most eminent for his Nobility in all the parts of Aquitane, having sold away all his patrimonies, together with the goods of his wife, did out of pure love to Jesus Christ divide all that vast Sum of Money amongst the poor; and he himself from a rich Senator is become a most poor man, having cast off that heavy secular burden, and forsaken his own house, his country, and his kindred, that he might with more earnestness follow Christ. His Wife also, as nobly descended, and as zealous for the Faith as himself, consented to all his desires, and having given away all her own large possessions, lives with her husband in a little thatched cottage, rich in nothing but the hidden treasures of Religion and holiness. Saint Augustine also in his first book de Civitate Dei, and the tenth Chapter, celebrates him with the like testimony: Our Paulinus (saith he) from a man most splendidly rich, became most poor most willingly, and most richly holy. He laboured not to add field unto field, nor to enclose himself in C●dar and Ivory, and the drossy dark gold of this world, but to enter through the gates into the precious light of that City, which is of pure gold like unto clear glass. He left some few things in this world, to enjoy all in the world to come. A great performance certainly, and a most fair approach towards the Kingdom of heaven. He that fights with dust, comes off well, if it blinds him not. To slight words, and the names of temptations, is easy, but to deal so with the matter, and substance of them, is a task. Conscience hath Music, and light, as well as discord and darkness: And the triumphs of it are as familiar after good works, as the Checks of it after bad. It is no heresy in devotion to be sensible of our smallest Victories over the World. But how far he was from thinking this a Victory, may be easily gathered out of his own● words in his second Epistle to Severus; Facile nobis bona, etc. The goods (saith he) I carried about me, by the slipping of my skirt out of my hand, fell easily from me: And those things which I brought not into this World, and could not carry out of it, being only lent me for a time, I restored again. I pulled them not as the skin off my back, but laid them by, as a garment I had sometimes worn. But now comes the difficulty upon me, when those things which are truly mine, as my heart, my Soul, and my works must be presented and given a living Sacrifice unto God. The abdication of this World, and the giving of our temporal goods amongst the poor, is not the running of the race, but a preparing to run; it is not the end, but the beginning, and first step of our Journey. He that striveth for masteries, shall not be crowned, except he first strive lawfully; And he that is to swim over a River, cannot do it by putting off his clothes only, he must put his body also into the stream, and with the motion of his arms, his hands and feet, pass through the violence of the Brook, and then rest upon the further side of it. And in his 12th Epistle, he cries out, O miserable and vain men! We believe that we bestow something upon the poor: we trade and lend, and would be counted liberal, when we are most covetous. The most unconscionable usurers upon Earth are not so greedy as we are, nor their interest and exactions so unreasonable as ours. We purchase Heaven with Earth, happiness with misery, and immortality with rust and rottenness. Such another Divine rapture is that in his Poems. 
— Et res magna videtur,  
Merc ari propriam de re pereunt● salutem?  
Perpetuis mutare caduca? etc.  
— And is the bargain thought too dear,  
To give for Heaven our frail subsistence here?  
To change our mortal with immortal homes,  
And purchase the bright Stars with darksome stones?  
Behold! my God (a rate great as his breath!)  
On the sad cross bought me with bitter death,  
Did put on flesh, and suffe'rd for our good,  
For ours, (vile slaves!) the loss of his dear blood.   
We see by these Manifesto's what account he made of this great deed; so great, that none now adays think of doing it. Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, is a commandment, as well as, take up the Cross and follow me. This last cannot be done, but by doing the first. Well sell oftentimes, but seldom give: and happily that is the reason we sell so often. He that keeps all to himself, takes not the right way to thrive. The Corn that lies in the Granary will bring no harvest. It is most commonly the food of vermin, and some creatures of the night and darkness. Charity is a relic of Paradise, and pity is a strong argument that we are all descended from one man: He that carries this rare Jewel about him, will every where meet with some kindred. He is quickly acquainted with distressed persons, and their first sight warms his blood. I could believe, that the word stranger is a notion received from the posterity of Cain, who killed Abel. The Hebrews in their own tribes, called those of the farthest degree, brothers; and sure they erred less from the law of pure Nature, than the rest of the Nations, which were left to their own lusts. The afflictions of man are more moving then of any other Creature; for he only is a stranger here, where all things else are at home. But the losing of his innocency, and his device of Tyranny have made him unpitied, and forfeited a prerogative, that would have prevailed more by submission, than all his posterity shall do by opposition. Not to give to one that lacks, is a kind of murder: Want and famine are destroyers as well as the sword, and rage very frequently in private, when they are not thought of in the Public. The blessed JESUS who came into the World to rectify Nature, and to take away the inveterate corruptions of man, was not more in any of his precepts, then in that which bids us Love one another. This is the cement not only of this World, but of that other which is to come. Blessed are the merciful; and, give to him that asketh thee, proceeded from the same lips of truth. And in his description of the last judgement, he grounds the sentence of condemnation pronounced against the wicked upon no other fact, but because they did not clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and take in the stranger. Love covers a multitude of sins, and God loves the cheerful giver. But this is not our whole duty: though we give our bodies to be burnt, and give all our goods unto the poor, yet without holiness we shall never see the face of God. Darkness cannot stand in the presence of light, and flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. The great difficulty then (as our holy Bishop here saith) is to become a living sacrifice; and truly the next way to it, is by an Evangelical disposing of these outward encumbrances; this will open and prepare the way before us, though it takes nothing from the length of it. The Hawk prunes and rouseth before she flies, but that brings her not to the mark: Preparations, and the distant flourishes of Array will not get the field, but action, and the pursuance of it.  
His Estate in France being thus disposed of, he retired into Italy; where having done the like to his Patrimonies there, he came to Milan, and was honourably received by holy Ambrose, than Bishop of that Sea. But these gay feathers of the World, being thus blown off him, by the breath of that Spirit which makes the dry tree to become green, and the spices of the Garden to flow out, all his kindred and former acquaintance became his deadly Enemies. Flies of estate follow Fortune, and the Sunshine; friendship is a thing much talked off, but seldom found; I never knew above two that loved without selfe-ends. That which passeth for love in this age, is the mere counter to it; It is policy in the clothes of love, or the hands of Esau with the tongue of Jacob. These smooth Cheats the World abounds with: There is Clay enough for the potter, but little dust whereof cometh Gold. The best direction is Religion; find a true Christian, and thou hast found a true friend. He that fears not God, will not fear to do thee a mischief.  
From Milan he came to Rome, where he was honourably entertained by all, but his own kindred, and Siricius the great Bishop. It was the ill Fortune of this zealous Pope, to be offended not only with Paulinus, but with that glorious Father Saint Hierome. It was a perilous dissoluteness of some Bishops in that Century, to admit of Laymen, and unseasoned persons into the Ministry. This rash and impious practice Siricius had, by several strict Sanctions or decrees, condemned and forbidden; and it is probable that the reason of his strange carriage towards Paulinus and Hierome was, because he would not seem to connive at any persons that were suddenly ordained, though never so deserving, lest he should seem to offend against his own edicts. It is a sad truth that this pernicious rashness of Bishops (fight ex diametro with the Apostolical cautions) hath oftentimes brought boars into the Vineyard, and Wolves into the sheepfold; which complying afterwards with all manner of Interests, have torn out the bowels of their Mother. We need no examples: We have lived to see all this ourselves. Ignorance and obstinacy make Heretics: And ambition makes Schismatics; when they are once at this pass, they are on the way toward Atheism. I do not say that Ecclesiastical polity is an inviolable or sure sense against Church-rents; because there is a necessity that offences must come, though woe to them by whom; but rules of prevention are given: and therefore they should not be slighted. The Bridegroom adviseth his spouse to take these foxes while they are little.  
In a pleasant field half a mile distant from Nola lies the Sepulchre of the blessed Martyr Felix. To this place (which from his youth he was ever devoted to,) did Paulinus now retire. It was the custom of holy men in that age no● only to live near the Tombs of the Martyrs, but to provide also for their burial in those places; because they were sure, that in the Resurrection, and the terrors of the day of Judgement God would descend upon those places in the soft voice, that is to say in his love and mercies. Eusebius is his fourth Book, and the sixth Chapter of the life of Constantine tells us, how that great Emperor gave strict order for his burial amongst the Tombs of the Apostles, and then adds, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. Saint Chrisostome in in that homily which he writ to prove that Christ is God, gives the same relation, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, etc. The Emperors of Constantinople (saith he) esteem it for a great honour, if they be buried not within the shrines of the Apostles, but at the Gates of their Temple, that they may be the doorkeepers of those poor fishers. So Marcellina, descended from the consular Nobility of Rome, refused to be buried amongst her Ancestors, that she might sleep at Milan with her great Brother Saint Ambrose, where she lies under this Epitaph. 
Marcellina, tuos cum vita resolveret artus; Sprevisti patriis, etc.  
Life, Marcellina, leaving thy fair frame,  
Thou didst contemn those Tombs of costly fame,  
Built by thy Roman Ancestors, and liest  
At Milan, where great Ambrose sleeps in Christ.  
Hope, the deads' life, and faith, w●ich never faints,  
Made thee rest here, that thou may'st rise with Saints.   
To this place therefore near Nola in Campania (a Country lying within the Realm of Naples, and called now by the Inhabitants Terra di Lavoro,) as to a certain Harbour and recess from the clamours of their friends, and the t●mptations of the World, did Paulinus and Therasia convey themselves. His affection to this holy 
a Paulininus calls him a Martyr, quia multa pro Christo passus, ersi non occi●us.  Martyr was very great: for frequenting Nola, when he was yet a youth, he would oftentimes steal privately to visit his Sepulchre: and he loved the possessions which his Father had left him in those parts above any other, because that under pretence of looking to his estate there, he had the convenience of resorting to the Tomb of Felix; where he took in his first love, and in the seven and twentie●h year of his age, made a private vow to become a Servant o● Jesus Christ. This Felix was by a descent a Syrian, though born in Nola, where his Father (trafficking from the East into Italy, had purchased a very fair estate, which he divided afterward betwixt him and his Brother Hermias; but Felix following Christ, gave all to his brother. The frequent miracles manifested at his Tomb, made the place famous, and resorted to from most parts of the world. Saint Augustine, upon a Controversy betwixt his Presbyter Boniface, and another fellow that accused him, when the truth of either side could not be certainly known, sent them both from Hippo to Nola, to have the matter decided upon Oat●, before the Tomb of Felix; and in his 137th Epistle, he sets down the reason, why he sent them so far. His words are these: Multis notissima est sanctitas lo ci, ubi Felicis Nolensis corpus conditum est, quò volui ut peragrent, quia inde nobis facilius fideliusque scribi potest, quicquid in eorum aliquo divinitus fuerit propalatum. The holiness (saith he) of that place where the body of Felix of Nola lies interred, is famously known to many; I have therefore sent them thither, because that from thence, I shall be more easily and truly informed about any thing that shall be miraculously discovered concerning either of them.  
Paulinus had not lived very long in this place, but it pleased God to visit him with a very sharp and tedious sickness. He had now (upon Earth) no Comforter but Therasia; His Estate was gone, and his contempt of that made the World contemn him. In this solitude and poverty, he that tries the reins and the heart, begins to take notice of this his new servant, and the first favour he conferred upon him was a disease. Good Angels do not appear without the Ecstasy and passion of the Seere: without afflictions and trials God will not be familiar with us. Fruit-trees if, they be not pruned, will first leave to bear, and afterwards they will die. Nature, without she be dressed by the hand that made her, will finally perish. He that is not favoured with visitations, is (in Saint Paul's phrase) a bastard, and no Son of the Superior Jerusalem. Paulinus had put from him all occasions of worldly sorrows, but he wanted matter for Heavenly Joys. Without this disease, he had not known so soon, how acceptable his first Services were unto his Master. This sickness was a pure stratagem of love, God visited him with it for this very purpose, that he himself might be his Cordial.  
Man and the Eagle see best in the daytime, they see by the light of this World: but the 
a Paulinus will have the word which is commonly used in the Latin, to be Nicticora, from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, which signifies the apple or candle of the eye, and not from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. And this he saith was told him by a holy man, that had lived a long time in the deserts of Egypt, where he observed the nature of this bird of night, and the Pelican.  night-Raven is a bird of Mystery, and sees in the dark by a light of her own. Paulinus hought now (like the servant of Elisha) that he had not a friend in all the World to be of his side; but God removes the mist from his Eyes, and showed him a glorious Army of Saints and Confessors, who during the time of his sickness, did so throng and fill up his Cottage, and the fields about it, that neither his Palace in Rome, nor his house in Bordeaux could ever boast of such a number. These Comforters he hath recorded with his own pen in his first Epistle to Severus; viderant pueri tui, etc. Your men (saith he) that were here with me, have seen, and can tell you with what constant diligence all the Bishops, and my brethren the Clergy, with the common people my neighbours, did minister unto me all the time of my sickness. Unto you, who are unto me as my own soul, I take leave to boast and glory in this mercy of the Lord, whose goodness it is, that I am so plentifully comforted. There is not one Bishop in all Campania that did not come personally to visit me, and those whom either a farther distance, or their own infirmities would not permit to travel, faied not to visit me by their Presbyters & letters. The Bishops of afric also with the beginning of the spring, sent their particular letters and messengers to comfort me. Thus he that forsakes houses and brethren, and lands to follow Christ, shall receive an hundred fold even in this World, and in the world to come life everlasting.  
As touching the letters or Embassage rather of the African Bishops to Paulinus, it happened on this manner. Alypius, the Bishop of Tagasta in afric, had at Milan (as I intimated before) taken special notice of Paulinus: And the rumour of his Conversion (as the actions of eminent and noble personages pass quickly into the most distant regions,) had filled with joy not only the Churches of afric but the most remote corners of Christianity, even the very wilderness and the scattered Isles, which in those days were more frequented by Christians, then populous Continents and splendid Cities. Alypius upon this (because he would not lose so fair an opportunity to ground his acquaintanec,) dispatcheth a letter from Tagasta to Paulinus, to gratulate his conversion to the Faith; encouraging him withal to hold fast his Crown; and for a token, sent him five of Saint Augustine's books against the Ma●ichaeans, which in that age (when the Invention of the Press was not so much as thought of,) was a rich present. Paulinus was so taken with the reading of these Volumes, that he conceived himself not only engaged to Alypius, but to Augustine also. Whereupon he sent his servant from Nola with letters full of modesty and sweetness to them both, and with particular commendations to other eminent lights of the Church then shining in afric. These letters received by Augustine and Alypius, and communicated by them to the other Bishops, and the African Clergy, were presently Copied out by all, and nothing now was more desired by them, than a sight of this great Senator, who was turned a poor Priest, and a fool (as Saint Paul saith) for Christ his sake, and the offscouring of the World. But above all, the Souls of holy Augustine and Paulinus (like Jonathan and David, or Jacob and Joseph) were knit together, and the life of the one was bound up in the life of the other. The perfect love and union of these two, can by none be more faithfully, or more elegantly described, ●hen it is already by Saint Augustine himself. I shall therefore insert his own words, the words of that tongue of truth and Charity; 
August. Epistol. 22. ad Paulin.  O bone vir, O bone frater! lei dico ut toleret, quia adhuc lates oculos meos, latebas animam meam, & & vix obtemperat immo, non obtemperat. Quomodo ergo non doleā quod nondum faciem tuam novi, hoc est, domum animae tuae, quam sicut meam novi? legi enim literas tuas fluentes lac & mel, praeferentes simplicitatem cordis, in qua quaeris dominum, sentiens de illo in bonitate, & afferens ei claritatem & honorem. Legerunt fratres & gaudent, infatigabiliter & ineffabiliter tam uberibus & tam excellentibus donis dei, bonis tuis. Quotquot eas legerunt, rapiunt; quia rapiuntur, cum legunt. quam suavis odor Christi, & quam fragrat ex eyes? dici non potest, illae literae cum te offerunt ut videaris, quantum nos excitent ut quaeraris: nam et perspicabilem faciunt, & desiderabilem. Quantò enim praesentiam tuam nobis quodammodò exhibent, tantò absentiam nos ferre non sinunt. Amant te omnes in eyes, & amari abs te cupiunt. Laudatur & benedicitur deus, cujus gratiâ tu talis es. Ibi excitatur Christus, ut ventos & Maria tibi plasare tendenti ad stabilitatem suam dignetur. Ibi conjux excitatur, non dux ad mollitiem viro suo, sed ad fortitudinem redux in ossa viri sui: quam intuam unitatem redactam, in spiritualibus tibi taus firmioribus quantò castioribus nexibus copulatam, officijs vestrae sanctitati debitis ir te, uno ore salutamus. Ibi cedri Libani a terram depositae, & in arcae fabricam compagine charitatis erectae, mundi hujus fluctus imputribilitèr secant. Ibi gloria ut acquiratur, contemnitur; & mundus, ut obtineatur, relinquitur. Ibi parvuli, si●e etiam grandiusculi filij Babylonis eliduntur ad petram, vitia scilicet confusionis, superbiaeque secularis. Haec atque hujusmodi suavissima & sacratissima spectacula literae tu● praebent legentibus; literae fidei non fictae, literae spei bonae, literae purae charitatis. Quomodo nobis anhelant sitim tuam, & desiderium defectumque animae tuae in atria domini? Quid amoris sanctissi●i spirant? Quantam opulentiam sinceri cordis exaestuant? Quas agunt gratias deo? Quas impetrant â deo? blandiores sunt, an ardentiores? luminosiores, an faecundiores? Quid enim est, quòd ita nos mulcent, ita accendunt, it a compluunt; & it a screnae sunt? Quid est, quaeso te, aut quid tibi pro eis rependam, nisi quia totus sum tuus in eo, c● us tot us es tu? si parùm est, plus certê non h●beo. O good man, O good brother! you lay hidden from my Soul, and I spoke to my Spirit, that it should patiently bear it, because you are also hidden from my Eyes; but it scarce obeys, yea it refuseth to obey. How then shall I not grieve, because I have not as yet known your face, the habitation of your Soul, which I am as well acquainted with as my own? For I have read your letters flowing with milk and honey, manifesting the simplicity of your heart, in which you seek the Lord, thinking rightly of him, and bringing him glory and honour. Your brethren here have read them, and rejoice with an unwearied and unspeakable Joy, for the bountiful and excellent gifts of God in you, which are your riches. As many as have read them, snatch them from me; because when they read them, they are ravished with them. How sweet an Odour of Christ, and how fragrant proceeds from them? It cannot be expressed how much those letters, while they offer you to be seen of us, excite us to seek for you: They make you both discerned and desired: For the more they represent you unto us, we are the more impatient of your absence. All men love you in them, & desire to be beloved of you. God is blessed and praised by all, through whose grace you are such. There do we find that Christ is awaked by you, and vouchsafeth t● rebuke the winds and the Seas, that you may find them calm in your Course towards him. There is your dear wife stirred up, not to be your leader to softness and pleasures, but to Christian fortitude; becoming Masculine again, and restored into the bones of her Husband: whom we all with one voice salute and admire, being now united unto you, serving you in spiritual things, wherein you are coupled with mutual embraces, which the more chaste they be, are by so much the more firm. There do we see two Cedars of Libanus felled to the Earth, which joined together by love, make up one Ark, that cuts through the Waves of this World without detriment or putrefaction. There glory, that it may be acquired, is contemned; and the World, that it may be obtained, is forsaken. There the Children of Babylon, whither little ones, or of Maturer age; I mean the Evils of Confusion and secular pride, are dashed against the stones. Such sacred and delightful spectacles do your letters present unto us: O those letters of yours! Those letters of an unfeigned faith, those letters of holy hope, those letters of pure Charity! How do they sigh and gasp with your pious thirst, your holy longings, and the Ecstatical faintings of your Soul for the Courts of the Lord? What a most sacred love do they breathe? with what treasures of a sincere heart do they abound? How thankful to God? How earnest for more grace? How mild? How zealous? How full of light?? How full of fruit? Whence is it that they do so please us, and so provoke us, to shower and rain upon us, and yet are so calm and so serene? What is this I beseech you? or what shall I return unto you for these letters, unless I tell you, that I am wholly yours in him, whose you are altogether? If this be too little, in truth I have no more.  
These were the first effects of Paulinus his letters; but shortly after, St. Augustine sent him others, nothing inferior to this first, either in affection, or Piety. And the year following, being elected by Valerius to fit his Coadjutor in the Sea of Hippo, where he afterwards succeeded him; It was resolved by them all, namely by Valerius, Augustine, Alypius, Severus, and Profuturus, the African Bishops, that a messenger should be dispatched into Campania to present Paulinus with their several letters, and the sincere gratulations of their respective Clergy; which accordingly was performed.  
In the beginning of this year, which was the three hundred ninety and fifth after Christ, Theodosius Augustus the first, a most pious Emperor, and a Nursing Father of the Church departed this life. The Ethnic writers hating his memory as virulently as his person, laboured with all manner of lies and Libels to render him odious and detestable to posterity. Holy Endelochius awaked with these scandalous clamours, and the insolent aspersions cast upon so religious an Emperor, writes earnestly to Paulinus, and prevails with him, to employ those excellent abilities bestowed on him, in the defence of this faithful Soldier of Jesus Christ, and Champion of his Spouse. This task Paulinus performed, as appears by his own words in his 9th Epistle to Severus, to whom he sent a Copy of his learned Panegygick; however posterity have suffered in the loss of it. But we want not another witness: That learned Father, and happy translator of the book of God in his thirteenth Epistle to Paulinus, gives us a very fair and full account of it. Librum tuum quem pro Theodosio principe prudenter ornateque, etc. Your book (saith he) whihc elegantly and judiciously you composed in the defence of the Emperor Theodosius, and sent to me by 
a He proved afterwards a most detestable Heretic.  Vigilantius, I have with much delight read over. What I admire in it, is your Method: For having excelled all other writers in the first parts, you excel yourself in the last. Your stile is compact and neat, and with the perspicuity and pureness of Cicero, and yet weighty and sententious; for that writing which hath nothing commendable in it, but words, is (as one saith) mere prating. The consequence besides is very great, and the coherence exact. What ever you infer, is either the confirmation of the antecedent, or the inchoation of the subsequent. Most happy Theodosius, to be vindicated by such a learned Orator of Christ! You have added to the glory of his Imperial robe, and made the utility of his just laws sacred to posterity. But this rare piece, with many more mentioned by Gennadius, either through the envy of the Heathen, or the negligence of our own, are unfortunately lost; especially a Volume of Epistles written to his Sister, with some controversial pieces against the Ethnic Philosophers, mentioned also by Saint Augustine in his four and thirtieth Epistle; and a most learned Treatise of true Repentance, and the glory of Martyrs.  
Much about this time, the name of Paulinus began to be famous in the East; and not only there, but in all parts of the Christian World. It is almost incredible (especially in this age of Impieties and Abominations) how much the example of this one man prevailed over all. The Course he ran, drew another wealthy and noble R●man (I mean Pammachius) from the Senate to the Cell; and all the Fathers of that age, when they pressed any to holy living, and a desertion of the World, brought in Paulinus for their great exemplar, and a star to lead them unto Christ. St. Augustine propounds him to Romanianus & Licentius, Saint Hierome to Julian, and the Daughters of Geruntius; and Saint chrysostom in his thirteenth homily upon Genesis, sets him down for a pattern to the husbands, and Therasia to the wives. The reverend Bishop of Hippo did very earnestly solicit him to come over into afric, & he gives his reason for it in these words: Non imprudenter ego vos rogo, & flagito, & postulo, etc. Not unadvisedly do I entreat and earnestly desire, and require you to come into afric, where the Inhabitants labour more now with the thirst of seeing you, then with the famous thirstiness of the Climate. God knows, I ask it not for my private satisfaction, nor for those only, who either by my mouth, or by the public fame have heard of you; but for the rest, who either have not heard, or else having heard will not believe so great a change; but when they themselves shall see the truth, they will not only believe, but love and imitate. It is for their sakes therefore, that I desire you to honour these parts with your bodily presence: Let the Eyes of our flocks also behold the glory of Christ in so eminent a Couple, the great exemplars to both Sexes, to tread pride under their feet, and not to despair of attaining to prefection. And in his fifty ninth Epistle to Paulinus, when (according to the custom of those holy times) he had sent his Presbyter to him to be instructed, he cannot (saith he) profit more by my Doctrine, than he can by your life. Saint Hierome useth the same Engine to bring down the high thoughts of Julian: Art thou (saith he) nobly descended? So were Paulinus and Therasia, and far nobler in Christ. Art thou rich and honourable? So were they: and from the height of honours and worldly riches became poor and inglorious, that they might gain Christ. Dear did Anastasius, who succeeded Siricius in the Sea of Rome, affect this holy Bishop, as appears by his own words in his sixteenth Epistle to Delphinus the Bishop of Bordeaux.  
But amidst all these triumphs of the Church of God, for the conversion of so eminent a person, and the frequent gratulations of learned men, expressed by their letters or personal visits, there were none that raged with so much hatred and malice against him as his own kindred, and former acquaintance. A Prophet hath no honour in his own Country, and those of his own house will be his Enemies. There are no such persecutors of the Church, as those that do it for selfe-ends, and their private advantage. Sweetly doth he complain of these bitter, unnatural dealings in his fifth Epistle to Severus. Potiore mihi parente germanus es, quam illi quos caro tantùm & sanguis mihi sociat, &. You are my Brother now by a greater Father, than those who are tied to me by flesh and blood only. For where is now my great affinity by blood? Where are my old friends? where is my former acquaintance? I am become as a dream before them all, and as a stranger to my own brothers, the Sons of my Mother. My kinsmen and my friends stand looking upon me afar off, and they pass by me like hasty floods, or the streams of a brook that will not be stayed. They convey themselves away, and are ashamed of me, who displeased them by pleasing God. And in his first Epistle, I beseech you (saith he) If I shall have need (for now my servants, and those I made freemen, are become my despisers,) that you would take care to send the old Wine, which I believe I have still at Narbon, hither unto me, and to pay for the carriage: Do not fear, dear brother, to make the poor your debtor, etc. The Noble Spirit is the bravest bearer of indignities: and certainly extraction and a virtuous descent (let popular flatterers preach what they will to the contrary,) is attended with more Divinity, and a sweeter temper, than the indiscrete Issue of the multitude. There is an eminent difference betwixt flowers and weeds, though they spring from the same mould. The Ape contending with the Lioness, told her, that she was a very fair creature, but very barren: For you (said the Ape) bring forth but one at a birth, and I bring six, or more; 'Tis true (replied the Lioness,) but thy fix are six Apes, and my one is a Lyon. The greatest part of men, which we commonly term the populacy, are a stiff, uncivil generation, without any seed of honour or goodness, and sensible of nothing but private interest, & the base ways of acquiring it. What Virtue, or what humanity can be expected from a Raymond Cabanes, a Massinello, or some Son of a Butcher? They have one barbarous shift, which Tigers and Bears would blush to commit: They will cut the throats of their most generous and Virtuous Benefactors, to comply with times, and advantage themselves; Yea, they will rejoice to see them ruined, and like inhuman Savages, insult over their innocent and helpless posterity. I could compare those fawning Hypocrites, that wait not upon men, but upon their Fortunes, to that smith's bitch in the Apologues of Locmannus the Persian, which sleeping in the forge, could not be awaked with all the noise of the hammers, the Anvil, and the bellows: but if the smith would offer to stir his teeth to eat, she would start up presently, and attend upon him with all officiousness. She would share with him in the fruits of his labours; but would not watch and look to the shop one minute while he laboured.  
Paulinus had now first lost these false friends, but was loaded for it with the love and commendations of true ones; And I know not which offended him most, to be despised by the first, or commended by the last. He had (like Saint Paul,) great heaviness, and continual sorrow of heart, to see that his brethren and kinsmen according to the flesh, hated him because he loved Christ: And on the other side, his humility would not suffer him to bear the labour of love, I mean the general applause and sincere commendations conferred upon him by his Christian friends. Severus in one of his Epistles written to him (after he had spent some lines in the commendation of his zeal and constancy,) contrary to the custom of that plain age, subscribed himself, 
Te multa dilectio ad mendacii peccatum traxit.  his Servant. To the first he replied, that his excessive love had drawn him to the sin of untruth: And the last he desired him to desist from, for this reason; Cave ergo ne posthac, etc. Have a care hereafter (saith he) that you who are a Servant of Christ, called unto liberty, term nor yourself the servant of a sinner, and of one that is not worthy to be called your fellow-servant. The virtue of humility will not excuse the vice of flattery. Thus Gregory the great, when Pope Anastasius had exceeded towards him in his laudatory elocutions, blasted them all with this humble reply; Quod verò me ●s domini, quod lucernam, etc. Your calling me the mouth of the Lord, a shining light, and a strong helper, is nothing else but an augmentation of my iniquity; for when I deserve to be punished for my sins, then do I instead of punishment receive praise. Severus, in another of his Epistles to Paulinus, earnestly entreated him to suffer his picture to be taken by a limner, which he had sent to him for that purpose, that he might have it to set up, together with the picture of Saint Martin, before the sacred font in a fair Church which Severus was then in building. This friendly motion Paulinus was very much offended with, and would by no means consent unto, teling Severus, that too much love had made him mad; And in his eighth Epistle, reasoning with him about this request, What kind of picture (saith he) would you have from me, the picture of the earthly, or the Heavenly man? I know you love only that incorruptible image, which the King of Heaven doth love in you. I am ashamed to picture what I am, and I dare not picture what I am not. But Severus resolving to force it from him, would not be satisfied with any other return; whereupon he sent it to him, with these following verses, the elegant express of his unfeigned humility. The first copy relates to the pictures, and the latter to the Font. 
Abluitis quicunque animas & membra lavacris,  
Cernite propositas ad bona facta vias, etc.  
You that to wash your flesh and Souls d●w near,  
Ponder these two examples set you here.  
Great Martin shows the holy life, and white;  
Paulinus to repentance doth invite▪  
Martins pure, harmless life took Heaven by force,  
Paulinus took it by tears and remorse.  
Martin leads through victorious palms and flowers,  
Paulinus leads you through the pools and showers.  
You that are sinners, on Paulinus look,  
You that are Saints, great Martin is your book.  
The first example bright and holy is,  
The last, though sad and weeping, leads to bliss.   
The verses relating to the Font, were these. 
Hic reparandarum generator fons animarum  
Vivum viventi lumine flumen agit, etc.  
Here the great wellspring of washed Souls, with beams  
Of living light quickens the lively streams;  
The Dove descends, and stirs them with her wings,  
So weds these waters to the upper springs,  
They straight conceive: A new birth doth proceed  
From the bright streams by an immortal seed.  
O the rare love of God sinners washed here,  
Come forth pure Saints, all justfied and clear.  
So blest in death and life, man dies to sins,  
And lives to God; Sin dies, and life begins  
To be revived: Old Adam falls away,  
And the new lives, born for eternal sway.   
Nor did the manners of holy Paulinus differ from his mind: all his Garments, all the Utensils of his poor Cot, were so many emblems and mementoes of humility. Grace is an Elixir of a contrary Nature to the Philosopher's stone, it turned all the gold and Silvervessells of this great Senator into earthen dishes and wooden spoons. Righteousness and honesty are always poor. In his first Epist. to Severus, he presents him with some of this innocent furniture; Misimus testimonialem divitiarum scutellam buxeam, etc. I have sent you (saith he) a platter made of a boxtree, for a testimonial of my, riches; receive, it as a pledge or earnest of Evangelicall poverty, and let it be an example to you, if as yet you will make use of any Silver platters. To this he adds, that he was very desirous to be supplied with some more earthen dishes, which (saith he) I do very much love; and then subscrib●s reason, quòd secundum Adam cognata nobis sint, & domini th●saurum in talibus vasis commissum habeamus; because they are near kin to us by Adam, and because the treasure of the Lord is committed to our care in such vessels. Certainly poverty (as man is now to be considered) is his best, and his true estate. Riches, though they make themselves wings, yet do they not fly to Heaven. The h●m● or house of gold, is the heart of the Earth, and minerals are a fuel of hellfire. Poverty was the Inauguration of the first man, who was made naked, and all his posterity are born, so. This only have I found (saith Solomon) that God made man upright, but he hath sought out many invention. By Covetousness we lose our uprightness: We come here light and easi●, b●t we load ourselves afterwards with ●nnecessary burdens. Perditi● tua ex te, these weights that we take up, sink us down: Our temporal misery as well at the Eternal is from ourselves. The merriest creature that I can see, is the 
* Paulinus calls Christ (mstically) a sparrow: H●c est ille pass●r, qui requirentibus se n viis hilaritèr ostend it; nunc in portis fit obvius, nunc in platis occurrit, nunc in muris vel turribus sublimis convocat ad se amatores suos, & invitat eos in altitudines habitationum suarum, ut impleat ve●bum suum, & exaltatus omnia ad se trahat. Quis dabit nobis p●nnas columbae deargentatas, ut pennati pervolemus ad brauîum supernae vocationis, sequentes istum passerem solitarium, qui est unicus dei filius, supervolitantem, cui in altis habitat, & humilia respicit?  Sparrow. This makes me think, that he is not troubled with forethoughts, which are the hands of covetousness. What man and beasts scatter and leave behind them, is his provision: his table is laid every where, and the first bush he meets with, is his bed. Our Saviour, who knew the nature and thoughts of all created things, was pleased to send us to school to the birds. They are always full of Musical liveliness, and a certain bright freedom, which descends not so low as men and beasts. Spirits, when they have business upon Earth, must assume bodies. Clarity and purification is a kind of poverty: it is a state that have cast off dregs & burdens. Divine is that saying of Gr. Pi●ides. 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
Poor habits are naturally heaven-seekers.   
But Paulinus, though he was poor, yet was he charitable, and withal liberal. The widow's mite is more than the rich men's abundance. In the four hundred and tenth year after Christ, when the Goths raged in Italy, and had sacked Nola, Paulinus (amongst many others,) was taken prisoner by them; 
Lib. 1. d▪ Civitate de●.  And thus (saith Saint Augustine) as I afterwards learned from him, did he then pray in his heart. Domine, ne excrucier propter aurum & argentum; ubi enim omnia mea sunt, tu scis. O Lord suffer me not to be troubled with the loss of Gold & Silver, for thou knowest where all my riches are laid up. His treasure was laid up in Heaven, where he commanded us to lay it, who foretold, that these calamities should come upon the World. And God (without doubt) had regard unto his prayer, for the barbarous enemy leading all the rest into captivity, he only was left behind. But amongst all these plunderings and outward afflictions, he never failed in his daily alms to the poor, nor was the hand of his faithful Therasia any way shortened. At last his store failing, and no more provision being left, then only one loaf of bread; A poor man coming to the door for relief, Paulinus commands it should be given him. But Therasia (arguing with herself, that no beggar could be poorer than Paulinus now was, and that it was as much charity to keep it for him, as to give it to another,) concealed the loaf, and suffered the poor man to go without it. A day or two after, some men that were sent with relief to Paulinus, from his friends, arrive at Nola, and tell him that they had been there much sooner, had not one of the ships, which was loaden with corn, been cast away almost in the Harbour; the rest that were fraught with Wine and other Victuals, being come safe to shore. Whereupon Paulinus turning towards Therasia, put her in mind of her overmuch carefulness, with these words, Understand now Therasia, that this great ship full laden with Co●ne, was cast away for that one loaf of bread which thou didst steal from the poor man.  
But pass we now to his Episcopal dignity. In his own Works we have not one line that mentions this Ecclesiastical honour, nor any other passage of his life, that might but seem to conduce to his own glory. They breathe nothing but humility, nothing but self-denial and dedignation. We must be guided then through this part of his life by other Authors, and such faithful records as are come unto us, from the hands of learned and public persons; who either upon the general interest and concernments of the Church, or their own private merits, and not by reflection were acquainted with him. The first that offers himself to us, is Uranius, his own Presbyter, who in that short narration which he wrote of his life, sets him forth to posterity in this following Character; Cum autem ad summum sacerdotij gradum, etc. When he was honoured (saith he) with the highest degree in the Priesthood, he did not show himself such a Bishop that desired to be feared, but one that endeavoured to be beloved. He was never so far angry, as not in his anger to show mercy. Nor could that man indeed be angry, for he regarded not calumnies, and he avoided hatred. He never sat in Judgement, but mercy sat close by him. He was truly such a Bishop as laboured to get the love of all. For he lived a Consolation to all, and their great example to make sure their Salvation. Nor is this my voice only: even the barbarous Nations who knew my Lord Paulinus by report only, will testify as much. And worthily was he beloved of all, who was a friend to all. For who was there cast down, and he did not lift him up? who ever called to him for help, and was not piously and comfortably answered? For he was pious, tender hearted, humble and courteous, hating none, despising none. He gave to all, he cherished all: he encouraged the fearful, pacified the violent, those with his words, these with his example; Some he comforted with his letters, and those that wanted, with his money. He loved not any riches, nor any treasures, but those which Christ promised to his followers. Gold and Silver, and the other accommodations of life he approved of, if they were liberally given to the poor, not covetously hoarded up. Briefly, he had in him all goodness, for he loved Christ. He had Faith, Meekness, love towards his neighbours, a constant care of the poor, compassion upon the weak, and laboured for nothing in his life, but peace and charity. All his endeavours were to make men good, and to save their Souls. What place is there in the World, what solitude, what Seas which acknowledge not the good works of holy Paulinus? All men desired his acquaintance, and did extremely long to have a sight of him. Who ever came to him without joy or who went from him, but he desired to stay longer? those that could not see him in the body, desired to see him in his writings; for he was sweet and gentle in his Epistles, elegant and ravishing in his Poems. What more shall I say? The relations that may be given of him, would be scarce credible, but that his known integrity is above falsehood.  
Nola was at this time a very famous and splendid City, nothing inferior to the best Emporiums of Italy, and had withal a very rich Sea; which questionless was a great occasion, that the piety of this blessed Bishop was so renowned, and so familiarly spoken of in the most remote parts of the World. So the just and faithful God exalteth those that humble themselves, and honours those that honour him. He had been faithful in those things that were his own, and was therefore entrusted with the treasures of the Church. Prosper in his second book, de vitâ Contemplatiuâ, and the ninth Chapter, tells us, how he disposed of them; Sanctus Paulinus (ut ipsi meliùs nostis) ingentia praedia quae fuerunt sua, vendita pauperibus erogavit: sed cum posteà factus esset Episcopus, non contempsit Ecclesiae facultates, sed fidelissime dispensavit. Holy Paulinus (saith he) as you best know, sold all those princely Possessions which were his own, and gave of them to the poor: but when he was afterwards consecrated Bishop, he neglected not the revenues of the Church, but was a most faithful Steward and dispenser of them. So faithful, that when he lay upon his death bed, he had not one piece left to relieve himself, but was driven to lay out for some clothes which he had given to the poor, a small sum of money, which God ordained to be sent to him for that very purpose a little before the hour of his dissolution. So that living and dying, he kept to the Apostles rule, and owed no man any thing but love. He was a great lover of learned and holy men, and confesseth in one of his Epistles to Alypius, that his affection to Saint Ambrose, was the first inducement which he felt to incline him to Christianity. His dearest and most intimate friends were Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose, Saint Hierome, Saint Martin the Bishop of Tours, Delphinus the Bishop of Bordeaux, and Amandus his Successor; Alypius the Bishop of Tagasta, Januarius the Bishop of Naples, afterwards a Martyr, Victricius the Rhotomagensis, Aper, Severus, and Nicetas of Da●ia. I may say of him as the Scripture saith of Moses, he was the meekest man upon the face of the Earth. He was not only obedient and serviceable to these Fathers, and pillars of the Church, but to his own Presbyters and Domestics: he judged himself the most unworthy, and the most unable of all his brethren. Victor the Monk, sent from Severus to see him (according to the custom of those times) washed his feet. This was a ceremony, which in that age of holiness could not be refused. But Victor by this did not only wash his feet, but his face also; for he drew tears from him, because he might not deny him the performance of that Evangelical service. Servivit ergo mihi peccatori, & vae misero mihi quod passus sum; he served me a sinner (saith the holy Bishop) and woe is to me because I suffered him. But he stayed not at tears, for as soon as Victor had done washing his feet, to requite his service, he fetched him clean water, and held the basin while he washed his hands. He was not like that insolent Abbot that did cast off his humility with his Cowle, and being asked by his brethren, why he was then so proud, that was formerly such an humble Monk, made answer; that in his Monachisme, when he went so low, and stooping, he was searching for the keys of the Abbey; but now having found them, he did hold up his head to ease himself.  
This true carriage of an Evangelist, made him both honoured and beloved; the Church rejoiced, and glorified ●od for him, and the Court admired him. Holiness is a light that cannot be hidden: It is a candle set upon a hill: stars never shine more glorious, then when they are near black Clouds. In the year of our Lord, four hundred and nineteen (a grievous Schism then happening in the Church,) there was a convention of certain Bishops and Fathers at Rome, to quiet those groundless perturbations, and stop the breach. But Honorius the Emperor, judging by his skill in the temper of those Churchmen, that no good would be done without the presence of Paulinus, who then lay sick at Nola, dispatched his Imperial le●ter to this holy Bishop, wherein he earnestly entreated him (if possible) to shake off his present indisposition, and to repair in person to the Synod, lest that great blessing of peace, which he and the Church did earnestly hope and long for, might by his absence unfortunately miscarry. This royal record (because it is a monument of no less sincerity than concernment, and discovers unto us much of the face of those times) I shall verbatim insert.  
Sancto & venerabili Patri, Paulino, Episcopo Nolensi.  
TAntùm fuit apud nos certa sententia, nihil ab his sacerdotibus, qui ad Synodum convenerant, posse definiri, cum beatitudo tua dé corporis inaequalitate causata, itineris non potuit injuriam sustinere, ut propter absentiam sancti viri, non quidem obtentura: Interim tamen vitia gratulantur, cum prava & vetus ambitio, & cum benedicto viro sanctaeque vitae diù vel●t habere certamen, ut contra haec Apostelicae institutionis bona, de praesumptis p●r vim pariet●bus ●xistimet confidendum. O verè digna causa quam non nisi coronae t●ae beata vita designat! Dilatum itaque Judicium nuntiamus, ut divina praecepta ex venerationis tuae ore promantur, qui easecutus implesti; nec potest alius ●orum praeceptorum lator existere, quam qui dignus Apostolicis disciplinis est approbatus. Specialiter itaque domine sancte, meritò venerabilis pater, Justus dei famulus, divinum opus, contemp●o labour, tributum hoc nobis visitationis tuae (si ita dicendum est) munus indulge, ut postpositis omnibus, quantùm temperantia his & tranquillitas suffragantur, Synodo profuturus, sine intermissione etiam desideriis nostris, & benedictioni quam cupimus, te praestare dig●eris.  
To the holy and reverend Father PAULINUS, Bishop of Nola.  
SUch a firm opinion have we that nothing can be agreed and concluded upon by the Bishops met in this Synod, (your Holiness by reason of your bodily indisposition being not able to travel hither) that for your only absence it is not like to continue: In the mean time offences triumph and rejoice at it, and the old and wicked sin of ambition, which of a long time desires to contend even with your holiness and upright life, presumes now, and is confident that having forcibly taken the wall from us, it will carry you also against the wholesomeness of Apostolical institution. O! a cause truly worthy not to be determined, but by your holy life, which is your Crown▪ we therefore declare unto you, that we have suspended our judgement for the present, that we may have the truth of these Divine precepts pronounced by your reverend mouth, who have both followed them, and fulfiled them: For none can be a fit arbiter of those rules, but he that hath approved himself worthy and conformable to Apostolical discipline. Wherefore, holy Sir, worthily reverend Father, the faithful Servant of God, and his Divine work, we entreat you particularly, that slighting the troubles of this Journey, you would favour us with this gift and tribute (if I may so speak) of your presence: and laying aside all other concernments (so far as your health and ease will permit,) be in your own person at this Synod, and vouchsafe to lend your assistance to our desires, and that blessing which we earnestly long for.  
We see by this letter in what account he was with the Emperor, and that his integrity and holiness were not dissimulations and popular Fables, but experimental truths so known and so believed; he was a true Christian, and no Impostor. It was not the Custom, but the nature (if I may so say) of those Primitive times to love holy and peaceful men. But some great ones in this later age, did nothing else but countenance Schismatics and seditious railers, the despisers of dignities, that covered their abominable villainies with a pretence of transcendent holiness, and a certain Sanctimonious excellency above the Sons of men. This Veil (which then cozened weak eyes) is now fallen off their faces, and most of their patrons have by an unthought of Method received their rewards: The rest without doubt (though they shift themselves into a thousand shapes) shall not escape him, whose anger is not yet turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. But return we to Paulinus: Whose Charity and tenderness towards the poor, was both inimitable and incredible; This iron age wants faith as well as mercy: When he had given them all he had, to the last that begged he gave himself. Gregory the great, in the third Book of his Dialogues, and the first Chapter, hath recorded this memorable passage. I shall cut it short, and in as, few words, as conveniently may be, give you all that is material. When the Vandals had miserably wasted Campania, and carried many of the inhabitants into afric, blessed Paulinus gave all that he had both towards his own sustenance, and the relief of the poor, amongst the prisoners and Captives. The Enemy being departed, and his prey with him; a poor Widow (whose only Son was (amongst the rest of the Natives) by a Son in law of the King of the Vandals carried into Bondage,) comes to petition Paulinus for so much Money as might serve to redeem him. Paulinus told her that he had nothing then left, either in money or other goods, but promised, if she would accept of him, to go with her into afric, and to be exchanged for her Son. The poor Widow taking this for a mere scoff, turns her back to be gone. Paulinus follows after, and with much ado made her believe, that he meant it (as he did indeed) in earnest. Upon this, they travelled both into afric, and having opportunity to speak with the King's Son in Law, the poor widow begged of him first▪ to have her son restored unto her Gratis: but the youthful and haughty Vandal averse to all such requests, would hear her no farther; whereupon she presents him with Paulinus, and petitioned to have her Son set at liberty, and the other to serve in his stead. The Prince taken with the comely and reverend countenance of Paulinus, asked him, what his occupation or trade was? Paulinus answered, that he never followed any trade, but that he had good skill in dressing of Herbs and Flowers. Upon this, the Prince delivered her Son to the Widow, who took him home with her, and sent Paulinus to work into his Gardens.  
The Prince delighting much in Flowers and Salads, would very frequently visit Paulinus, and took such delight in him, that he forsook all his Court-associates to enjoy the company of his new Gardener. In one of these visits, Paulinus taking occasion to confer seriously with him, advised him to be very careful of himself, and to consider speedily of some means to secure and settle the Kingdom of the Vandals 
a This was about the year of our L. 428. about which time the Vandals after their excursions through Polonia, Italy, Franconia, and Andalusia had settled in afric, where they continued quietly until the reign of Justinian, bu● rebelling against him, they were together with their King Gillimer totally overthrown by the great Captain Beli●arius An. Christi 533.  in Mauritania; for (said he) the King your Father in law will shortly die. The Prince something troubled with the sudden news, without further delay acquaints the King with it; and tells him withal, that his Gardener (whose prediction this was) excelled all other men both in wisdom and learning. Whereupon the King requested, that he might see him; you shall, replied the Prince, for to morrow when you are at dinner, I will give order that he shall come in person with the dishes of Sallate to the Table. This being agreed upon, and accordingly performed, the old Tyrant upon the first sight of Paulinus exceedingly trembled, and speaking to his Daughter, who sat next to him, to call to her husband, he told him, that the prediction of his Gardener was very true; for yesternight (said he) I saw in a dream a great tribunal with judges sitting thereon, and amongst them this Gardener, by whose judgement a scourge which had been formerly put into my hands, was taken from me. But learn of him what his profession is, and what dignity he had conferred upon him in his own Country, for I cannot believe him to be (as he pretends) an inferior or ordinary person.  
As soon as dinner was ended, the Prince stole from the presence into the Garden, and earnestly entreated Paulinus to tell him, who he was; I am (said he) your Gardener, which you received in exchange for the Widows Son. I know that, replied the Prince, but I desire to know your profession in your own Country, and not the servitude you have put yourself in with me for the present; To this Paulinus answered, that he was by profession a Bishop, and a servant of Jesus Christ the Son of the living God. At these words the Prince was mightily troubled, and requested him to depart again into his own Country, assuring him, that before he departed, he would give him any thing that he should please demand. Paulinus replied, that he would desire nothing, but to have those Captives which were carried out of Campania, set at liberty, and transported to their Native Country. To this the Prince consented, and for Paulinus his sake, furnished them with shipping and all other necessaries for their voyage, and sent them home joyful in the Company of their blessed and beloved Bishop.  
Some few days after, th● old Tyrant (as God had foretold by his holy Servant) departed out of this World into his own place; And so that scourge which God had put into his hand for the punishment of a great part of the Christian World, was taken away, and the instrument cast into the fire. Wherefore whoever thou be'st, that readest this book, and art a sufferer thyself, or dost see and grieve for the calamities of the Church, the oppression of the poor, & the violent perverting of judgement & justice in a province, do not thou marvel at the matter, nor vex thyself; for he that is higher than the highest, regardeth it, and there be higher than t●ey. Envy not the glory of Sinners, for thou knowest not what will be their end; but submit thyself under the mighty hand of God, expecting with patience the time of refreshing, and I do assure thee upon my Soul, thou shalt not be deceived,  
Paulinus, with all his joyful Captives, was now landed in Campania, where all the Inhabitants, as upon a solemn feast-day flocked together to welcome him, and to pour their joys into his bosom; some received their Sons, some their brothers, and some their husbands: both the receivers and the received were beholding to Paulinus. They commended, honoured and admired him: He exhorted, encouraged and confirmed them. Mutual Consolations are a double banquet, they are the Churches Eulogiae, which we both give and take. What the Campanians most admired in Paulinus, was that which the Scripture commends in Moses: youthfulness in old age. He was now as earnest, as hearty, and as active for the glory of God, as in his most vigorous years. His spiritual force was not abated, nor the Eye of his Soul any way dimmed. He did not cool towards his setting, but grew more large, more bright, and more fervent. Bearing trees, when their fruit is ripe, bend their boughs, and offer themselves to the gatherers' hands. He knew that his time of departure was at hand, and therefore Moses-like he made his Doctrine to drop as the rain, and his speech distilled as the dew. He poured out his milk and his Wine, and made them drink abundantly. To labour in the heat of the day, and to give over in the cool, is great indiscretion, the contention should be always hottest towards the end of the race.  
I am now come to my last Paragraph, which all this while I did reserve for his Works of Piety. And these indeed (if we consider his unworldlinesse, and religious poverty) were very great and very sumptuous. He repaired and beautified the four old Basilica's, or Churches, dedicated to the Martyr Felix, and built the fifth, which exceeded them all, both for beauty and largeness. This he dedicated to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It was adorned with two stately Porches, the one opened towards the way of Public resort, the other was a private Postern; and the path leading to it, was through a pleasant green field set with fruit-trees and other shady wood, fenced about with a very high and sumptuous wall; The entrance into this Court was through a fair Marble-Gate, in whose Front were cut these following verses. 
Caelestes intrate vias per amoena vireta, etc.  
Through pleasant green fields enter you the way  
To bliss; and well through shades and blossoms may  
The walks lead here, from whence directly lies  
The good man's path to sacred Paradise.   
This Church was joined to the other four, and an entrance made from the one into the other, by high and spacious Arches, supported with pillars of Marble. Through these pillars (whose height did almost reach to the roof,) as through a traverse was to be seen, by those that came from the old Ch●rch into the new, the picture of the Cross, limned in most lively and glorious Colours, and hung with Garlands of palms and flowers; above it shined a clear and luminous sky, and on the Cross, which was all Purple, sat perching a flock of white Doves; at the bottom of this Paisage were written these verses. 
Ardua florifera Crux, etc.  
The painful Cross with flowers an● Palms is crowned,  
Which prove, it springs; though all in blood ' is drowned:  
The Doves above it show with one consent,  
Heaven opens only to the innocent.   
In the Courts belonging to this Church, were very fair and spacious walks, paved with stone, and covered over head against the violence of weather. The outside was supported with Pillars, and the Inner was divided into neat and cleanly Cells, opening towards the Walks, where the people that came thither to celebrate the Vigils of Felix, reposed themselves. Round about these Courts were great Cisterns, and Lavers of several kinds of Marble most curiously polished, whose diverse-formes and colours were very delightful, and much recreated the beholders. The Porches, which were very large, and contained with in them many private Oratories, or places of prayer, were all richly pictured with sacred Histories out of the Pentateuch, the book of Joshuah, Judges and Ruth; This Church is fully described in his twelfth Epistle to Severus, and his ninth Natalis, when Nicetas came out of Daciae to see him. 
Ecce vidès quantus splendor velut aede renatâ  
Rideat, insculptum camerâ crispante lacunar  
In ligno mentitur ebur; tectoque supernè  
Pendents lychni spiris retinentur ahenis,  
Et medio in vacuo laxis vaga lumina nutant  
Funibus, undantes flammas levis aura fatigat, etc.  
You see what splendour through the spacious Isle,  
As if the Church were glorified, doth smile.  
The Ivory-wrought beams seem to the sight  
In graven, while the carved roof looks curled and bright.  
On brass hoops to the upmost vaults we tie  
The hover Lamps, which nod and tremble by  
The yielding Cords; fresh Oil doth still repair  
The waving flames, vexed with the fleeting air.   
Having finished this Church, he built another, not far from Nola, in a little Town called Fundi, where his possessions (which he afterwards sold and gave to the poor,) were situate; this also de dedicated to our Lord Jesus, whom he used to call th● Saint of Saints, and the Marty of Martyrs. In this Church in the great Isle leading to the Altar, he caused to be put up another piece of Limning, or sacred Paisage, which for beauty ●nd excellency exceeded all the former. We have it most lively described and explained in these following verses. 
Sanctorum labour & merces sibi rite coherent,  
Ardua Crux, pretiumque crucis sublime, corona, etc.  
The pains of Saints, and Saints rewards are twins,  
The sad Cross, and the Crown which the Cross wins.  
Here Christ the Prince both of the Cross and Crown  
Amongst fresh Groves and Lilies fully blown,  
Stands, a white Lamb bearing the purple Cross,  
White shows his pureness, Red his bloods dear loss:  
To ease his sorrows the chaste Turtle sings,  
And fans him swetting blood with h●r bright wings;  
While from a shining Cloud the Father Eyes  
His Sons sad conflict with his Enemies,  
And on his blessed head lets gently down  
Eternal glory made into a Crown.  
About him stand two flocks of differing notes,  
One of white sheep, and ●●e of speckled goats,  
The first possess his right hand, and the last  
Stand on his left: The spotted Goats are cast  
All into thick, deep shades, while from his right  
The white sheep pass into a whiter light.   
But in all these sacred buildings, our most pious and humble Bishop did not so much as dream of Merit. He thought (as bl●ssed Mr. Herbert did) that they were good works, if sprinkled with the blood of Christ; otherwise he thought them nothing. It will not be amiss, nor perhaps needless, to produce his own words in his own defence: Nisi dominus aedificaverit domum, vano aedificantes labore sudabimus. Oremus ergo dominum, ut dum nos illi aedificamus domicilia quae videntur, ille nobis intus aedificet illa quae no● videntur, domum videlice● illam non manufactam. Unless the Lord build the house, we labour in vain to build it. Let us therefore (saith he) pray to the Lord, that while we outwardly build unto him these visible buildings, he would build inwardly in us those which are invisible, that is to say, the house not made with hands. How can a servant merit by making use of his master's goods? All we do, and all we give are but his concessions and favours first given unto us. Cum suis & hìc & ibi rebus lo●upletamur, in this World, and in the World to come all ou● magnificence is but his munificence. But Paulinus was not only outwardly pious, but inwardly also. He did so abound with private devotions, that all the time from his Baptism to his burial, may be truly called his Prayer-time. All that he did think, all that he did speak, and all that he did write, was pure devotion. Either public or private prayers took up all his tim●. Our Saviour tells us, that Gods Elects cry day and night unto him, 
Luk. 18.  and Saint Paul adviseth us to pray without ceasing, and in every thing to give thanks, for this (saith he) is the will of God in Christ jesus concerning you. Holy Paulinus called Saint Paul his Master, having made himself his Disciple, he would not neglect his commands: If you continue in my word (saith our Saviour) then are you my Disciples indeed.  
To this I shall add his Conformity and obedience to the Church, a blessing of no small consequence in all ages, especially in this age of Schisms and Heresies. He highly honoured the memory of the Saints of God, and was a most cheerful and devout observer of Sacred Festivals, or holy days. His pious affection to these blessed seasons, together with the necessity and convenience of them, he hath most elegantly and learnedly demonstrated in his Poems. 
— hos per long a morantes  
Tempora, dum tardi splendens rota vertitur anni  
Sustineo intentis affecto pectore votis:  
Quos cupio totis mihi praelucere diebus,  
Vel quando veniunt ita compensare moras, ut  
Aestivis possent spatiis producere lucem,  
Aut illum pensare diem, qui sistere Jussis  
Syderibus, longo lassavit lumine mundum,  
Humanos duplicans dilatâ nocte labores.  
Ergo velut caelum stellis, & floribus arva  
Temporibusque annos dominus, sic ipse diebus  
Tempora distinxit festis, ut pigra diurnis  
Ingenia obsequiis, saltem discrimine facto,  
Post intervallum reduci sollemnia voto  
Sancta libenter agant, residesque per annua mentes  
Festa parent domino, quia Jupiter intemeratos  
Justitiae servare piget: delinquere suetis,  
Parcere peccato labor est: decurritur omni  
Valle, per ascensum non est evadere cursu.  
Ind bonus dominus cunctos pietatis ut alis  
Contegat, invalidis niti v●rtutis ad arcem  
Congrua sanctorum dedit intervalla dierum,  
Ut saltem officiis mediocribus ultima Christi  
Vestimenta legant, & eos sacra fimbria sanet.  
Primus enim gradus est caelo pertexere cunctos  
Continuâ bonitate dies, & tempore toto  
Pascha sacrum Christi Cultu celebrare pudico.  
Quod si mista seges tribulis mihi germinat, & cor  
Incultum stimulat terreni spina laboris,  
Vel festis domino studeam me offere diebus,  
Ut vel parte mei tanquam confinia Vitae,  
Corpore ne toto trahar in Consortia mortis.   
Englished thus. 
Those sacred days by tedious time delayed  
While the slow years bright line about is laid,  
I patiently expect, though much distressed  
By busy longing, and a lovesick breast▪  
I wish, they may outshine all other days,  
Or when they come, so recompense delays  
As to outlast the Summer-hours bright length,  
Or that famed day, when stopped by Divine strength,  
The Sun did tire the World with his long light,  
Doubling men's labours, and adjourning night.  
As the bright Sky with stars, the fields with flowers,  
The years with differing seasons, months' and hours'  
God hath distinguished and marked; so he  
With sacred feasts did ease and beautify  
The working days: because that mixture may  
Make men (loath to be holy every day,)  
After long labours with a freer will.  
Adore their maker, and keep mindful still  
Of holiness, by keeping holy days:  
For otherwise they would dislike the ways  
Of piety as too severe. To cast  
Old customs quite off, and from sin to fast  
Is a great work. To run which way we will,  
On plains is easy, not so up a hill.  
Hence 'tis our good God (who would all men bring  
Under the Covert of his saving wing,)  
Appointed at set times his solemn feasts,  
That by mean services, men might at least  
Take hold of Christ as by the hem, and steal  
Help from his lowest skirts their Souls to heal.  
For the first step to Heaven, is to live well  
All our life long, and each day to excel  
In holiness; but since that tares are found  
In the best Corn, and thistles will Confound  
And prick my heart with vain cares, I will strive  
To weed them out on feast-days, and so thrive  
By handfuls, till I may full life obtain,  
And not be swallowed of Eternal pain.   
Two places upon Earth were most renowned with the memory of our Saviour, Bethlem for his birth, and mount Calvarie for his passion. To extirpate all remembrance of his Humanity out of these places, Hadrian the persecutor caused the Idol of Jupiter to be set up, and worshipped in Mount Calvarie; and in Bethlem he built a Mosquie for that Egyptian block Adonis, which the Idolatrous Jews called Thamuz. Some men amongst us have done the like: Two Seasons in the year were consecrated by the Church to the memory of our Saviour: The Feast of his Nativity and Circumcision, and the Feast of his Passion and Resurrection. These two they have utterly taken away: endeavouring (in my opinion) to extinguish the memory of his Incarnation and Passion, and to raze his blessed name out of those bright columns of light, which the Scripture calls days. They will not allow him two days in the year, who made the day's and the nights. But it is much to be feared, that he who hath appointed their days here, will allow them for it long nights.  
Holy Paulinus had now attained a good old age, the forerunners (as Master Herbert saith) were come, and the Almond tree did flourish: he was all white with years, and worshipped (like Jacob) lea●ing upon the top of his staff. His virtuous and dear Therasia had died (I believe) long before this time; God having ordained him to be hindmost, who was the stronger Vessel, and best able to bear her absence, and the unavoidable disconsolations of flesh and blood. And now (having for some time stood gazing after her,) he begins to follow, God visiting him with a strong pain in the side, which in a few days did set him at liberty to overtake her, by breaking the prison.  
Three days before his dissolution, Symmachus and Hyaci●thinus, two Bishops of his acquaintance c●me to visit him; whereupon he spoke to Uranius his Presbyter, that he should prepare to attend him in the administration of the Sacrament; for (said he) I desire to receive it in the company of my brethren, which are now come to see me. This sacred Solemnity was no sooner ended, but suddenly he began to ask, where his brothers were? One that stood by, supposing that he had asked for the two Bishops, answered, Here they be: I know that, replied Paulinus, but I ask for my brothers Januarius and Martinus, 
Januarius was Bishop of Naples, and a Martyr; and Martinus was the Bishop ●f Tours in France  who were here with me just now, and promised to come to me again. And having thus spoken, he looked up towards Heaven, and with a voice as cheerful as his countenance, which seemed to shine and revive with joy, he sung out the one hundred and twentieth Psalm, I lift up mine Eyes unto th● hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, who made Heave● and Earth.  
This being done Posthumianus, another Presbyter that was then present, told Paulinus, that there were forty shillings unpaid for the clothes which he had given to the poor, before be fell sick. To this Paulinus replied with a smile, that he remembered it very well: and Son (said he) tak● no thought for it, for believe me, there is on● that will not be wanting to pay the debt of the poor. The words were no sooner out of his mouth, but presently there comes in from the parts of Lucania (now called Basilicata) a Presbyter sent from the holy Bishop Exuperantius to visit Paul●nus; who brought him fifty shillings for a token from the Bishop. Paulinus receiving the money, blessed God, saying, I thank thee O Lord, that hast not forsaken them that seek thee. Of these fifty shillings he gave two with his own hand to the Presbyter that brought them, and the rest he delivered to Post humianu● to pay for the clothes which were given to the poor.  
The Evening now drawing on, he remained quiet and well at ease until midnight: but the pain then increasing in his side, he was troubled with a great difficulty, and shortness of breathing, which held him till five in the morning. The day beginning to break, he felt the usual motions of holiness awaking his Spirit, to which (though weak) he cheerfully obeyed, and sitting up in his bed, celebrated Matins himself. By this time all the Deacons and Presbyters of his diocese were gathered together at the door, and came (like the Sons of the Prophets) to see the translation of their aged Father. After some short exhortations to holiness and Christian courage, he lifted up his hands and blessed them, mindful (it seems) of our Saviour's carriage at his ascension, whose peace he prayed might rest upon them.  
Shortly after (the pain still increasing and prevailing against him) he became speechless, and so continued until the Evening; when suddenly sitting up (as if he had been awaked out of his sleep) he perceived it to be the time of the Lucernarium, or Evening-Office, and lifting up his hands towards Heaven, he repeated with a low voice, this verse out of the Psalms, Thy word is a Lantern unto my feet, and a light unto my paths. About the fourth hour of the night, when all that were present sat diligently watching about him; his poor Cottage did suddenly shake with such a strong Earthquake, that those who kneeled about his bed were something disordered with it, and fell all trembling to their prayers. The Guests of Eternal Glory were now entered under that narrow roof, where (after the abdication of his great worldly honours) he had lived so long in all holiness and humility. For in that instant of time (saith Uranius) he was dissolved, the blessed Angels testifying that they were present to conduct his happy and glorious Soul into the joy of his Master. By the like sign did Christ signify to his Church in Jerusalem, that he heard their prayers when they were persecuted by the merciless Jews. Gregory the great, in the place   

St. Paulinus to his Wife Therasia.  
COme my true Consort in my Joys and Care!  
Let this uncertain and still wasting share  
Of our frail life be given to God. You see  
How the swift days drive hence incessantly,  
And the frail, drooping World (though still thought gry,)  
In secret, slow consumption wears away.  
All that we have, pass from us: and once past  
Return no more; like clouds, they seem to last,  
And so delude loose, greedy minds. But where  
Are now those trim deceits? to what dark sphere  
Are all those false fires sunk, which once so shined  
They captivated Souls, and ruled mankind?  
He that with fifty ploughs his lands did sow,  
Will scarce be trusted for two Oxen now,  
His rich, loud Coach known to each crowded street  
Is sold, and he quite tired walks on his feet.  
Merchants that (like the Sun) their voyage made  
From East to West, and by wholesale did trade,  
Are now turned Sculler-men, or sadly swett  
In a poor fisher's boat with line and net.  
Kingdoms and Cities to a period tend,  
Earth nothing hath, but what must have an end:  
Mankind by plagues, distempers, dearth and war,  
Tortures and Prisons die both near and far;  
Fury and hate rage in each living breast,  
Princes with Princes, States with States contest;  
An Universal discord mads each land,  
Peace is quite lost, the last times are at hand;  
But were these days from the last day secure,  
So that the world might for more years endure,  
Yet we (like hirelings) should our term expect,  
And on our day of death each day reflect.  
For what (Therasia!) doth it us avail  
That spacious streams shall flow and never fail,  
That aged forests high to tire the Winds,  
And flowers each spring return and keep their kinds?  
Those still remain: but all our Fathers died,  
And we ourselves but for few days abide.  
This short time than was not given us in vain,  
To whom time dies, in which we dying gain,  
But that in time eternal life should be  
Our care, and endless rest our industry.  
And yet, this Task which the rebellious deem  
Too harsh, who god's mild laws for chains esteem,  
Suits with the meek and harmless heart so right  
That 'tis all ease, all comfort and delight.  
" To love our God with all our strength and will;  
" To covet nothing; to devise no ill  
" Against our neighbours; to procure or do  
" Nothing to others, which we would not to  
" Our very selves; not to revenge our wrong;  
" To be content with little; not to long  
" For wealth and greatness; to despise or jeer  
" No man, and if we be despised, to bear;  
" To feed the hungry; to hold fast our Crown;  
" To take from others naught; to give our own;  
These are his precepts: and (alas!) in these  
What is so hard, but faith can do with ease?  
He that the holy Prophets doth believe,  
And on God's words relies, words that still live  
And cannot die; that in his heart hath writ  
His Saviour's death and triumph, and doth yet  
With constant care, admitting no neglect,  
His second, dreadful coming still expect:  
To such a liver earthy things are dead,  
With Heaven alone, and hopes of heaven he's said;  
He is no Vassal unto worldly trash,  
Nor that black knowledge, by which pretends to wash,  
But doth defile: A knowledge, by which Men  
With studied care loose Paradise again.  
Commands and titles, the vain world's device,  
With gold, the forward seed of sin and vice,  
He never minds: his Aim is far more high,  
And stoops to nothing lower than the sky;  
Nor grief, nor pleasures breed him any pain,  
He nothing fears to lose, would nothing gain;  
What ever hath not God, he doth detest:  
He lives to Christ, is dead to all the rest.  
This Holy one sent hither from above  
A Virgin brought forth, shadowed by the Dove;  
His skin with stripes, with wicked hands his face,  
And with foul spittle soiled and beaten was;  
A Crown of thorns his blessed head did wound,  
Nails pierced his hands and feet, and he fast bound  
Stuck to the painful Cross, where hanged till dead  
With a cold spear his hearts dear blood was shed.  
All this for man, for bad, ungrateful Man  
The true God suffered! not that sufferings can  
Add to his glory ought, who can receive  
Access from nothing, whom none can bereave  
Of his all-fulness:: but the blessed design  
Of his sad death was to save me from mine;  
He dying bore my sins, and the third day  
His early rising raised me from the clay.  
To such great mercies what shall I prefer,  
Or who from loving God shall me deter?  
Burn me alive, with curious, skilful pain  
Cut up and search each warm and breathing vain:  
When all is done, death brings a quick release,  
And the poor mangled body sleeps in peace.  
Hale me to prisons, shut me up in brass:  
My still free Soul from thence to God shall pass;  
Banish or bind me, I can be no where  
A stranger, nor alone; My God is there.  
I fear not famine; how can he be said  
To starve, who feeds upon the living bread?  
And yet this courage springs not from my store,  
Christ gave it me, who can give much, much more;  
I of myself can nothing dare or do,  
He bids me fight, and makes me conquer too.  
If (like great Abr'ham,) I should have command  
To leave my father's house and native Land,  
I would with joy to unknown regions run,  
Bearing the Banner of his blessed Son.  
On worldly goods I will have no design,  
But use my own, as if mine were not mine;  
Wealth I'll not wonder at, nor greatness seek,  
But choose (though laughed at,) to be poor & meek.  
In woe and wealth I'll keep the same stayed mind,  
Grief shall not break me, nor joys make me blind:  
My dearest Jesus I'll still praise, and he  
Shall with Songs of Deliverance compass me.  
Then come my faithful Consort! join with me  
In this good fight, and my true helper be;  
Cheer me when sad; advise me when I stray;  
Let us be each the others guide and stay;  
Be your Lord's Guardian: give joint aid and due;  
Help him when fall'n; rise, when he helpeth you;  
That so we may not only one flesh be,  
But in one Spirit, and one Will agree.  
FINIS.